‘Oppenheimer’ Review: Christopher Nolan’s Epic Is a Scorching Depiction of America’s Ability to Create and Destroy Its Heroes

Hollywood Reporter ^ | JULY 19, 2023 9:00AM | BY DAVID ROONEY

[Red Badger]

Cillian Murphy stars as the “Father of the Atomic Bomb” in a stacked ensemble that includes Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr. and Florence Pugh.

Cillian Murphy in 'Oppenheimer' UNIVERSAL PICTURES Both a probing character study and a sweeping account of history, Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a brainy, brawny thriller about the man who led the Manhattan Project to build the bomb that ended World War II. To dispense with the inevitable weapon of mass destruction metaphors, it’s more slow-burn than explosive. But perhaps the most surprising element of this audacious epic is that the scramble for atomic armament ends up being secondary to the scathing depiction of political gamesmanship, as one of the most brilliant scientific minds of the 20th century is vilified for voicing learned opinions that go against America’s arms-race thinking.

Chiseling Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherman’s whopping, definitive biography, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, from 700-plus pages into a three-hour screenplay, Nolan hasn’t entirely streamlined the dense plot.

It can feel like a talky thicket of scenes in which men in midcentury business attire stand around in offices and labs having animated discussions about quantum mechanics, which at times lack the elucidation to afford non-physicists much access. It’s a relief when, about an hour in, one of the ever-expanding lineup of theoreticians plops marbles into glass containers to demonstrate the difference between uranium and plutonium as fusion bomb components.

But there’s a method to Nolan’s approach, which becomes increasingly apparent as the two separate Washington hearings laced throughout the narrative intersect in the foreground and occupy the riveting final hour. And the emotionally affecting decision to close with an earlier private conversation between Cillian Murphy’s J. Robert Oppenheimer and Albert Einstein (Tom Conti) elegantly brings it all back to the personal views of two men looking at their branch of science from different perspectives.

While the four-act structure asks a lot of the film’s audience, our patience and concentration are amply rewarded as the 1945 “Trinity” test in the New Mexico desert makes way for the devastating bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That defining moment in modern human history — crowning Oppenheimer as an American hero even as corrosive moral qualms play out across Murphy’s expressive face — then segues to a stomach-churning 1954 witch hunt, representing the most vile smear tactics of the McCarthy era.

Nolan expertly builds his dramatic crescendo by exposing the pain and humiliation of that hearing for Oppenheimer and his flinty wife, Kitty (Emily Blunt), and then reopening those wounds five years later, during the Eisenhower administration’s Senate confirmation hearings for the nomination of Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.) as secretary of commerce.

In a mighty ensemble of heavy hitters, Downey gives the drama’s standout performance as Strauss, a founding member, and later chair, of the Atomic Energy Commission, whose political ambitions get tangled in his vindictiveness toward the arrogant Oppenheimer.

The actor makes him mild-mannered at first, playing up Strauss’ origins as a humble shoe salesman. The ruthlessness with which he pursues his goals is displayed only toward the end, when the stakes are at their highest, spilling out in a bitter torrent of rage. It’s a stunning moment of revelation and a reminder of skills that many of our best actors have put aside while they frolic around playing quippy superheroes for huge wads of cash.

Unexpectedly, I found it was the late-action intrigue — parallel strands unfolding in a dingy Capitol Hill conference room and in the Senate chamber — that left me breathlessly anticipating each new development, each betrayal and show of loyalty, each disclosure of who was pulling the strings. The extended setup prior to the Trinity test becomes more vital in retrospect, as we see how Oppenheimer’s associations both before and after he and his Manhattan Project team relocated to Los Alamos, New Mexico, to accelerate development of the atomic bomb, are dissected by political operators looking to discredit him.

As the central figure in this erudite saga of men and science, warfare and Washington opportunism, Murphy builds a fine-grained character portrait, making the soft-spoken Oppenheimer’s complexities no less evident for being a man of such outward restraint.

The actor’s piercing pale blue eyes are a window to the physicist’s lofty intellect, his dogged determination and, eventually, to his torment as he comes to acknowledge his naivety and face the ramifications of what he has set in motion. Rather than startle the world into playing nice, as he had ingenuously imagined, the Japanese bombings merely opened a door to the Cold War, and to the escalating threat of more powerful nuclear bombs — one that resonates louder than ever today.

Coverage of Oppenheimer’s early years feels somewhat cursory and his encounters with like-minded scientists initially tend to blur, though his studies at prestigious colleges in Europe — in addition to facilitating encounters with some of the field’s most influential figures — serve to show that his skills lay in theoretical physics, not lab work. But little by little, distinct personalities emerge.

Oppenheimer’s peers associated with the Manhattan Project, a handful of Nobel Prize winners among them, include his longtime friend Isidore Rabi (David Krumholtz, wonderful), his UC Berkeley colleague Ernest Lawrence (Josh Hartnett) and the hot-tempered Hungarian Edward Teller (Benny Safdie), whose real interest is in developing a hydrogen bomb, causing him to butt heads amusingly with others in the think tank.

