Alright! Today I'm reviewing the latest epic from Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight, Interstellar), a three-hour biopic about the life and times of J. Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb and overseer of the Manhattan Project, whose role in WWII led to the decisive atomic bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima and subsequent victory for the Allies. Expertly headed by Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer is an intimate look at "the most important man who has ever lived."
There are tiny little details and filmmaking tricks that already give Oppenheimer an edge over the average biopic - using black and white to show scenes that are objective (Such as court hearings with transcripts), introducing new characters and briefly cutting back to when we first met them (so the audience actually knows who they're talking about), and the numerous technical innovations Nolan and Co. had to do to capture it all in IMAX. Unfortunately, this means that Oppenheimer, like Nolan's last two films Dunkirk and Tenet, is much more impressive on a technical level than a visceral one.
As a result of Christopher Nolan's restraining order against linear storytelling, Oppenheimer sports a rather dense narrative that, while slow, does ultimately have a rather cool effect that shows the highs and lows of several points in Oppenheimer's life at the same time, all of which are underscored by Ludwig Göransson's intense and haunting score. The unfortunate effect of this editing is that it's almost impossible to get through a scene without flashing back to seventeen different conversations. It's not particularly difficult to keep up with, but it occasionally falls into the territory of "one step forward, two steps back."
However, there are two glaring issues with the movie, neither of which are particularly surprising given Nolan's resume - one being the female characters and the other being the clunky dialogue. With numerous courtroom scenes and a subsequent heavy focus on verbal sparring, the movie requires diligent attention for the entirety of its three-hour runtime. Unfortunately, the dialogue - which is not only distinctively Nolan but also largely about quantum theory and physics - is trying far too hard to be smart and fast. Sorkin he is not, and during Kitty's testimony I was seized by a horrible vision of what The Social Network might have looked like with Nolan in the directing chair.
On the depiction of the fairer sex, the first female lead, Kitty Oppenheimer (Emily Blunt), had a dynamic with Oppenheimer that was unnervingly reminiscent of Chronos and his wife in the Justice League Unlimited episode "The Once and Future Thing." This relationship culminates in the aforementioned testimony, whose vain attempts to try and be a badass mic-drop moment feel very unearned after she spends most of the runtime very drunk and very angry. However, I wouldn't be surprised if that scene was the entire reason Emily Blunt signed on for the rather thankless role.
The second female lead, Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh), is Oppenheimer's long-term low-distance low-commitment casual girlfriend who is, again, very angry for most of her screen time. While the actual performance from Pugh was rather good, the three sex scenes and subsequent nudity cast a rather dark stain on the performance and the film. Even worse was the "I am become Death" quote being said mid-intercourse with Sanskrit translation being used as foreplay. While I get it on an intellectual level - her relationship with Oppenheimer seems to be entirely carnal and the "Death" quote foreshadows her role in his downfall during the McCarthy era - it's also just gross. The awkwardness of the courtroom scene, the disrespect of reading Hindu texts during intercourse... it does more harm than good for the movie and needed a TMI check.
I also wasn't a huge fan of how afraid the movie was to take any definitive stance on such a divisive figure. Oppenheimer has several fatal character flaws - infidelity, smoking, political apathy, and being the inventor of a device that killed upwards of 230,000 people being a few - and the movie feels like it wants him to be Walter White, a good person who starts off with good intentions and ends as a selfish antihero who was only seeking glory and fame (an interpretation explicitly stated by Lewis Strauss). However, Oppenheimer is afraid to take an unfavorable stance on the historical figure, unwaveringly showing him as an exceedingly loyal American hero who is haunted by guilt over his role in a potential nuclear holocaust - and maybe he was. But the movie hinges on the idea that he was anything but, and after two lengthy trials he walks away morally spotless to everyone save for the movie's villains. Without giving us reason to think he might be disloyal or making him likable enough that we want him to triumph against all odds, it's just a weird middle ground of hour-long bookends to the Manhattan Project.
