Oppenheimer (2023)

Every so often a film comes along that is so immense in scope and deep in layers that the idea of doing justice to it in two or three thousand words is ludicrous. To be sure, I've been that much of an ass that I've tried to do just that on this platform and also to be sure, I'm about to do it again.

Like many people, I could blather ridiculously about Christopher Nolan's genius and command of the medium. Unlike many people, I more often than not admire his work than love it. I used to hear that from people about Kubrick; he was too cerebral, too analytical, and so on. I don't necessarily believe that about Nolan. Yes, he is cerebral, and yes, you can see the analytical elements come together in his work, but there is a genuine humanity in each of his films, as well. He is a humanist before aught else. 

I think my issue - and believe me, it is only my issue - is that his films are often so refined and well-crafted that I get lost in the magic of his mastery. It takes me two or three viewings before I get beyond the whiz-bang of it all and start to relate to the people instead of the ideas or the artistry. Again, that's my issue.

But with Oppenheimer? Holy shit! I could end this piece on that note and I think I would have said all that's necessary. 

However, because I enjoy this exercise, I am going to blather on and on. 

Rather than go down into exposition, recapitulation, and likely spoilage, it might be more fruitful to consider the film's structure overall (since Nolan is one of our grand formalists) and how the themes of power, hubris, and desire weave like threads to form this immense tapestry. 

Out of the gate, Nolan sets up two timelines. One is titled "Fission" and takes us through the subjective lens of the physicist himself and could be conceived as the various atomic structures of a life smashing together to lead up to the narrative as a whole. The other is "Fusion", filmed in black and white and no less comprised of memories - this time from Lewis Strauss who is up before a Senate confirmation hearing and is using Oppenheimer as a piñata for perceived slights from years before. That Strauss was a proponent for fast-tracking the development of the hydrogen bomb is an additional reason for the use of the title.

We have, thus, two timelines between which we shift in a non-linear manner but are so distinct and build to two distinct results. One results in the development of the atomic bomb, of course, but also, the Atomic Energy Commission; the other in the elevation of an ambitious politician at the cost of another man's career and reputation. Overshadowing both is the weapon whose progeny still portend mutually assured destruction if they are ever employed in the course of hostilities between nations. 

At the center of this, of course, is J. Robert Oppenheimer, one of the few physics students in the United States at the time who understood quantum theory and mechanics. It is telling how, throughout the film, Oppenheimer himself emphasizes that he is far more adept at theory than application, but this may also be why he was chosen to head the Manhattan Project. Oppenheimer had met Niels Bohr, and knew many of the leading practical/applied physicists in the U.S.; he greets Einstein at Princeton where "Oppy" has been offered a position, and it is these connections that trump his otherwise dodgy political associations and interests. While not a member of the Communist Party, his brother and sister-in-law were, his lover Jean Tatlock was, and he himself was pretty definitively a Leftist. 

U.S. Army General Leslie Groves recruits Oppenheimer to lead the project and while he may not have completely regretted the decision, discovers that keeping tabs on the lead physicists is not unlike herding cats. Attempting to staunch and stave off leaks, Groves tries to command that the scientists work in silos; a fool's errand, of course, scientific work depends on collaboration. And yes, there are union organizers among those in the project, there are - if not outright communists - at least, communist sympathizers. We see evidence of leaks relatively early on when, during a dinner meeting along the "Fusion" thread, Strauss presents results of the Soviets testing their own bomb after the war. 

If Oppenheimer and most of the physicists at work on the Manhattan Project were not as jingoistic and overtly performatively patriotic as someone like Groves would have preferred, they were more or less united with the understanding that the United States had to develop a bomb before the Germans if the Nazis were to be definitively defeated. That many were Jewish was added incentive.

While this gives a sort of macro view of how the race to develop the bomb came together, it may be secondary to the substance of the man at the center. Oppenheimer, as a young man, was somewhat troubled. He did try or at least got far along enough to, poison his tutor, dramatized differently in the film as a (fictional, for that time in his life) meeting with Bohr. 

