This is, without question, one of the most ambitiously powerful films ever made.
Director/scripter Christopher Nolan’s attention to detail, and his flair for dramatic impact, are nothing short of awesome. Viewed on a giant IMAX screen, the result often is overwhelming.
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| U.S. Army Corps of Engineers veteran Leslie Groves (Matt Damon, left), tasked with running the Manhattan Project, is constantly vexed by the demands that come from head scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy). |
Best of all, Nolan’s adaptation of Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s Pulitzer Prize-winning American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer — published in 2005, and written over a period of 25 years — has the political complexity and narrative fascination that we’ve come to expect from Aaron Sorkin and William Goldman. Jennifer Lame’s pow-pow-pow editing also is terrific.
All that said, Nolan does himself no favors with a needlessly outré prologue that blends ostentatiously surreal imagery — representing the anxiety-laden guilt and terror that later plagued Oppenheimer — with Ludwig Göransson’s shrieking loud synth score. It’s much too intentionally weird and off-putting.
Göransson’s score and the film’s equally thunderous sound effects remain distracting during the first half-hour, obscuring dialogue while we struggle to absorb the initial character and information dump.
Nolan eventually settles comfortably into a multifaceted storytelling structure that cuts back and forth between Oppenheimer’s post-WWII security clearance hearing, held in the spring of 1954; and the June 1959 Senate hearings over whether former Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) chairman Lewis Strauss would be confirmed as President Eisenhower’s choice pick for U.S. Secretary of Commerce.
The former was a one-sided witch hunt deliberately kept out of the public eye, the latter a headline-generating circus very much in the public eye.
Oppenheimer, present throughout his 1954 hearing, reads a statement that opens the film’s third — and primary — narrative focus: his own life and career.
These sequences, as Oppenheimer’ history unfolds, are filmed in glorious 65mm color. (It remains true: Well-crafted film stock still is more satisfying — sharper, warmer, more vibrant — than digital.)
The Strauss Senate hearings — an event beyond Oppenheimer’s control, in which he plays almost no role, although his presence is felt throughout — is shot in grainier black-and-white. The result feels more sinister and mysterious; first impressions of the key players ultimately prove misleading, as Nolan craftily moves his film into its third act.
But that comes much later.
As a young physics student hapless at math and lab work, Oppenheimer nonetheless earns early degrees at Harvard (1925) and German’s University of Göttingen (1927). His life-changing moment comes during a chance encounter with Niels Bohr (Kenneth Branagh, simply sublime), who encourages the young scholar to pursue quantum mechanics and nuclear physics.
By 1936, when Oppenheimer — now played by Cillian Murphy — becomes a full professor in the UC Berkeley physics department, he has blossomed into a prickly, excitable academic whose huge intellect is matched by impatience and arrogance. He’s adored by students and fellow scientists, who throng to his lectures.
But he’s also difficult to like, as a person; this is key to Murphy’s performance. On the one hand, Oppenheimer is candid, almost to a fault; on the other, he dismisses any censure of his behavior, even when it comes from his beloved brother Frank (Dylan Arnold), also a scientist.
Murphy’s expressions and bearing are sincere when Oppenheimer insists that his actions always are proper, and he’s genuinely bewildered when challenged; how could anybody argue with one so intelligent? Murphy unerringly nails the man’s intensity and posture, along with the hat and pipe that become ubiquitous.
Given that he always knows best, Oppenheimer tut-tuts when Berkeley colleague Ernest Lawrence — played with gregarious generosity by Josh Hartnett — warns that involvement in social reforms, and raising funds for the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War, could be politically damaging.
Worse yet, Oppenheimer begins a torrid affair with Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh), a Stanford-educated psychiatrist who writes for a Community Party newspaper. Pugh makes this young woman sensuous and taunting; she’s one of few people who can get under Oppenheimer’s skin.
