Nolan’s ‘Oppenheimer’ is a Monumental Cinematic Achievement
The film is so compellingly realised it may help fill quantum physics lecture halls
Two caveats: There are spoilers ahead. And this film review is ‘suggested for mature readers’.
SYNOPSIS
'Oppenheimer' (2023; R). World War II is almost over. Japan doggedly fights on in the Pacific. Lives are being lost. J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) is a curious, gifted, American physicist of Jewish heritage who keeps his finger on the pulse of his ever-evolving field.
Needing to make sense of the powerful ideas swirling in his mind, and searching for a place that’ll satisfy his insatiable hunger to immerse himself in scientific theory, Oppenheimer travels Europe, learning from its best scientific minds.
Seeing the future, he brings quantum theory from Europe to the U.S., and begins teaching it, drawing interest from prominent people in, and outside, his field.
Oppenheimer is tapped by Colonel Leslie Groves (Matt Damon), to assemble and lead a team of physicists building two atomic bombs to drop on two cities in Japan.
COMMENTARY
The Cast and its Performances
Murphy as Oppenheimer, is easily likable, and speaks with an appealing cadence and modulation of voice. His portrayal of J. Robert Oppenheimer is nothing short of a sheer triumph.
I recall reading, in an issue of ‘Sight and Sound’, in the early 2000s, about Cillian Murphy being in a film called ‘The Wind that Shakes the Barley’, by Ken Loach. Murphy has come a long way since then.
I was pleasantly surprised to see Casey Affleck as Boris Pash, a military man with a no-nonsense reputation, and Josh Hartnett, as Ernest Lawrence, Robert's scientific peer. I hadn't seen them on screen in a long time. I was also pleasantly surprised to see, in the end credits, that Gary Oldman played President Harry S. Truman. I hadn’t recognised him.
Emily Blunt as Kitty, Robert’s wife, is a delight to watch, and hear.
Tom Conti’s Albert Einstein is endearing. His wisened, sympathetic countenance and voice are immensely soothing. I wish he had more screen time.
Florence Pugh’s Jean Tatlock; her forthright, yet contained nature imbues her interactions with Robert with a palpable tension.
Matt Damon’s Colonel Groves, who later becomes a general, is firm but remains appealingly accessible, human, which gives Robert and others the chutzpah to occasionally act against his wishes.
Kenneth Branagh’s Niels Bhor, whom Robert describes as the only man to ever prove Einstein wrong, has a strong presence. He commands attention when he speaks. It’s a pleasure to see and hear him. I thought I heard Branagh wander off accent for a second, in one scene.
Jefferson Hall’s Haakon Chevalier, a close friend of Robert’s, has an appealingly pronounced, sensitive and soft-spoken nature.
David Dastmalchian’s William Borden, who pens a damning letter about Oppenheimer, to the FBI, is inscrutable.
Robert Downey Jr.’s Lewis Strauss, a former shoe salesman now working in government, is engagingly multi-faceted. He’s ingratiating, vindictive, ambitious, doggedly determined, jealous, cunning, vain, and so on.
Benny Safdie’s Edward Teller, a physicist, is interestingly volatile and outspoken.
Dylan Arnold’s Frank Oppenheimer, younger brother to Robert, is easily likable. He simply comes across as a good human being. Maybe it’s because of his gentle face, and demeanour.
Tony Goldwyn’s Gordon Gray, who heads The Board, has a strong presence though he speaks little. I suppose it helps that he sits smack-dab at the center of a table perpendicular to the one Robert sits at, directly facing Robert.
David Krumholtz’s Isidor Rabi, a Jewish man of science, like Robert, is endearingly sympathetic to, honest with, supportive, and protective of Robert. “Eat,” Rabi urges a self-neglecting Robert, twice or so in the movie, while offering a peeled orange wrapped in cloth, each time.
A Selection of Notable Scenes, in no Particular Order
Emily Blunt’s glorious eyes smoulder ever so wonderfully in the scene where she asks Robert to explain quantum physics to her. That has to be one of the most beautiful and potent depictions of attraction between a man and a woman, ever committed to film (and Nolan shoots on actual film, so I mean that in the most literal sense).
And in the scene where Kitty is sitting before the board, and being harangued by Strauss’ rabid hound, Roger Robb (Jason Clarke), Kitty holds her own, and defends her husband so beautifully, you wish you could reach into the screen and hug her. You fall in love with her.
The scene in which Robert addresses cheering Los Alamos staffers, after the successful dropping of the atomic bombs, on Japan… There are moments when he’s speaking, and the wall behind him seems to vibrate from the blast wave of an explosion, and he clearly wants to weep, but maintains his composure. It’s fine, fine acting. It’s moving to see him stifle his anguish.
And when after he’s spoken, and the crowd is applauding, and he seems to see the skin of one clapping woman in the audience flake off like bits of paper, while the sound is off, and he looks on in silent pain, while a harsh, white light shines from behind him… it’s a masterful use of images and silence that powerfully conveys Robert’s inner turmoil, and the grave seriousness of the ramifications of the bombings.