That Oppenheimer was complex, contradictory, and contained multitudes is shown dramatically in a way that only the best narratives in cinema are capable of. Nolan avoids the usual Oscar bait bio-pic tropes and story beats with aplomb. We very much see the world through his eyes; concentric ripples of raindrops on water, the mental visualization of particles whipping through spacetime and colliding, Oppenheimer sitting in a chair smashing glasses to observe the patterns of the glass shards shattering into smaller bits.

Oppenheimer is not necessarily shy, let alone unsexed; indeed, it is in his relationship with Tatlock that we see just how much his sense of the cosmic fabric is intwined with his carnal existence. We first hear him quote from the Bhagavad Gita ("I am become death, the destroyer of worlds") when Jean pulls a copy in Sanskrit from his bookshelf and asks him to translate as she holds his manhood. If Nolan was looking for a way to bring together sex, power, and desire into one scene, he succeeded here. Some have opined how sterile or non-sensual the scenes between Cillian Murphy and Florence Pugh are and that might actually be partly by design. Everything in this movie serves a larger theme that does not diminish nor does it lose its emotional impact. 

Nolan, throughout this work, marries the human and the thematic seamlessly. No one is not a fully realized character at the service of this script and its narrative. That he directed this is one thing; that it is so precisely and at times poetically written is a testament to his artistry. Certainly, it is ever thus with Nolan, alone or with this brother Jonathan and/or David Goyer; The Prestige, Inception, even as early on in Memento, we very much meet a sure command of the humanity of the plight of a character. 

What sets the current work apart and above are the Promethean stakes. Yes, Oppenheimer built the team that built the weapon the legacy of which hangs over every man, woman, and child's head. Yes, like Prometheus he was punished as much for his work (primarily by his own divided conscience) as for who he was (by the gods, or in this case, the kangaroo court convened to revoke his security clearance and that would fatally destroy his reputation) and his hubris in thinking he could get through the gauntlet unscathed.

Yet, through all this is Oppenheimer as savant, seer, prophet, and shaman. As with anyone gifted with the ability to invoke great power or bring about tremendous devastation, the cost to himself and those closest to him will also accrue. In some cases, friends turn on him. Suicide takes another. The only relation that holds is his marriage. His wife Kitty is as much a force of nature as the resulting explosion from the Trinity test. Emily Blunt's performance encapsulates the slow burn of the development of both the bomb and the narrative. I wouldn't say she explodes, but her simmering and well-served defense of her husband and herself is as powerful as what happened at Los Alamos. 

What happened at Los Alamos. The lead-up to the big bang doesn't really quite presage the visual richness of what we see. That said, this is when I wish that one of the 70mm IMAX theaters had been located in Houston. Watching in standard definition was fine, but I can only guess at how much more momentous and monumental the execution is in its full format. As it is, the only other time imagery like this has been used to such searing effect was in Lynch's Twin Peaks: the Return in what is the most abstract episode of television ever produced. In Lynch's vision, the atom bomb rent a hole into our world where a greater evil and doom could enter, set to Prenderecki's Threnody. Nolan's is no less damning or harrowing. It plays out slowly over a subtle string figure as clouds red and infernal consume the screen. It is terrifying in its immensity. It is terrifying in its origin; not by some demonic force of nature, but from the minds and mechanics mastered by men, but only in the sense that they found the way to free the Djinn. Once out, it can never be returned. Our innocence as a species is long gone.

Some reviewers have opined that the Trinity test wasn't explosive enough. I don't understand this (I suppose they were expecting Thor or Thanos to show up, as well.) No, this was on par with the best of Terrence Malick; a visual meditation on what man hath wrought. When we visit Oppenheimer in other scenes and the background begins to vibrate around him and he has visions of the people he's talking to blanched to white by a flash of light or retching from sickness, we are inside his head, inside that divided conscience.

