I remember in a high school history class covering the Cold War a teacher explaining that enough advanced nuclear weapons now exist to decimate the world three times over. A frightful thing to be told at fifteen, though necessarily sobering. The reality of the atom bomb is something we have grown to live with, but when reminded of its power, it is a chilling thing to consider that it was ever developed, ever used to rain down death and destruction on a level unimaginable.
And yet, when Christopher Nolan illustrates the nuclear blast of the Trinity Test, the ensuing mushroom cloud is as much a thing of intense majesty as horror. Through the eyes of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) it is the successful culmination of years of research and disciplined scientific development, as well as the most awesome destructive force on earth. At that moment, there’s no going back, no putting the genii back in the lamp. And the famous line rings with a dull, pronounced gravity: “I am become death, destroyer of worlds.”
The monumental weight of this moment, and everything surrounding it and its’ architect, is conveyed with the magnitude almost of a nuclear blast itself in Oppenheimer, an epic film about the genesis of the Atomic Age that is one of Christopher Nolan’s greatest achievements. Breathtakingly nuanced and sweeping, it is a movie of considerable ambition and reckoning, both for Nolan and for his subject -Nolan’s own existential concerns, guilt complexes, and allegorical use of the filmmaking process finding their way in. Mostly however, it is concerned with those questions of ethics in scientific advancement, the consequences of certain knowledge, it’s moral and political implications, and what makes the kind of person with the power and responsibility to reconcile these things.
Nolan argues that Oppenheimer was the most critical figure of the twentieth century, and his movie certainly imbues that level of significance on him -opening with a quote invoking the myth of Prometheus (American Prometheus being the name of the book Nolan most heavily draws from). A severe if sometimes subtle profundity of character is channeled likewise in the performance of Cillian Murphy -one of Nolan’s reliable scene-stealing featured players for going on eighteen years now, at long last given the lead role for the director who arguably knows best his strengths. Murphy is the titan of this film in every conceivable way, exuding the gravitas that both comes with this character’s place in history and speaks to his complex and conflicted psychological state over his work. A man who can both recede from attention and command it –conveyed through subtle and intricate yet highly entrancing performance choices that set Murphy apart as a solid early awards contender. Consider the many times the movie frames his face in close-up, isolated and encompassing, the gears in motion behind Murphy’s immaculate blue eyes in deep consideration. Juxtaposed with these and other intuitive moments for Oppenheimer are flashes of stars, supernovas, atoms, and energy waves –the mathematical processes constantly on his mind… until the moment of truth when different kinds of images present themselves to his mind.
Being a Nolan movie, Oppenheimer is told partly out of sync, sequences from the 1954 security hearing on Oppenheimer’s alleged Communist history –split between a special counsel interrogation of Oppenheimer and his associates and the Senate confirmation hearing of Atomic Energy Commission official Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr. in a great comeback performance post-MCU), who instigated the public attack on Oppenheimer’s credibility –giving way to the narrative of his academic and professional history leading up through the Manhattan Project and its aftermath. All scenes related from Strauss’ perspective are shot in black and white to distinguish them from the histories concerning Oppenheimer and his colleagues more clouded by subjectivity. It’s a technique Nolan famously used for the dual timelines of Memento as well, and it’s just as effective here. The movie also employs shifting aspect ratios, the meaning of which is a little more difficult to assess (possibly to denote an even more subjective lens).
But in any shape it looks fantastic through Hoyte van Hoytema’s deep and intense photography. The technical acuity on display is something to behold -the town of Los Alemos where a lot of the action is set, built by the production, is conveyed with an immersive sense of geography. And of course there are the much talked about visual effects, created practically up to and including the detonation -which is utterly stupendous. The real genius however lies in the Trinity sequence itself, shot and paced with a captivating sense of looming dread unlike anything Nolan has ever done. The stakes of this enterprise with its’ not-impossible catastrophic implications are chilling, made all the more so through Jennifer Lame’s impeccable editing and the haunting precision of the sound technicians -who make the culmination the great movie moment of 2023. Following this, Oppenheimer’s speech to the community after the first practical use of their research makes similarly stark use of technique to illustrate a bleak psychological trauma our titular character is ill-prepared to quantify.
