J. Robert Oppenheimer: Who Was He? Yes, there is a famous physicist who is known as the “father of the atomic bomb.” But other than him creating nuclear warfare, I don’t know. I had no prior awareness of Oppenheimer, his tale, or the specifics and importance of what he did until I entered Christopher Nolan’s most dizzyingly difficult work to date. I was hoped the movie, which is based on the book American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, would inform me.
In his most recent film, Nolan explores the difficult relationship between the man (played with brilliance by Cillian Murphy) who altered the course of human history and his own legacy. It is a successful “biopic” to the extent that it defies the temptation to simply list his career highlights and blandly blaze through bullet points. It instead transports you inside his head. Sometimes very literally.
The film follows Oppenheimer’s early years using his 1954 trial and cross-examination as a plot device. This trial occurred years after the horrifying Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings of 1945, which claimed more than 200,000 lives. Robert, a young man studying at some of Europe’s most prestigious universities, is presented to us. He is the kind of great mind who takes a few months to casually pick up conversational German so he can give a quantum physics lecture in Germany.
He sees the stuff and atoms that make up the universe around him because of his knowledge and genius. Robert can actually see the vigor of life. It’s like “being able to hear the music,” according to one academic colleague. Robert’s chats with people are mixed together with images of eerie explosions, crumbling stars, and chemical reactions in Jennifer Lame’s visceral editing to give us an insight inside his unique thinking.
That is, until a few years later, when he sees how his actions caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, changing him irrevocably. His life’s work—the theory and potential he had so dearly—becomes an awful reality. Ideas and creativity are instantly transformed into atrocities. He stops catching glimpses of atoms, matter, or life at that point. All he sees is devastation and death.
Oppenheimer vs Nolan’s other films
The first hour of Oppenheimer is dense and difficult to understand because we are bombarded with information and plunged into a frenzy of names, places, and events that happen in rapid succession. His proximity to the communist party, his tumultuous relationship with Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh), his time as a teacher when he first introduced quantum mechanics to the US, his involvement in the war against the Nazis, and his appointment to the Manhattan Project are all depicted in the film.
All at once. at once. A movie that requires your full attention in order to follow along. Oppenheimer isn’t so much a narrative that is told as it is a story that requires you to be fully engaged with.
Oppenheimer is Nolan’s most daring and least approachable film to date because of this. There are always notions, ideas, and universes to savor and be taken by in his films, which is essential to his wonderful filmmaking technique. They operate on several levels. His films’ broad strokes appeal to a wider audience while still providing additional levels and artistic expression for those who wish to delve deeper.
Simply said, everyone enjoys Inception. Despite its heady psychological delights, Memento has a strong central idea. Tenet is a highly captivating riddle contained within a stylish action film, despite its craziness.
Even Dunkirk, an immersive war film that put us on the front lines, had a booming scale. Oppenheimer, though, has no such genre façade to cover his tracks. The film’s overwhelming, bone-shaking use of sound and its implications—how Robert Oppenheimer gave us the means to bring about our own destruction—are what give it its massiveness.
Instead, the picture thrives when it is at its most straightforward, especially in the outstanding final hour, where the expansive, ambitious narrative reaches its magnificent crescendo.
I wasn’t sure whether to be impressed by how much Nolan wants to test his audience or turned off by his refusal to provide more palatable storytelling as I left the theater. Whether to be discouraged by the amount of information available to become lost in and overwhelmed by, or to be impressed by how much persists in your memory despite that. The powerful technique, the depth of the artwork, the control over our heart rates, and the enormous cast that included many unexpected and well-known actors.
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