What holds this all together, all of a piece is Cillian Murphy's performance. It's an exercise in stillness, the likes of which are rarely seen. This is on the order of finest screen acting and anyone who's followed his career knew he had this role in him. Robert Downey, Jr. said in an interview that the cast were all given the note to support Murphy's performance. This they did; there isn't a whiff to be seen. However, it's not just the stillness in Murphy's bearing or the thousand mile stare; it's in his attempts to relate to what others are going through and often failing miserably. His wife in particular, having to deal with the revelation of his infidelity in private, but then to have it revealed and picked apart in a (albeit, closed) hearing suffers humiliation twice. And while Strauss (Downey, in one of the finest turns of his illustrious career) was a thin-skinned egotist, we have some idea of how casually dismissive and oblivious of other people's feelings Oppenheimer could be.

There are too many other remarkable, often small, performances throughout the film. From Benny Safdie as Oppenheimer's rival, Edward Teller, to Matthew Modine as Vannevar Bush, each actor brings a fully embodied person into Oppenheimer's orbit. Matt Damon as Groves brings the ramrod discipline of a career officer and one who you can almost feel coming just so close to wanting to deck some of these scientists, probably mostly Oppenheimer. The pyrotechnics are minimal but well-deployed throughout the film.

They are so well-deployed that they seem to prick us deeper and deeper with every moral conundrum; each time there is a discussion about the work these men and women are doing, the uneasiness surrounding the enormity of what is about to be unleashed grows. But it grows inward, deeper and deeper. It might well be that many applauded when Oppenheimer declared the success of the test, but by then, the word was out that it was not to be deployed in Germany - the Nazis had surrendered, after all; but on Japan. Oppenheimer is asked to consider the calculus by which it was determined to drop the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and that discussion in itself merits the chill in the bloodstream.

At present, we seem to have as our primary existential threat climate change. However, the importance of this film is to remind us that another equally and potentially more imminent threat remains nuclear war. Vladimir Putin's threats to deploy nuclear arms is tragedy writ large. It is terrorism on the world stage and it is terrifying that humanity has limped into the 21st century having torn asunder not just the atom but the treaties and goodwill to ensure that it will never be used again.

All of this that I've mentioned fits into a canvas as lush and rich as any author could imagine. It goes without saying that between the director, his script, and his players, a great work has found voice in the world. And to give credit where credit is do, there are others whose contributions require due note.

Ludwig Emil Tomas Göransson's score is as much a character and effect as the people and the sound and visual design of the film. Less intrusive or leading than Hans Zimmer's work, Göransson's is more ambient, more part of the environment. The work doesn't reflect or underscore dramatic beats so much as provides support for those moments when called upon. As mentioned above, the work during the Trinity test is staggering.

To not mention Hoyte Van Hoytema's cinematography would be criminal. Most recently, having filmed Nope for Jordan Peele, his work with Nolan goes back to Interstellar, and his filmography is replete with an embarrassment of riches, from Spectre to Her to Let the Right One In to Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

Jennifer Lame's editing practically requires an immediate Oscar. This is a three hour long film with no fight scenes, chase sequences, and full of more ideas than are found in a hundred films in any given year. Yes, film is a director's medium, but it's the editors whose grammar refines the sentences of the showrunner. Lame's work here surpasses much of her best and this is saying so very much. She is, after all, Noah Baumbach's editor of choice, she worked with Lumet on Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, Ken Lonergan on Manchester-by-the-Sea, Ari Aster on both Hereditary and Midsommar, and with, oh! Christopher Nolan on Tenet.

Like Oppenheimer, Nolan a thing about bringing an accomplished team of professionals together. 

There has been some hemming and hawing about whether or not Oppenheimer is a great movie, whether it is a masterpiece, and so on. I find this idiotic. Personally, I do find it a masterpiece. But to, say, call it a masterpiece on the order of 2001: A Space Odyssey or take your pick of great films? The older I get, the less interesting that question becomes. That people are even talking about a film in that rarified atmosphere should be a gauge of its greatness. Besides, comparisons are odious. Don't compare Oppenheimer to anything else; enjoy and even, learn from this film. It is masterful.