Film Review: Oppenheimer (2023)
Christopher Nolan is arguably the most successful and influential filmmaker working today. Over the past quarter of a century, he has not only delivered a series of immensely popular blockbusters that have dominated the global box office, but he has also won and maintained the favour of critics as one of the rare 21st-century filmmakers to retain the status of true auteur. Unlike many of his contemporaries who have been dismissed as mere hacks or studio journeymen, Nolan has cultivated a reputation as a serious artist working within the commercial mainstream. This success has, in turn, created a cult around him, whose devotees, as the recent brouhaha over his forthcoming adaptation of The Odyssey shows, spend inordinate amounts of time and energy convincing anyone who will listen that Nolan is incapable of doing any wrong. Yet arguably the greatest triumph and crowning achievement of Nolan's career to date was his 2023 biopic Oppenheimer, which not only became one of the great summer blockbusters—an unlikely fate for a three-hour historical drama—but also won a series of Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, cementing Nolan's place in the pantheon of cinema's greats.
The film is based on American Prometheus, the Pulitzer Prize-winning 2005 book by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, dedicated to the life and times of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the American nuclear physicist best known for his work on the Manhattan Project during the Second World War, which would later give him the controversial moniker "father of the atomic bomb." The biography is widely regarded as the definitive account of Oppenheimer's life, and Nolan's adaptation draws heavily from its detailed research and nuanced portrayal of a brilliant but deeply flawed man.
Nolan's script takes a non-linear approach to Oppenheimer's story, jumping between various time periods with the director's characteristic disregard for conventional chronology. However, the plot generally begins with Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) studying physics at the most prestigious universities of Europe—Cambridge and Göttingen among them—where he came under the influence of pioneering quantum physicists. Upon returning to America in the 1930s, he would teach physics at Caltech and Berkeley, establishing himself as one of the foremost theoretical physicists of his generation. Oppenheimer, whilst not overtly political himself, held leftist beliefs, and many of his colleagues and acquaintances were even card-carrying members of the Communist Party. These included his brother Frank (Dylan Arnold), his girlfriend Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh), and Kitty (Emily Blunt), another girlfriend whom he would ultimately marry and with whom he would start a family. These associations would later prove problematic when the Cold War climate of suspicion took hold.
His work on theoretical physics, which included projects on splitting the atom, was overshadowed by the Nazi invasion of Poland in September 1939, which started the Second World War and led many prominent physicists, including Albert Einstein (Tom Conti), to warn the United States government about the possibility of Hitler developing nuclear weapons. The US government took this warning seriously and began a secretive, expensive, and ambitious programme to develop a weapon of its own before the Germans could achieve the same. Oppenheimer was eventually put in charge of the project, which he would supervise with the help of US Army General Leslie Groves (Matt Damon), the builder of the Pentagon, who had constructed a small secret town to house the scientists and laboratories in Los Alamos, New Mexico. Although Germany surrendered in May 1945 before the first bomb was built, Japan was still in the fight, and in July 1945 Oppenheimer supervised the first bomb tests in the desert near Alamogordo. Two new bombs were subsequently built and delivered to the US Army, which dropped them on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, leading to Japanese surrender and the end of the war.
Following the bombings, Oppenheimer was at the zenith of his popularity, hailed as a scientific genius and war hero who brought the most destructive conflict in history to its end. Although Oppenheimer never publicly regretted his role in the atomic bombings, as the Cold War developed he became increasingly worried that this might not be the last time atomic weapons were used. He was openly opposed to the development of the even more powerful hydrogen bomb, a project advocated by his colleague Edward Teller (Benny Safdie). In 1949, this stance put him in deep conflict with Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.), the head of the Atomic Energy Commission. Strauss, who had been publicly humiliated by Oppenheimer in congressional hearings, retaliated in 1954 by orchestrating the denial of Oppenheimer's security clearance, effectively ending his influence on American nuclear policy. Four years later, Strauss himself was denied the position of US Commerce Secretary when the scientific community, who abhorred the mistreatment of Oppenheimer, turned the American public and senators against his confirmation.
