This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movie being covered here wouldn’t exist.
If you’ve ever had a chance to visit Hiroshima Japan, it is a solemn, surreal experience. So many horrors are recorded in the Hiroshima Peace Museum that you can’t help but shed a tear for what the atomic bomb did to over 200,000 people there & in Nagasaki. Christopher Nolan’s latest film is not about those poor Japanese civilians, but instead their Death, destroyer of worlds, J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb and arguably the most important person in the 21st century, for better and worse.
Nolan takes us through the main beats of Oppenheimer’s (Cillian Murphy) life. Originally from New York, he starts as a struggling physics student at Cambridge, eventually blossoming into America’s Quantum Mechanics expert at Berkeley. There, he blends his theoretical understanding with the real life work of fellow professors like Ernest Lawrence (Josh Hartnett) to study nuclear physics. Good timing, because Germany’s just about to invade Poland in the 1930’s sparking WWII. Sensing the Germans are working on a nuclear bomb, the US government sends Leslie Groves (Matt Damon) to recruit Oppenheimer to run the US’s Manhattan Project, to make the bomb first. After the events of August 6 and 9, we also get insights into what happened to Oppenheimer, especially through the eyes of Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.), a powerful government official working in the shadows to build the credibility he wanted for himself.
Oppenheimer is built around one of life’s great lessons: context matters. As we jump from pre and post atomic bomb, we see all sorts of people trying to justify their actions to people who attempt to frame those actions in a different way. When the Nazi’s were the greatest evil on the planet, Robert and his brother Frank’s (Dylan Arnold) allegiances to unions and socialist movements seemed strange, but not that big of a security risk? During the age of McCarthyism and Cold War panic? Uh oh, Robert might be a Russian spy, selling nuclear secrets to America’s great enemies, since he’d covertly meet with people close to him during the Manhattan Project like Frank or his lover Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh). Lewis Strauss is the king of context shifting, working behind the scenes to be part of something big when it’s positive and get out of the way when things go bad. This issue also applies emotionally. Pre bomb, Robert sees the creation as necessary so everyone can see the horrors of mass destruction. Oppenheimer’s mind about bombs changed after he built his, tormented by the atrocities he helped bring to the unsuspecting Japanese people. This surprised many in the government even the President, who looked down upon Robert’s morality as “weakness.” Humans, institutions, politics, beliefs, science. All of these things are relational, and it’s important to not go into things blindly, an important lesson Christopher Nolan imparts on the audience of those hoping to see just a “bomb movie.”
But it was never going to just be a “bomb movie” with Christopher Nolan involved. I could think of no better director to handle the story of death, the destroyer of worlds. Oppenheimer is a masterclass in editing like all of Nolan’s films. We jump forward and backward in time with ease, as Nolan guides us through the dense complicated science and political machinations to keep the audience guessing as to what story is being told at any given time. Nolan wrote the screenplay in first person, putting us inside Oppenheimer’s mind with these wonderful little flourishes of discovery and horror only a tortured genius like Nolan could communicate. The movie is a sensory experience most of all, using sound and sight to drive tingles up your arms. The director’s casting instincts are right again too. Years of dedicated service to Chris meant it was time for Cillian Murphy to be the star of one of Nolan’s films. Nolan knows how to shoot Murphy well: the constantly excellent actor can carry years of anguish and endless ingenuity in those gorgeous blue eyes. Matt Damon, Florence Pugh, and Emily Blunt were always going to be good, but Nolan’s best casting is giving 2nd shots to actors who’ve fallen by the wayside. Josh Hartnett, Dane DeHaan, David Krumholtz, and Alden Ehrenreich play integral roles in the Oppenheimer story and do incredible jobs with their parts. But maybe the biggest resurrection Nolan has is to give us Robert Downey Jr., serious actor again. Downey’s great as Lewis Strauss, a man growing tired of living in the shadows of men he thinks he’s better than.
I know Tom Cruise gets a lot of love for really trying to will movies back into the mainstream. With all do respect to the stunt master Cruise, it’s directors like Christopher Nolan who gives me the most hope for the future. A great director turns movies into a force of nature, urging things forward through pure entertainment propulsion. And in Oppenheimer’s case, just a bit of quantum mechanics too.