On "Oppenheimer"

I wasn't able to see "Oppenheimer" as Christopher Nolan intended, not having access to any large format showings.  However, this is true for most of the viewers of this film, who will end up watching it on much smaller screens.  There's definitely a sense that this was intended to be a piece of spectacle, even though the scope of "Oppenheimer" is fairly small, and there's nothing that you could really call a set piece or action sequence.  The only exception is the testing of the first nuclear bomb, a spine-tingling event marked by slow motion renderings of flame and smoke.  Even this is brief and fleeting, intended to evoke somber awe instead of excitement.

"Oppenheimer" is structured more like a conspiracy thriller and courtroom drama than a typical biopic.  It takes place in three different points in time, nested like so many other Nolan films.  In 1959, Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.), is being questioned by the US Senate for his part in disgracing J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy), which may cost him the position of Secretary of Commerce.  In 1954, Oppenheimer is undergoing similar questioning by government officials, intended by Strauss to discredit and diminish him.  Framed by the two different interrogations, we learn the trajectory of  Oppenheimer's career as a physicist, from his student days in the 1920s, to leading the Manhattan project to build the first atomic bomb during WWII, to the fame, notoriety, and controversy that followed.

J. Robert Oppenheimer is a fascinating figure, a scientific genius who let himself be convinced that building the bomb was necessary to end WWII, and came to regret it.  He was politically at odds with the government, and constantly under suspicion for marrying his wife Kitty (Emily Blunt) and maintaining a sporadic love affair with psychiatrist Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh), both Communists.  He interacted with every major scientific mind of his era, including having a fateful conversation with Albert Einstein (Tom Conti) that bookends the film.  Nolan portrays him as brilliant, but also disconnected and naive about his ability to stay on the right side of history, and only concerned with the consequences of his achievements when it was too late.  The structure of the narrative forces him to confront himself and his worst failings, even as the film is simultaneously making the case for how unfairly he was treated after the war.  

Aside from the achronological storytelling and abrupt editing, there's not much flashy visual blandishment going on in the film.  Every part of Oppenheimer's era is immaculately recreated with great attention to historical detail, of course, but it's nothing too different from a more typical biopic.  Most of the big, dramatic moments are in conversation or testimony.  The Strauss timeline being in black and white is the only major stylistic decision I can think of.  Instead, what gives "Oppenheimer" its weight is the intense focus that Nolan affords to Cillian Murphy's performance, and willingness to treat intimate moments as momentous.  So much of the film is simply Murphy thinking and reacting, often wordlessly, as Oppenheimer races to be the first to weaponize nuclear power, and then has to live with the consequences.  "Oppenheimer" doesn't strike me as cold the way most Nolan films are, maybe because his canvas so much of the time is human faces blown up on IMAX screens, the subtlest emotions magnified to magnificent proportions.  Cillian Murphy delivers a great performance, anchoring a film that is often awash in scientific and political babble, with too many characters to keep track of.

Good grief, Christopher Nolan stuffed this cast with great actors.  You have major talents like Rami Malek, Kenneth Branagh, Casey Affleck, and Gary Oldman barely getting half a scene apiece.  The visual shorthand of familial stars is necessary, however, because so many people contributed important pieces of this story, and Nolan seemed determined not to leave out any of them.  Standouts include David Krumholtz as Oppenheimer's close collaborator Isidor Isaac Rabi, Jason Clarke as attorney Roger Robb, who spearheaded the witch hunt Oppenheimer endured in the '50s, and Matt Damon as the excitable director of the Manhattan Project.  Blunt and Pugh don't get enough to do because "Oppenheimer" spends little time concerned with its subject's private life, but are afforded enough opportunity to remind us of what formidable actresses they are.  Robert Downey Jr., however, delivers my favorite performance, playing Strauss as a miserable, petty man who is driven by an imagined slight. 

 I also found Nolan's screenplay impressive for how willing it is to dive headfirst into difficult subjects without making anything easy for audiences.  Politics and paranoia are discussed heavily, along with the moral issues around the use of the bomb.  However, the writing is so efficient that it never feels like the pace slows down, even when the race for the atomic bomb transitions into the disposition of the two inquiries.  This doesn't feel like a three hour movie, even if it has the weight of one.  Likewise, this doesn't feel like a biopic despite J. Robert Oppenheimer rarely leaving our sight.

---