Subtle notes of humor also come from the man that recruits Oppenheimer, Major Leslie Groves (Matt Damon), who oversees the secret research and development project and provides the liaison between the government and the scientists. A gruff career military man probably better suited to the battlefield than to War Department jobs, Groves has a stern manner but an underlying respect for Oppenheimer’s genius, a duality that Damon plays to moving effect in the 1954 hearing.

Blunt’s role at first seems limited to the supportive wife, urging her husband to fight harder for his reputation. But she has a knockout scene in the same hearing, disavowing her premarital affiliation to the American Communist Party without apologizing for it.

Kitty also shows her emotional resilience when confronted with her husband’s troubled romantic attachment to psychiatrist Jean Tatlock, a role brought to sensual but tortured life by Florence Pugh. Jean’s strong ties to Communism contribute to suspicions about Oppenheimer’s leftist leanings, as do those of his younger brother and fellow physicist, Frank (Dylan Arnold).

In small but significant roles, Casey Affleck pops up as a wily military intelligence officer; Rami Malek plays an experimental physicist who speaks passionately for the science community during the Strauss Senate hearing; Kenneth Branagh brings his usual authority to Danish physicist Niels Bohr, whose cautionary words prove prophetic; and Jason Clarke is a chilling attack dog as the special counsel at the 1954 hearing. An unbilled (and almost unrecognizable) major-name actor appears in one terrific scene in which President Truman bluntly informs Oppenheimer that people will remember who dropped the bomb, not who built it.

Aiding immeasurably in Nolan’s unfaltering control of tone and tension is Jennifer Lame’s nimble editing and especially Ludwig Göransson’s extraordinarily forceful, almost wall-to-wall score. The music combines with the bone-shaking sound design to give the movie a febrile energy that won’t quit, mirroring the nervous inner life of its title character.

The director deftly cranks up the suspense in the nail-biting countdown to the Trinity test, when even the sharpest minds haven’t ruled out the “near zero” chance of a chain reaction destroying the world; and even more so as each of the two hearings (shot in black and white) reaches its climax. The choice not to show the Japanese bombings, but to experience them exclusively via radio reports and through the jubilant reaction of the Los Alamos community — an entire township built expressly for the Manhattan Project — heightens the gut-punch impact, while images flashing through Oppenheimer’s mind only hint at the horror unleashed.

It’s hard to know how the Nolan fanboys will respond to a movie as heady, historically curious and grounded in gravitas as Oppenheimer, which has little in common with the brooding majesty of his Batman movies or the tricky mindfuckery of films like Inception or Tenet. In terms of its stirring solemnity, it’s perhaps closest to Dunkirk, while its melding of science and emotion recalls Interstellar.

The major draw for hard-core film geeks will be the visuals. Shooting with large-format Panavision and Imax 65mm cameras, DP Hoyte van Hoytema (in his fourth collaboration with Nolan) brings visceral intensity to the Trinity sequence and extraordinary texture and depth of field to the many dialogue-driven scenes. If you’re lucky enough to be near one of the 30 screens worldwide showing the film in Imax 70mm, you’ll experience a movie that, even at its talkiest, exerts an immersive hold, pulling you in to absorb the molecular detail of every shot.

This is a big, ballsy, serious-minded cinematic event of a type now virtually extinct from the studios. It fully embraces the contradictions of an intellectual giant who was also a deeply flawed man, his legacy complicated by his own ambivalence toward the breakthrough achievement that secured his place in the history books.

Full credits:

Distribution: Universal

Production companies: Syncopy, in association with Atlas Entertainment

Cast: Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, Josh Hartnett, Casey Affleck, Rami Malek, Kenneth Branagh, Benny Safdie, Jason Clarke, Dylan Arnold, Tom Arnold, Gustaf Skarsgard, David Krumholtz, Matthew Modine, David Dastmalchian, Alden Ehrenreich, Jefferson Hall, Tony Goldwyn, Michael Angarano, Jack Quaid, Josh Peck, Olivia Thirlby, Dane DeHaan, Danny Deferrari

Director-screenwriter: Christopher Nolan, based on the book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, by Kai Bird, Martin J. Sherman

Producers: Emma Thomas, Charles Roven, Christopher Nolan

Executive producers: J. David Wargo, James Woods, Thomas Hayslip

Director of photography: Hoyte Van Hoytema

Production designer: Ruth De Jong

Costume designer: Ellen Mirojnick

Music: Ludwig Göransson

Editor: Jennifer Lame

Visual effects supervisor: Andrew Jackson

Special effects supervisors: Scott Fisher

Casting: John Papsidera

Rated R, 3 hours

[EEGator]

Agreed.

I was a 9S100 in the USAF. Our mission was nuclear test ban treaty monitoring.
We were TS/ SCI with CNWDI clearance, so I have a deep interest in the history involved.
It seems our “golden years” were 40’s to 80’s. I barely recognize my country anymore.

