Film Review: Oppenheimer

 

Sexuality/Nudity Objectionable

Violence Mature

Vulgarity Mature

Anti-Catholic Philosophy Mature

There is a problem that many successful directors encounter the further on they go in their careers: the removal of limits.

You see, when a director is correctly lauded for their visionary artistry and box office bonafides, there tends be a reluctance to put constraints on the director.  The problem with this is that often true creativity occurs when you are forced to think through the limitations you have with new and creative ideas.  There is a reason that Steven Spielberg's two greatest movies are Schindler's List and Jaws.  While both are wildly different, they both achieve an outstanding level of directing excellence because you had a creative genius who had to work around his limitations.

This takes us to Christopher Nolan and Oppenheimer.

The movie centers around the "father of the atomic bomb" J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy).  We start with his early days as an eccentric genius through his affair with the married woman he later marries Kitty (Emily Blunt).  It takes us through his recruitment by Col. Leslie Groves (Matt Damon) to lead the Manhattan Project.  But (because Nolan loves to play with the narrative timeline), we are also encounter a parallel story years after the bomb's creation.  Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.) is going through confirmation hearings to become part of President Eisenhower's cabinet.  However, his association with Oppenheimer comes up.  Particularly this is an issue because Oppenheimer's security clearance was revoked due to questionable ties with Communists.  As the movie unfolds, so does the history between Strauss and Oppenheimer.

There are two excellent movies in Oppenheimer.  The problem is that Nolan pushes them into one movie.

The movie is packed with famous actors like Gary Oldman, Kenneth Branagh, Jason Clarke, Tony Goldwyn, James D'Arcy, Alden Ehrenreich, Scott Grimes, Josh Hartnett, Florence Pugh, David Dastmalchian, Dane DeHaan, Jack Quaid, Rami Malek, Olivia Thrilby, Casey Affleck, and James Remar.  But I would be hard-pressed to tell you much about their characters.  While the movie is three hours long, almost everyone on this list is reduced to glorified cameos.  

Their performances aren't bad at all.  In fact, most of them are outstanding.  I would say that Murphy is currently the front-runner to a Best Actor Oscar.  His performance is wonderfully restrained.  He paradoxically is both easy to hate but difficult to dislike.  You can understand why people develop such an animus towards him but Murphy always lets you see his humanity.  This is especially true in the post-bomb scenes.  His Oppenheimer is a maelstrom of emotion being held together by a veneer of steel.  Blunt is also equally good, though she is given so little to do.  When the full power of her character is unleashed later in the movie it seems to come out of nowhere but is nevertheless cathartic.  Downey Jr., sheds his Tony Stark persona completely.  He still has an unshakeable charisma, but he lets his age work to his advantage by giving him a sense of gravitas.  

But my favorite performance is Damon's.  There is something about it that feels like a throwback to the classic leading men of yesteryear.  I could see his Groves being played believably by a John Wayne or Spencer Tracy.  There is something that is simple, masculine, rough, and decent about Groves.  In the hands of a lesser actor, this would be a bland, one-note performance.  But Damon is the everyman in a room full of science nerds and politicians.  You may not always like him or agree with him, but you feel like you can trust him.  Hats off to Damon for infusing this character with the most humanity of anyone in the movie.

Nolan deserves an Oscar nomination for his visual storytelling.  Most people will leave the theater remembering the Trinity atomic bomb test scene.  And too be sure, it is something was one of my favorite IMAX experiences.  When the boom of the explosion hit, everyone (including myself) jumped in their seats.

But to me, the best scene is the one that takes place at a rally after the successful Trinity test.  Oppenhemier has to lead the group in a congratulations for a job well done.  But the full weight of what he has done presses down upon them.  Instead of taking the easy way out and giving us an internal narration to tell us how he feels, Nolan uses his skill with sight and sound to help us see how he feels.  We see things from Oppenheimer's point of view as must disconnect his internal turmoil from his external enthusiasm.

But as I mentioned at the beginning, Nolan cannot edit himself.

While I found the second half of the movie more interesting than the first, you could feel the movie drag.  There is just too much going on.  If someone could have forced Nolan to put a scalpel to this movie, you would have had a much more streamlined, stronger story.  

Another issue that the movie has is that this is the most sexually explicit thing Nolan has done.  I find this incredibly disappointing.  I cannot recall a single one of his other movies that featured graphic nudity, but he inexplicably has incorporated it here.  He clearly wants to show the passion that Oppenheimer shares with Pugh's Communist Jean Tatlock.  But the introduction of this element makes the movie less, not more watchable.  There is one section where he uses sex and implied nudity well: when Oppenheimer is testifying about this affair, he appears naked and then appears to have Tatlock on top of him while she stares at his wife.  Visually, this expresses how exposed Oppenheimer feels and how humiliated Kitty is.  But with a little more creativity, Nolan could have gotten this across without compromise his integrity.

The movie also suffers from Nolan's trademark emotional rigidity.  Ever since Interstellar, it feels like Nolan is afraid to let his characters express their feelings in an unfiltered way.  While emotional restraint can be effective, it can also make you feel distant from the audience.

For some reason, the movie seems to underplay the threat of Communism in the post-WWII world.  I read someone who wrote something along the lines of "Oppenheimer worked with Communists, slept with Communists, had family members who were Communists, and gave money to Communists, but that is no reason to think he was a Communist."  Everything about his associations screams "security threat," but the movie does not want us to think that this is a serious issue at all.

The movie is very fair about the implications of the bomb.  It shows us both sides of the argument even as the main characters are building it.  Regardless of its necessity, the exploration of what it does to Oppenheimer's soul is fascinating.  Oppenheimer is not wicked, but he is never a virtuous man.  He is lecherous and arrogant.  And both those vices come back to bite him in a big way.  But his thin soul cracks under the weight of his greatest accomplishment and he is never the same.

Oppenheimer is a movie that is worth seeing on the big screen (though one should avoid the illicit sex scenes).  But it is also embodies one of the biggest themes of the movie regarding the creation of their new weapon:

Bigger is not always better.