OPPENHEIMER, A FILM REVIEW
Oppenheimer (**** out of Four), with Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh, Matt Damon, Robert Downey, Jr., Kenneth Branagh, Josh Hartnett, Rami Malek and Tom Conti as Albert Einstein. Written and Directed for the Screen by Christopher Nolan, based on the book American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin.
By Chris M. Barkley: I should start by saying that I have read John Hersey’s Hiroshima. Three times. Once in high school in the early 1970’s, once as an adult in the 80’s and most recently during the pandemic.
Each time I read the depiction of the first use of an atomic weapon in wartime, my feelings of angst, for the people who developed and deployed it and my empathy for the victims who suffered its horrible wrath, was bottomless and seemingly unending.
(I also think that since America has the ignominious distinction of being the only nation to use these weapons directly on another nation (so far), Hiroshima should be required reading, by every single schoolchild in this country by the time they reach high school.)
(It is also ironic, in every sense of the word, that I am writing this film review on the 78th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima…)
When film director Christopher Nolan announced that his next project would be a biographical portrait of Oppenheimer, I was intrigued by the prospect. I knew that by reputation and observation that he is a thoughtful and incredibly competent filmmaker who prefers to make intelligent movies to be enjoyed in a theatrical setting and treats an audience with dignity and respect.
Nolan is also known for writing intricate and involving screenplays and play with time (Tenet) narrative (Dunkirk), space (Interstellar), memory and narrative (Memento) and the perspective of the inner mind (The Prestige, The Dark Knight, and Inception).
And while I knew that J. Robert Oppenheimer was the scientific director of the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, the only thing I knew about him was through the his cinematic portrayals in the 1980 BBC mini-series (by stage and film actor Sam Waterston) and the 1989 CBS docu-drama film Day One (by the well regarded character actor David Strathairn).
Irish actor Cillian Murphy was the very first person Christopher Nolan cast in the film, in lead role of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Murphy not only bears a remarkable resemblance to the late physicist, his intense gaze, imprecise body language and demeanor (as pictured above) had me thinking I was watching the acting performance of a lifetime. And everything that happens intricately pinwheels around this remarkable performance.
Oppenheimer, a moderately successful physicist, was in the 1930’s engaged in a somewhat new and unexplored area of scientific inquiry, quantum physics. Although he has some associations in communist party circles in America, he is chosen by Brig. General Leslie Groves (Matt Damon) to lead a group of scientists in developing an atomic bomb before Nazi Germany can.
As the film ricochets back and forth along his lifetime, Nolan demonstrates that while Oppenheimer may have been a great leader and motivator in Los Alamos, his personal life was a disaster; he had a tumultuous relationship with his wife Kitty (Emily Blunt) while carrying on a long running relationship with an emotionally troubled girlfriend Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh) with communist leanings. Both Blunt and Pugh are sharp, uncompromising and unforgettable in their roles.
In stories that become gradually and thematically entwined with the race to build the bomb, Oppenheimer’s professional reputation is questioned and security clearance in jeopardy in a mid-1950’s inquisition is tied to the prolonged 1959 Senate hearings for the embattled nomination of Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey, Jr.) to be President Dwight Eisenhower’s Secretary of Commerce.
Both men know each other and the eminent genius Albert Einstein (Tom Conti); Oppenheimer as a peer and Strauss as a somewhat officious bureaucrat.
The nexus of the three men’s relationship to each other ultimately leads to one of the most profound and moving climaxes I have ever witnessed in the final moments of a film, one that for myself, rivals Citizen Kane, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Vertigo, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Do The Right Thing.
In essence, Oppenheimer is the ultimate horror movie; one that goes beyond the obvious effects of war on people and more on how the choices we make (or not make) can lead to catastrophic events and devastating consequences, both on a geopolitical, societal and individual basis.
There will be a number of prestigious films being released between now and the end of the year, most notably Napoleon, Killers of the Flower Moon, Dune Part 2 and the musical version of The Color Purple.
I can tell you right now that the yardstick for greatness in cinema this year will be how they measure up against Christopher Nolan’s masterpiece, Oppenheimer.
It will definitely be on my Hugo Award nomination ballot in 2024 for Best Dramatic Presentation – Long Form. You should consider it as well…
“I am, at the moment, stunned and emotionally recovering from having seen it. I think it is going to be a stunning artistic achievement, and I have hopes it will actually stimulate a national, even global conversation about the issues that Oppenheimer was desperate to speak out about — about how to live in the atomic age, how to live with the bomb and about McCarthyism — what it means to be a patriot, and what is the role for a scientist in a society drenched with technology and science, to speak out about public issues.”
Kai Bird, co-author of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, May 18th, 2023 at Wolfensohn Hall, Institute for Advanced Study.
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I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree about this movie. I knew a great deal about Oppenheimer’s life and work before seeing this movie and was very disappointed. I believe the too frequent unannounced time jumps throughout this story will leave most members lost as to what’s happening, and more importantly, why it’s important to the story. My wife shared that observation after we saw it this morning. Yes, they did depict how messed up his personal life was, but I don’t believe most members of the audience will learn very much about the actual Manhattan Project by watching this movie. They’d be much better served by watching the 1989 “Fat Man and Little Boy” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_Man_and_Little_Boy).
