The Doctor’s Diagnosis: A
Christopher Nolan made perhaps the best superhero movie ever with The Dark Knight and is now one of the only hopes to save adult cinema from the superhero-dominated wasteland that is the modern movie theater. Oppenheimer is not only an excellent movie, but it’s the kind of movie that Hollywood usually doesn’t make anymore. This is a 3-hour adult drama about a historical figure that absolutely needs to be seen on the big screen, harkening back to the days when films like Patton and Lawrence of Arabia would pack movie theaters from coast to coast. Oppenheimer is a riveting character study with an ensemble cast for the ages that makes one remember that Hollywood did once actually make smart movies for adults.
Nolan has a penchant for nonlinear storytelling that can become grating at times, but works very well with Oppenheimer. For those that skipped history class, the film is a biographical look at the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer and an adaptation of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize winning book American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. The film starts with Oppenheimer in graduate school and then bounces back and forth between periods in his life, focusing on both his time leading the development of the atomic bomb and the following government investigation into his ties with the communist party (which I was, admittedly, unaware of).
It is difficult to build suspense with a true story since, by definition, we know what is going to happen. It is here that Nolan’s nonlinear storytelling comes into play and the film somehow creates a feeling of suspense despite the historically inevitable outcomes. The central point of the film is an encounter between Oppenheimer and Einstein that occurs before the bomb is built and the mystery of what is said between them, with the rest of the film focusing on the events preceding and following this meeting. Aside from my general ignorance of the latter stages of Oppenheimer’s life, this builds a central mystery to the film that is isolated from basic historical fact. While the film would have worked well enough with a linear format, Nolan’s narrative choices make the film far more interesting than it would have been with a more straightforward script.
The two basic halves of the story (the building of the bomb and the later government hearings) are equally compelling, which makes the 3-hour running time breeze by without the laborious pace that hinders so many modern films. The Manhattan Project (and why was it called that when the bomb was built in New Mexico) is filmed with equal parts war thriller and horror film as the participants deal with the inevitable consequences of what they are about to create. There are great discussions and performances here that highlight the amazingly difficult questions that these people were dealing with. What if we do? What if we don’t? Can we live with this either way? For these scientists, these had to be some of the most difficult decisions ever made and the film captures it perfectly. It is one of history’s great moral quandaries and it leads to the first detonation of an atomic bomb in the stunning Trinity Test sequence. This is one of the most memorable cinematic sequences in resent history, from the suspense of the countdown to the painstaking staging to the thoughtfully developed reactions of the various witnesses to the “seriously, how the hell did they do this?” explosion. Seriously, I have no idea how they pulled this off since no CGI effects were used in the creation of the explosion. It is one of the most awe-inspiring effects seen on the big screen in years.
The latter government investigations into Oppenheimer’s potential communist ties could be a sequel unto itself, but are brilliantly integrated here because of the audience’s investment into Oppenheimer and his associates. While this may lack the literal firepower of the Trinity Test, it is equally dramatic and more exciting than government hearings have any right to be. This is the most invested that I have been in “characters” in years and, while one could argue that these sequences drag out the running time, I feel that they are critical to the overall arc of a reluctant man doing some very reluctant things for a government that may not entirely fathom what he has created. Oppenheimer isn’t really about the creation of a bomb, but about a man struggling with a world that may not be ready for the potential output of his own mind and these latter sequences are critical to that arc.
And the frigging cast of this movie, my god. Cillian Murphy deserves the Oscar for this. I no longer care about the Oscars and I fear this movie may not be diverse enough to warrant consideration, but Murphy’s tortured, layered portrayal is one for the ages and has catapulted the man to the A-list of modern actors. This is a career-defining performance in an adult drama seen by millions; the kind of thing that turned people like Jack Nicholson and Dustin Hoffman into legends. He is that good here. Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh and Emily Blunt all deserve awards recognition for their supporting roles (for Downey in particular, this is probably the best performance of his career). Beyond them as the principles, the depth of this cast is astonishing. Going into the theater, I had no idea that Kenneth Branagh, Rami Malek, Josh Hartnett, Tony Goldwyn and Casey Affleck were even in this damn movie. This truly reminds me of an epics from the 60s or 70s where the film’s poster was basically a laundry list of A-list starts in the film.
This isn’t a perfect film and there are a few things preventing the A+ grade (and I even considered an A- until The Film Nurse yelled at me). I do wish there was more interactions between the scientists about actual development of the bomb (although most audiences likely wouldn’t find that entertaining) and I thought that the introduction of Emily Blunt’s character into Oppenheimer’s life was a little, well, blunt. But those are fairly minor quibbles. I saw this in 70mm (the first movie I’ve seen in the format since The Hateful Eight in 2015) and I highly recommend seeing this in a theater on the biggest screen possible. Oppenheimer is the best historical drama in years and a reminder of when Hollywood made great films rather than corporate products.
Image By: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppenheimer_(film)#/media/File:Oppenheimer_(film).jpg