If Oppenheimer can be accused of re-litigating the debate over the building and use of the atomic bomb (to say nothing of the hydrogen bomb, which features as a background priority for one of the Los Alemos scientists), it at least does so with a fresh and informed perspective. The themes of scientific innovation being exploited by warfare and ones research fallen out of their control have long been associated with Oppenheimer’s legacy -elevated his status and made him a martyr, especially in light of his public efforts to regulate nuclear weapons. The movie is not subtle in articulating this at all: right after the test a military official literally tells Oppenheimer “we’ll take it from here”. And when he attends the critical meeting over where to use the bomb, the casual apathy with which the Secretary of War dismisses Kyoto as a target because he honeymooned there (an authentically sourced comment) is a cold and perfectly revolting statement on the arrogance of western imperialism -one man’s arbitrary sentiment determined the deaths of thousands. At the same time, Nolan makes clear it wasn’t a cut and dry situation. He sympathizes with Oppenheimer, who concludes that if the Americans don’t build the weapon first, the Soviets or Germans very well might -that the bomb’s manufacture may as well be in the hands of those who could be “trusted” with it.
But clearly, it is Oppenheimer’s bias, clouded by the stimulating process of science and engineering for him and the allure of the unknown -for these he can set aside ethical qualms. He becomes conflicted over this only afterwards, proud of his breakthrough but concerned with its consequences. The movie doesn’t have a clear position -Nolan seems to agree the bomb’s creation was inevitable, yet is still horrified by it’s use, daunted by what it wrought for humanity. He reveres Oppenheimer’s ingenuity and vision, viewing him in a somewhat tragic light, though not excusing his culpability, highlighting his flaws, and his role in manufacturing his own narrative post-Hiroshima. All the while, he infuses the movie’s tone with a dread that consciously captures both the severity of bringing atomic power into the world and the anxiety of our current existential threats, be they climate change or the subversion of western democracy -to any of which he would draw a line back to the bomb.
Oppenheimer’s politics are a curious facet of the film, brought to the fore as he is forced to confront the political machine that he gave nuclear power to. His flirtatious history with communism, an academic interest that he never pursued actively -at least to the account given by his perspective, is of course used against him in the context of the Red Scare; but his accurate leftist leanings come up more frequently, openly contradicting his work within the military industrial complex -adding to the layers of his character. When made to answer for this and his positions against using the H-Bomb where he had on record supported (regardless of inner turmoil) the use of the A-bomb, it’s fascinating to see the twists in logic he applies. In some cases the personal is seen to influence the political character of Oppenheimer -not flattering, but a vividly honest portrait of a man.
By all account the movie appears to be very historically accurate -some of the most artificial-seeming moments, such as President Truman profanely denouncing Oppenheimer’s comment about “having blood on his hands” are on record. Oppenheimer also benefits immensely from a stacked cast apart from Murphy. Downey, Matt Damon as his military handler, Emily Blunt as his wife Kitty (who gets the most scathing moment of the film), and Florence Pugh as his former lover are all fantastic. In the sea of other recognizable faces, Benny Safdie, Josh Hartnett, Alden Ehrenreich, and Kenneth Branagh (playing Niels Bohr) stand out -but perhaps most strikingly Tom Conti as Albert Einstein, giving a performance imbued with the same sense of weight Murphy gives Oppenheimer.
A curious note, Oppenheimer is Nolan’s version of Hayao Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises -both movies about World War II-era historical figures the director sees themself in whose pursuit of a passion conflicted with the moral conundrum of the destruction that passion was in service of. They also both feature a love interest played by Emily Blunt. And like with The Wind Rises, Oppenheimer represents a particular high watermark for its filmmaker; a personal provocative culmination of his themes and interests, a staggeringly excellent movie for its time, reckoning in the good and bad with the world that Oppenheimer made.
Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/JordanBosch
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jordan_D_Bosch
Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/jbosch/
Comments
Post a Comment