Following the incredibly disappointing, over-complicated and dull “Tenet” Christopher Nolan needed a big bounce back. While “Oppenheimer” is not a masterpiece it is a great movie made with the love and care of a master craftsmen. Nolan’s technical excellence and stunning visuals combined with Cillian Murphey’s magnificent performance create a special experience at the movies.
“Oppenheimer” tells the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer. The man in charge of the Manhattan Project and the team that created the atomic bomb during World War 2. The story is told in three parts. Oppenheimer as a young, brilliant and ambitious student. His time putting together and managing the project from different corners of the country, and postwar that follows his complicated and conflicted feelings about being the father of weapons of mass destruction, and the persecution he felt being accused of being a communist for some of his pre-war associations and actions.
Nolan constructs the film in flash backs and flash forwards. The centerpiece the film returns to throughout is the confirmation hearings of Robert Straus in the post war. Oppenheimer’s memories of Straus, who made Oppenheimer the director of the nuclear commission at the end of the War, for the most part are shot in beautiful black and white and stand in stark contrast to striking colors of the New Mexico Desert, classrooms and campuses across the globe, and general social gatherings of the 30s the rest of the film is shot in. Nolan invests in every 70MM frame of this epic biography. A basic biography seems like an odd place to apply such intense technology, and only a master film maker with credibility and clout could execute it. The intimacy it creates with the story is palpable.
The sets are dead replicas of the eras they cover. Particularly the Los Alamos set where they tested and eventually detonated the first atomic bomb. The government created a city for the project and Nolan had a community built for the film. Even though we know the outcomes, Nolan manages to create great tension for the first A-Bomb test. Not only whether or not it will work, but if it will set off a chain reaction that will destroy the world.
The film is populated with great performances to match the career best from Murphey. From Matt Damon as the hardheaded military man who is Oppenhiemer’s partner and boss on the project, to Robert Downey Jr’s reserved and duplicitous role as Robert Straus. All the actors playing the supporting scientist bring individuality and demonstrate how each was conflicted by the joy of discovery and possibilities of the science, while always coping with the negative impact of creating the most lethal weapon in history.
In a film about 1940’s scientist the female parts would figure to be standard and forgettable, but Florence Pugh brings a seductive strong and haunting presence as Oppenheimer’s passionate but flawed first wife that haunts him for the rest of his life. While Emily Blunt, who had me wondering what she was doing in this movie as the neglected alcoholic second wife, but she brings surprising strength to the character and dominates in a few key moments toward the end of the film.
At its center “Oppenheimer” is focused on examining the necessity of Atomic weapons and the emotional and conflicted impact it had forever for the man, and all of those involved, who created it. It is over 3 hours long and could use some trimming. However, with movie after movie in today’s market force feeding us nostalgia and sequels, it is fantastic to sit in a theater and enjoy a true auteur who is trying to dazzle us with every poetic shot, and an actor capturing the complexities of a truly brilliant but flawed man. It truly an event film and a memorable time at the movies.