Her hold on him continues — he’s a moth, to her flame — even after he marries Katherine “Kitty” Harrison (Emily Blunt), a fragile soul who nonetheless stands by Oppenheimer’s side during the rest of their lives. Blunt’s performance is raw, tortured and hard to watch. Her pinched and often shattered gaze is heartbreaking, as Kitty succumbs to the demons of alcohol, and yet — this is important — she also is the rock on which her husband can lean, during moments of crisis.
All of this is preamble — a fast-paced first act — to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s response to rumors that Nazi Germany is developing a “super bomb.” The result is the Manhattan Project, to be chaperoned by Leslie Groves Jr. (Matt Damon), the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers officer who has just overseen construction of the Pentagon.
To the surprise of many, Groves chooses Oppenheimer to lead what quickly becomes the project’s secret weapons laboratory. The latter’s mad, pie-in-the-sky scheme: to build a full-blown community in barren Los Alamos — the middle of nowhere, New Mexico — where scientists can work hard while living with their families.
This initial meeting is a highlight. Damon’s Groves systematically catalogues Oppenheimer’s personality flaws and political liabilities, any one of which should make him unsuitable for this assignment, while Murphy delivers the scientist’s best mocking expression, knowing full well that he will get it.
Which Groves also realizes, to his dismay.
(Their second choice exchange comes when Oppenheimer admits that one member of his team has theorized that an atomic blast could ignite a chain reaction that would destroy all of Earth’s atmosphere … although the chances are “near zero.” “Near zero?” Groves replies, Damon’s expression aghast.)
Their prickly first encounter notwithstanding, the two become friends and allies, during what becomes the craziest, most accelerated research project in American history. Worse yet, Groves’ job has blossomed into herding cats: The dozens of newly arrived scientists may not be as intransigent as Oppenheimer, but they’re all proud, willful and — in many cases — unwilling to play well with others.
By this point Oppenheimer also has met Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.), and their relationship becomes … wary. Both are stubborn, wildly ambitious and, in radically different ways, earnestly patriotic. Downey, his line deliveries electrifying, establishes Strauss as a crafty man who keeps close counsel: his eye on a distant prize, and willing to play a long game to get it.
Additional key individuals includes Edward Teller (Benny Safdie), Hans Bethe (Gustaf Skarsgård), Isidor Rabi (David Krumholtz) and — in a delightful cameo — Tom Conti, as Albert Einstein. Rami Malek pops up briefly as an apparently innocuous advisor, whose presence later proves quite consequential during the third act; Gary Oldman also has a fleeting but crucial role toward the end.
Other supporting players are far too numerous to list, although Jason Clarke is particularly malevolent, during Oppenheimer’s 1954 security clearance hearing, as AEC attack dog Roger Robb (shades of Joseph McCarthy!).
Although the overly loud score and sound effects continue to be intrusive, Nolan reserves silence for his film’s most dramatic scene, which makes it even more powerful.
I will confess, going in, that the notion that a scientist’s biopic could hold one’s attention for 180 minutes seemed unlikely … particularly when one recalls that Nolan’s previous film, 2020’s Tenet, is an incomprehensible, self-indulgent mess.
But he definitely pulls it off this time. Oppenheimer is by turns fascinating, mesmerizing, horrifying and even suspenseful: if not perfect, darn close.
I saw this film yesterday. Please, I urge everyone to avoid this film. Though it seems to be universally praised by critics and viewers, including Mr. Bang, I thought that “Oppenheimer” was a waste of my time and money. The soundtrack was intrusive and obscured the dialogue. The film was choppy, without smooth transitions between the jumps from past to present. There is no empathy evoked for Oppenheimer which made me indifferent to his fate and so indifferent to the film. Like other Nolan films (specifically “Memento”), “Oppenheimer” was difficult to follow and so it is not an enjoyable movie going experience.
ReplyDeleteEven the most laudable films won't please everybody, and that's to be expected. And I even admitted, above, that Nolan can be difficult viewing ... but I obviously felt otherwise this time. I do agree that the soundtrack can be intrusive, and said as much. But with respect to the rest of your comments, we must agree to disagree. Thanks for writing.
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