It should be a warning about the reckless pursuit of knowledge akin to Frankenstein, but instead, we see a protagonist who is an awful person that only feels remorseful once he inadvertently kills hundreds of thousands of people, and even then the movie focuses much more on the potential implications of nuclear weapons than the immediate implementations on August 6th, 1945. Now, for the sake of theming and because we don't want to make things even more morally gray, let's say that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, awful as they were, were necessary to win WWII and thus technically the right, awful thing.
However, Oppenheimer takes that cake and eats it too, barely acknowledging the suffering and pain caused by the dreadful weapon. At least Victor Frankenstein had to witness Justine getting hanged - Oppenheimer feels only metaphysical remorse over his actions and the real-world consequences of them, while not entirely ignored, are more discussed than shown. The film's one attempt to show the human impact, his seeing a young woman with peeling skin shortly following the Trinity test, is what I would deem "artsy fartsy." Looking at the easily available footage on Wikipedia shows that such a prosthetic is not only unrealistic, but also disrespectful as an artistic interpretation - the movie's already rated R. It's had three sex scenes at this point, and now they're afraid to use it? It doesn't need to be gory, but at least looking like some of the victims feels like the lowest possible bar.
The entire thing is seen from Oppenheimer's perspective, which makes sense in a movie called Oppenheimer, but also makes the entire movie feel biased in a way unbecoming of a biopic. He's haunted by the ghosts he caused, yes, but the film can't otherwise be bothered to actually deal with the destruction of the bombs. It's okay to focus on the story of Oppenheimer's personal tragedy, but when that tragedy is intermingled with the deaths of two hundred thousand people, I personally would appreciate more than lip service. The entire thing reminds me of a quote from BoJack Horseman: "You can’t keep doing shitty things and then feel bad about yourself like that makes it okay!"
There were a few things I liked about Oppenheimer - the entire cast is very talented, a sign of prestige earning prestige. Christopher Nolan movies make bank, and a genuinely profitable movie would look good on everyone's resume in the era of the "Flopbuster." The entire movie is filled with Oscar potential, with the first and most obvious candidate being Cillian Murphy. While I disagree with how the movie handled the impact of the bombings, Cillian Murphy as Oppenheimer is the saving grace that almost makes the whole thing work. He's able to sell the look of absolute torment and pain in his eyes, the heavy weight and burden of being the Destroyer of Worlds. He also developed an accent that not only sounds exactly like the actual figure but also made the entire movie more fun to listen to.
Matt Damon a General Leslie Groves brought a lot of charm and humor to the film, some much-needed levity during long and sometimes boring conversations. Robert Downey Jr. is the film's primary villain, Lewis Strauss, and is likely the only real competition Ryan Gosling will face at this year's Best Supporting Actor. I also thought Alden Ehrenreich was fantastic in the movie, stealing every scene he was in. Additionally, I'm very impressed by how they were seemingly able to resurrect Albert Einstein [citation needed].
The other main highlight of the film was the Trinity Test. For about fifteen minutes an hour and a half in, the movie is absolutely perfect as it transforms from Nolan's editing and dialogue into a genuinely anxious thriller. Everything leading up to and surrounding the test trial was fantastic, and the subsequent imagery of Oppenheimer being raised up by a cheering crowd in front of an American flag is undoubtedly one of the best shots of the 2020s. I absolutely loved his victory speech the following night, where creative sound mixing make the entire scene superb, and his brief vision of stepping on a burnt corpse being a highlight of the film, as well as the last two minutes. Unfortunately, this also made the film a beast to rewatch, as I knew that there would only be twenty or thirty minutes of genuinely interesting and thought-provoking material in a three-hour movie.
However, one of my favorite aspects of Oppenheimer was how unintentionally hilarious it is. In what seems like a subconscious plea to start making superhero movies again, Oppenheimer features superhero cliches that include but are not limited to:
- The hero suiting up dramatically
- A JFK namedrop like Joker in Batman Begins
- A catchphrase
- Assembling a team of scientists like it's a heist movie
- A villain who devotes his life to destroying the hero after a public humiliation
- Albert Einstein stepping out of the shadows like he's Batman
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| Odd choice to leave the movie open-ended considering it's well documented that the dude died from throat cancer due to his smoking habits, but okay. |
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