***
There’s a scene in which Jean and Robert are physically intimate with each other, for the first time. In the process, Jean suddenly gets off Robert and walks over to a bookshelf, leaving a puzzled Robert alone on the bed.
Jean scans the collection of books, and while doing so, there’s a witty exchange between the two, that references that which is Freudian and Jungian. They also touch on how Robert nearly poisoned his tutor at university. Jean concludes that Robert has other people convinced that he’s more complicated than he actually is, when all he needed was to simply be physically intimate with a woman.
She then takes a book off a shelf, walks over to Robert, and sits on him again. And while they’re having intercourse, Jean asks Robert to read a passage from the book, which is in Sanskrit, and Robert does. That’s when we hear the phrase, ‘And now I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds’, for the first time, in the film.
It’s a memorable scene.
Side note: According to Meta AI, the line 'And now I am become Death' is from the seminal Sanskrit text, the Bhagavad Gita. So, Pugh/Tatlock, in that scene, is holding a copy of the Bhagavad Gita. That's fascinating.
There’s another scene in which Jean and Robert are physically intimate with each other, later in the film. This time, we simply see each one sitting in a fancy chair, smoking, and in a state of undress, after the deed. They’re talking.
Jean asks Robert what he thought abruptly cutting her off would do to her. Robert tells her that he had to, because she’s a communist. Robert tells her that they can’t see each other again. Jean reminds him that he said he would always answer. Robert reiterates that they can’t see each other again. Both of them are visibly pained by the prospect of not seeing each other ever again.
The scene is masterfully intercut with the hearing. In a sense, we see the scene, that last encounter between Robert and Jean, because of the hearing.
***
There’s a moment during the hearing, when Robert reveals to the board, that he spent a night with Jean, while he was married to Kitty. In that moment, Robert segues (the visual sleight of hand is impressive) from being dressed to being naked. Jean appears, also in a state of undress, on Robert’s lap, and moves in a gentle up-and-down motion, making love to Robert, while looking Kitty dead in the eye, with a slightly gloating expression.
Side note: This was my first time to see overt, near-graphic 'sensuality' in a Nolan film. I haven't seen all of his films, but in the few l have seen, he's either steered clear of sensuality, or been quite subtle with it.
This scene highlights Robert’s vulnerability. Because he’s answering invasive questions, he feels as though he’s sitting stark naked before the board. This is also Kitty’s point of view, who’s letting her imagination run away with her, so to speak, and feels violated by Robert’s revelation.
Not only were Robert and Jean’s trysts, which he confessed to Kitty, beforehand, infidelity, but Robert is now revealing it to the world.
It’s masterful filmic storytelling.
***
I enjoyed the scene in which Robert brings his crying infant son to live with the Chevaliers, temporarily, because of Kitty’s seeming post-natal depression.
Haakon asks Robert whether Kitty knows that he’s brought their baby to them, and Robert says she does. Robert then has a reality check, and changes his mind about offloading his and Kitty’s responsibility onto the Chevaliers, saying to Haakon, that he and Kitty are such selfish, awful people.
And Haakon gently, sagely, points out to Robert that selfish, awful people don’t know that they’re selfish and awful. He also says that Robert sees beyond ‘surface’ reality, that there’s a price to be paid for that, and tells Robert that they will help him and Kitty.
The scene is well-played by both. And Chevalier’s statements about selfish, awful people, and Robert having to pay a price for his gifts, are thought-provoking.
***
There’s a moment when Teller announces that he won’t work with a certain team member (Hans Bethe) whom he doesn’t see eye-to-eye with, and proceeds to storm out of a meeting.
Robert quickly reassigns roles, tells everyone that no one is leaving Los Alamos, and follows Teller, who’s trudging towards the main gate. Teller reaches the gate, and the guards won’t raise the boom so that he can exit. Teller turns to face Robert who’s standing behind him, and says, annoyed, “They won’t let me leave!” Roberts corrects Teller by telling him that it’s he who won’t let him leave, not the guards.
Robert makes an offer to Teller. He can stay at Los Alamos and research what he wants, and the two of them can meet to discuss.
Teller, unconvinced, reminds Robert that he has no time to meet, since he’s now a politician who left physics behind him a long time ago. Robert bolsters his offer by specifying that they can meet once a week, one-on-one, for one hour, to discuss. Teller agrees, turns, orders the guards to raise the barrier, which they do, on Robert’s nod, and Teller trudges out.
It’s all well-played.
***
There’s a scene where the lawyer, Roger Robb, really goes on the offensive while trying to make Robert look bad. He firmly pokes the table with his forefinger, several times, while shouting at Robert in an accusatory tone, and Robert is shaken, and stammers his responses.
The sound effects (the vibration of the rings around the nucleus of an atom; bomb explosions; the stomping of feet), visual effects (harsh, white light, like that of an atomic explosion, filling the room, and reflecting off faces), and urgent strings of the score, effectively heighten the tension in the scene.