I don’t see how this would qualify for a Hugo nomination. It’s not SF. Science, yes, but it’s more of a historical film bio. Did Oppenheimer write any SF?
Hidden Figures was a historical film that was deemed eligible for a Hugo Nomination. If enough people nominate it we may just see it on the ballot in Glasgow.
And the movie Apollo 13 was a Hugo finalist. As you say, if enough people nominate a work of dramatized history the Hugo Administrator will put it on the ballot.
I found Hidden Figures disappointing. The subject matter deserved better. I would have happily watched a 2-hour accurate documentary on those fascinating women.
At least once a year, I get invited to do a talk on “The Hidden Figures of Space History” on important contributions by women to space science. Vaughan, Jackson, and Johnson comprise a big part of it.
(The trailers and the art for Oppenheimer look terrible. I also generally don’t like Nolan.)
@Mike: Apollo 13 was another one of those movies with unnecessary gussying. It made NASA look incompetent (“We’ve never planned for the event of a failure–you engineers have an hour to bung a solution from these random parts.”)
Gideon Marcus: If you don’t like Apollo 13 you must really hate Armageddon, which doesn’t exactly give NASA a love tap.
At least Apollo 13 has that great line, “If they could get a washing machine to fly my Jimmy could land it!”
(so, I guess all of these movies qualify as science fiction since their subject is science and they are definitely fiction!) 🙂
@Mike Haha. Armageddon was the first climax of the Big Stupid Disaster spate of movies. The beginning was Dante’s Peak/Volcano. But Armageddon set the mold… Deep Impact, The Core, Day After Tomorrow…and it’s still going. The latest was Greenland.
“Any theatrical feature or other production, with a complete running time of more than 90 minutes, in any medium of dramatized science fiction, fantasy or related subjects …”
@Troyce (tongue in cheek): Like moon rockets, atomic bombs belong to science fiction. Mere reality can not claim them just because those rockets and bombs now exist. Reality should count itself lucky that science fiction allows reality to have handheld computers.
🙂 I’d just popped by to post that with the same emphasis
John Lorentz: “Related subjects” is an undefined term. As a past Hugo Administrator did you ever rule something out as a finalist for not satisfying that requirement?
Hugo voters have a history of appropriating as genre stuff they want to give the award to — such as the coverage of the Apollo 11 moon landing.
Other than exciting the admiration of Hugo voters, Apollo 13 belongs in the same subsubgenre of movies with Flight and Sully.
Armageddon was unbelievably stupid, even for a cheap knock-off of the quite good “Deep Impact”. Its ‘science’ content was completely inept and the basic story line was almost as bad!
@Gideon:
Huh. I thought the point was that even when you plan ahead for all sorts of disasters, there’s always the possibility of something outside the range of your imagination – but after checking, I see that even though NASA couldn’t quite imagine a plausible reason that they’d need to kludge together two different kinds of CO2 scrubbers, they actually came up with a method (https://www.popsci.com/article/technology/greatest-space-hack-ever/) which they had in their library of work-arounds when disaster happened. I guess my memory of the book was overwritten by the movie. Thanks for reminding me of the real facts:
Troyce, John Lorentz, and Camestros Felapton:
Chris Barkley is a thoughtful guy who is more than familiar with the definitions of Hugo categories.
This I believe: If he decides to nominate Oppenheimer for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form, Chris has well-considered reasons for doing so.
He may or may not choose to share his reasons with us, and they may or may not be reasons I myself would agree with, but I have faith that he has given the matter some thought.
For the most part, I went with the will of the voters, when it came to edge cases.
@Andrew Exactly. Thanks for looking it up. I’m glad my memory was correct. 🙂
[That amateur hour portrayal of professionals is one of the main problems I have had with Trek since 2009. Everyone acts as if they just got on the job yesterday. With no prior training.]
@Bob Deep Impact was as stupid as Armageddon. Well, okay, maybe not quite, quantitatively.
The first half is not just stupid but insulting. The subsequent third is pretty good. The last sixth is unbelievably stupid.
So, I guess since you get 40 minutes of good watching, whereas there’s nothing worth watching about Armageddon, I suppose it is the “better” movie…
I am kind of amazed that with all this discussion of things Oppenheimer, nobody has mentioned John Adams’ great opera “Dr. Atomic.” It has been hugely successful, has been done all over the world, there are several recordings and more than one video.
There are areas of Oppenheimer’s life and character that Adams addresses that are not mentioned in any of the discussion here. (I am dying to see the movie, by the way.) Things that affected his life and his decisions.
And you gotta admire a composer who decides to end a live performance on stage of an opera that ends with the test of the first atomic bomb.
It seems to be acknowledged now as one of Adams’ masterpieces, and is certainly worthy of being on the table now that the film is out.