Nolan was inspired to make the film by memories of growing up in early 1980s England, when the Cold War was re-escalating and fear of nuclear apocalypse weighed heavily on many minds. He began to contemplate a film based on American Prometheus in the late 2010s, but its subject became frighteningly even more relevant with the outbreak of the Russo-Ukrainian War in 2022 and even more so with subsequent conflicts that, in one way or another, involved nuclear powers and raised the spectre of atomic warfare once again.
Oppenheimer was the first film Nolan had made since 2000 for a studio other than Warner Bros.; this was partly due to his displeasure at the way Warner handled the distribution of his previous film Tenet, which, ironically, also mentioned Oppenheimer in its dialogue. Oppenheimer was notable for being released at the same time as Barbie, a blockbuster immensely promoted by Warner Bros., and many have speculated that Warner deliberately scheduled Barbie to wreck Nolan's box office prospects as retaliation for his defection to Universal. Both films fared surprisingly well, often serving as one of the very rare and successful examples of counter-programming and creating the phenomenon dubbed "Barbenheimer," which saw audiences attending both films as a sort of cultural event.
Nolan once again demonstrates superb directorial skills throughout the film. The audience can, despite the non-linear structure, easily figure out the difference between various time periods and realise what is going on through subtle visual cues and shifts in colour palette. The three hours of running time pass remarkably quickly, even for audiences unaccustomed to epic biographies, thanks to Nolan's propulsive editing and the film's relentless momentum.
Nolan is also helped enormously by his cast, most notably Cillian Murphy, who was one of his longtime collaborators dating back to Batman Begins. Murphy successfully embodies Oppenheimer in various phases of his life, from the ambitious young physicist to the haunted elder statesman of science. Murphy, who would deservedly win the Academy Award for Best Actor for his effort, even subjected himself to a special diet in order to embody the gaunt appearance of the real-life Oppenheimer, demonstrating a commitment to physical transformation that has become expected in prestige biopics.
Although Robert Downey Jr. also won an Oscar, in his case for Best Supporting Actor, his performance, notable for being one of the oldest characters in his career, is easily overshadowed by Murphy's towering work. The rest of the cast is also good, although in many cases great actors are reduced to what amounts to glorified cameos, playing grand historical figures who appear for a scene or two before disappearing. This includes Matt Damon, who seems rather bland compared to Paul Newman playing the same character of Leslie Groves in the 1989 film Fat Man and Little Boy.
The film also benefits from Ludwig Göransson's musical score, which creates an atmosphere of impending dread and, despite being largely electronic, does not sound anachronistic despite being very different from the orchestral music typical of the mid-20th century.
Yet there is a serious flaw in the film which deprives it of true greatness. One is conceptual—Nolan focuses the first part on Oppenheimer's path towards handling the Manhattan Project, and the second turns into what is sometimes an inconsequential courtroom drama, reducing Oppenheimer's profound ethical dilemmas into a conflict between two strong-willed men. The complexity of the scientist's internal struggle is flattened into a procedural battle over security clearances.
The other issue is Nolan's occasional succumbing to arthouse pretentiousness. This is reflected in various scenes being shot in black-and-white—although sometimes they help set apart different periods—and partly in Oppenheimer's visions of future nuclear apocalypse. But the most egregious example is the scene when Oppenheimer sees his friends and acquaintances being horrifically burned in the way Hiroshima and Nagasaki victims were, suggesting that he had second thoughts about his role in the bombing after all, despite historical evidence to the contrary. It is a heavy-handed visual metaphor that undermines the film's otherwise restrained approach.
Another, perhaps less justified, descent into pretentiousness is Oppenheimer being shown naked and his wife imagining sex with Jean Tatlock during the 1954 hearing. This looks over-melodramatic and over-symbolic, and can be interpreted as a way for Nolan to demonstrate how untouchable he was at this point in his career, convincing Universal that they could release the film in cinemas with an R-rating simply because his name was attached.
Despite these flaws, Oppenheimer remains a formidable achievement and a testament to Nolan's unique position in contemporary cinema. It is a film that manages to be both a commercial blockbuster and a serious historical drama, a balance that few filmmakers could achieve. Yet one cannot help but feel that with a slightly less heavy hand and more trust in the audience's intelligence, it could have been a masterpiece rather than merely a very good film.
RATING: 7/10 (+++)
(NOTE: Croatian version of the text is available here.)
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