With the Doomsday Clock at 90 seconds to midnight, closer than it has ever been, Christopher Nolan’s new film could not have been released at a more timely moment.
Having read American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, the magisterial Pulitzer prize-winning biography on which Oppenheimer is based, I wondered how Nolan would structure his film. To tell the story in chronological order, as the book naturally does, would feel uninspired. Instead, Nolan, formally inventive as always, breaks up the narrative into multiple timelines. There is “fission” (splitting apart) in colour, and “fusion” (merging) in high-contrast black-and-white (shot in IMAX, a first). From the outset, the infamous 1954 private hearing, essentially a kangaroo court, is used to frame events, as Oppenheimer looks back on his life. We are quickly introduced to many characters, and I immediately noted that this will be challenging to follow if you are unfamiliar with the history being presented.
Oppenheimer’s life is so rich in incident, and he is such a multi-faceted and contradictory individual, that it would be impossible to include everything even in this three-hour epic – you would need a ten-part series. Nolan chooses not to explore the earlier aspects of Oppenheimer’s life, his childhood in a wealthy German-Jewish family on New York’s Upper West Side, the influence of the Ethical Culture Society, his experience of bullying at a summer camp, or his time at Harvard. Rather, the film begins as he is struggling with his mental health while at Cambridge; and yes, he really did poison his tutor’s apple during what seems to have been a psychotic break. Things kick into gear when he moves from Göttingen to California, bringing quantum physics to the US and becoming involved in left-wing political circles.
It quickly becomes apparent as the narrative progresses that this period piece is actually a thriller smuggled into a biopic. The narrative whooshes along, propelled by Hoyte van Hoytema’s sweeping and panning cinematography and Ludwig Göransson’s relentless, mercurial score. Who would have guessed that seminar rooms, chalk and blackboard, and the logistics of setting up a camp could be so gripping on screen?
It quickly becomes apparent as the narrative progresses that this period piece is actually a thriller smuggled into a biopic.
Cillian Murphy, rail-thin, fedora-wearing, and chain-smoking, strikes an uncanny resemblance to the (in)famous physicist. He gives an excellent performance which will most likely receive an Oscar nomination.
Oppenheimer is picked by Leslie Groves, played by Matt Damon in the only role that provides some moments of comic relief, to run a secret laboratory of scientists to develop an atomic bomb. An elegant example of the interweaving of the personal and the historical, the site chosen by Oppenheimer is Los Alamos, in his beloved New Mexico desert. The film puts you in the mindset of the characters at that time and effectively conveys the desperate race to build a bomb before the Germans. The scene we are all waiting for, the Trinity test, when it arrives, is nerve-wracking, awe-inducing and horrifying. Nolan’s effects team spectacularly recreates the bomb without using CGI.
The detonation of the ‘Gadget’ is the true climax here. The third act is perhaps slightly overlong and does not continue quite the same momentum that had been maintained up to that point. Could the structure have been re-organised so that Trinity came at the end? This final act deals with a Senate confirmation of Lewis Strauss (in a brilliant performance by Robert Downey Jr), the trial of Oppenheimer at the height of McCarthyism, and the protagonist’s growing realisation of the consequences of the Manhattan Project. It is striking how many myths can be readily applied to Oppenheimer’s life: he is not only a ‘Prometheus’, but also a Frankenstein who has released upon the world a monster beyond his control. Murphy’s haunted eyes and Göransson’s motif of thunderously stamping feet convey the terror of his new awareness.
The scene we are all waiting for, the Trinity test, when it arrives, is nerve-wracking, awe-inducing and horrifying.
Oppenheimer does not show any footage or images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the cities on which the atomic bombs were dropped. I can understand why Nolan made this decision: for one thing, the narrative is told through Oppenheimer’s perspective (the script, apparently, was even written in the first person). However, some may find that the film does not sufficiently grapple with the bombings of Japan. Oppenheimer’s vision of a woman’s face being flayed by a bomb blast (it’s not as graphic as it sounds) does not go far enough in engaging with what the Americans had just done.
Another minor issue is the sex scenes (one in particular). Jean Tatlock, played by Florence Pugh, was a very important figure in Oppenheimer’s life, not only in that she was the love of his life but also because his association with her, a member of the Communist party, did much to damage his reputation. It is strange that Nolan, who has studiously avoided sexuality in his work up to now, would suddenly shoot it in such a gratuitous fashion. It is not offensive – it just doesn’t work for me. Emily Blunt, as Oppenheimer’s alcoholic wife Kitty, plays another female character who does not receive much attention, but she at least has a powerful scene late in the film, when she defiantly challenges Jason Clarke’s prosecutor in the private hearing.
It is striking how many myths can be readily applied to Oppenheimer’s life: he is not only a ‘Prometheus’, but also a Frankenstein who has released upon the world a monster beyond his control.
There is so much more that could be written about this occasionally portentous but ultimately overwhelming movie. It will bring the essential account of Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project to a new generation. There is no more important topic we should be talking about. Oppenheimer’s vision in the film’s final scene is poignant and highly disturbing. Will we get out of the war in Ukraine, let alone out of this century, without the use of nuclear weapons? As Richard Rhodes, author of the classic The Making of the Atomic Bomb, has stated, Oppenheimer’s creation will lead to one of two outcomes: the end of major war, or the destruction of the human world.
WORDS: Micheal Healon