[Larry Lucido]

Indeed.

[TalBlack]

Given the idiotically overheated prose in the first few paragraphs I want neither to finish the review or see the damn movie.

[ViLaLuz]

I read it’s rated R for graphic sex scenes. It’s a pass for me.

[sauropod]

.

[Az Joe]

America is the best nation ever, the best hope for all of mankind. Blood on her hands or not. Doesn’t matter.

[cuban leaf]

I don’t disagree. My point is that even the best mankind has to offer actually has a lot to be desired. And it’s best to go into it all with your eyes wide open.

All these videos of police acting badly when they pull people over expose one thing a lot of people don’t think about. That is, that they did this with impunity before body cams. Some of it is so blatant that it’s laughable.

[Red Badger]

There is also real indications the State Dept was filled w Soviet spies.

It still is........................

[telescope115]

My wife and I were thinking of going to see it, but at 3 hours long, I’ll wait until it’s available to stream. It does look interesting.

[Texan4Life]

I found this bio on Oppenheimer to be fascinating...

Oppenheimer - Destroyer of Worlds Documentary
From The People Profiles Channel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0s9fpFPAC94

[telescope115]

Thanks. I’m gonna watch it.

[Texan4Life]

The Day After Trinity

The Criterion Channel

This essential, Academy Award–nominated documentary offers an urgent warning from history about the dangers of nuclear warfare via the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the enigmatic physicist and all-around Renaissance man who led the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb that America unleashed on Japan in the final days of World War II. Through extensive interviews and archival footage, THE DAY AFTER TRINITY traces Oppenheimer’s evolution, from architect of one of the most consequential endeavors of the twentieth century to an outspoken opponent of nuclear proliferation who came to deeply regret his role in ushering in the perils of the atomic age.

https://www.criterionchannel.com/the-day-after-trinity/videos/the-day-after-trinity

[Texan4Life]

Oppenheimer’s story is told in non-linear style, shuffling back and forth to different periods in time, his own tale shot in color and told in first person, the later trials explaining how it all happened from various points of view shot in striking 65MM black-and-white film — particularly Robert Downey Jr.’s cagey Lewis Strauss, who was the founding commissioner of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and later a Cabinet appointee as Secretary of Commerce in the Eisenhower administration.

Deadline

[telescope115]

I watched the other one last night. I will watch this one when I have a little more time. Thanks!

[Texan4Life]

I’ve decided, for convenience, to see the movie on a “small” screen at my neighborhood theater on Tuesday afternoon for $6.50. I will then decide if I want to try for the IMAX 70mm at the Dallas Cinemark, if the run is extended, for the chance of getting other than 1st three rows seating...

‘Oppenheimer’ Cast and Historical Guide: The Real People Behind the First Atomic Bomb

https://variety.com/lists/oppenheimer-cast-guide-manhattan-project/

The one thing you need to know about Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” is that it moves incredibly fast and covers a lot of ground. For most of its three-hour runtime, the atomic bomb epic can feel as if you’re reading a dense biography about J. Robert Oppenheimer at three times the normal speed. With so many scientist characters orbiting Oppenheimer at light speed, you’d be forgiven for feeling a little lost at times.

To help watch “Oppenheimer” with a bit more clarity, it’s important to know the movie takes place during three time periods. One timeline is set in 1954 as the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) holds a security hearing to investigate whether or not Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) is a Soviet spy. The hearing prompts the film to flash back to the events of Oppenheimer’s life, from his university days to his role in creating the atomic bomb. These portions of the film, shot in color, make up the bulk of “Oppenheimer’s” three-hour runtime.

A third storyline is shot in black and white and takes place in 1959 as Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.), the former chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, is seeking to become U.S. Secretary of Commerce under President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Strauss finds himself at the center of his own U.S. Senate confirmation hearing, which threatens to expose his involvement in the events of the 1954 timeline.

[telescope115]

Thanks, I definitely want to see it.

[Reily]

In fact, a segment of the Japanese Imperial Staff attempted to kidnap Emperor Hirohito and keep the war going. Hirohito’s household staff foiled it, some at the cost of their lives.

[Texan4Life]

Great Explanation/Animation Video ! !
The animation is made in Blender 3.1 (EEVEE)

What’s Inside the Atomic Bomb? | Insane Engineering of the Atomic Weapons | CURISM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPLagTduqvI

[Texan4Life]

I had trouble hearing some of the dialogue. The audio level of the music made it hard to hear some dialogue. I totally blame the Director for this. It’s his movie. Someday, when the movie is available to watch with subtitles, then I’ll know what I missed.

[Red Badger]

I wear hearing aids in both ears. I hate these movies that turn up the ‘suspense’ music so that you know something big is about to happen, only to have it muffled by the background music.

Also do not like movies that are shot in all dark scenes that are so black you cannot see the actor faces. Some call this ‘noir’, I call it ‘difficult to see’.....................