The scene is such an assault not only on Robert’s senses, but on ours, too. We feel like we’re the ones in the hot seat. We feel the intensity of Robb’s assault as much as Robert does. Like the scene where Robert sees the Los Alamos audience disintegrate after he’s given a speech, there’s masterful use of acting craft, image, and sound, here, too.
***
President Truman asks Robert what should be done with Los Alamos, and Robert says, without reservation (pun unintended), that it should be given back to the Indians, and Truman and his secretary glance disapprovingly at each other.
After Truman belittles and quashes Robert’s cautioning that the Soviets could be building atomic bombs of their own, Robert tells him that he feels like he has blood on his hands, and Truman removes a white hankie from his breast pocket, and mockingly waves it in front of Robert.
Truman then makes the point to Robert that the Japanese don’t give a sh#t who built the bombs, and only care who dropped them, meaning that the sole onus, the sole responsibility, sits squarely on his (Truman’s) shoulders.
The secretary then proceeds to show Robert out. And as Robert exits the oval office, we hear Truman in the background say, ‘Don’t let that crybaby back in here.’ Then Strauss’ voice-over tells us that in time, Robert embraced his reputation as ‘Father of the Atomic Bomb’, and used it to influence policy on atomic weapons.
The scene is played quite well by the three actors. Gary Oldman’s Truman is a little… scary.
I wonder whether that scene was meant to underscore Robert’s naivety.
***
The scene where Groves describes Pash as a ruthless man, to Robert, on the train, intercut with the scene where Robert clumsily attempts to reveal a possible saboteur at Los Alamos, to Pash, and his colleague, creates a fascinating dichotomy. Pash's ruthlessness, as described by Groves, and Pash’s evident patience, while talking to Robert, add intrigue to Affleck’s piercing-eyed, soft-spoken portrayal.
***
Vannevar Bush (Matthew Modine), one of the scientists who helped make the atomic bombs, asks the board to forgive him his agitatedness, after chiding the board for punishing Robert for daring to publicly speak his mind on atomic weapons. Bush says that they should punish him, instead. Modine imbues Bush with an appealing sympathy.
***
I like the way Rabi makes Lawrence, who is arriving to ‘testify’ against Robert, turn on his heels and leave, with only a look. Albeit a loaded look. Lawrence later fibs to Gray that he has colitis, and so cannot partake in the ‘hearing’. Rabi is a true friend. It’s heartwarming to see. Krumholtz plays Rabi wonderfully.
There’s a scene in which Rabi, visibly pained by having to let Robert down, tells Robert that he’s not joining The Project. He then justifies his decision by saying that it doesn’t sit well with him that three centuries of physics should culminate in a bomb.
Robert, who’s standing on a raised platform a fair distance from Rabi, who’s sitting, walks slowly towards Rabi, and standing close, says, in a calm, soft-spoken, conflicted yet convinced way, that he’s uncertain that they (America) can be trusted with such immense power, but he knows with certainty that the Nazis cannot.
Robert concludes, powerfully, by saying that they don't have a choice.
The scene is beautifully played by both, especially Murphy.
Shortly after that exchange Rabi tells Robert, who’s wearing an army uniform on Groves’ orders, to take it off, and dress in a way that’s true to who he is, because he was hired for what he is, a scientist, not a soldier. What follows is Robert changing into a suit topped with a fedora, wearing a badge that says “K-6", and taking his pipe in hand.
I like that it’s another instance of Rabi looking out for Robert. I also like the way the switch is handled in a triumphant way, visually, and musically, that conveys that Robert is now truly himself. It’s sort of like Kal-El changing out of Clark Kent mode, into Superman.
Recurring Collaborators, and a little Technical Speak
It's interesting that when Nolan develops a good rapport with someone who's part of either talent or crew, he or she will pop up often, in his films, in front, or behind the camera. For example, Cillian Murphy and Kenneth Branagh have become recurring faces, especially the former. And the impeccable composer Ludwig Goransson, and the curiously named, wonderful cinematographer, Hoyte van Hoytema, have become recurring, too.
Side note: I wonder why Nolan and the cinematographer, Wally Pfister, who lensed several of Nolan's well-known films, ceased working together.
It's interesting, no, wonderful, to notice film usage switch between the extremely large format of IMAX, and a smaller format, during the course of the film. When, for example, the location warrants it, e.g. a gently sloping city street with sumptuous architecture and foliage, or the majestic wilderness of New Mexico, Nolan uses an IMAX camera to make the most of the location. And the result is an image that is without a black bar at the top and bottom, fills the whole screen, and is a true feast for the eyes.
Preamble to the Conclusion
At the beginning of the movie, we see the ominous, swirling flames that we see later, at the first bomb test at the Trinity site, in the Jornada del Muerto desert, and hear the loud, ominous stomping of feet that we see and hear later, in the auditorium at Los Alamos, just before Robert speaks, after the successful bombings.
Perhaps Nolan telegraphs those two moments because they’re pivotal ‘points of no return’. When the test bomb detonated as required, it, in a sense, guaranteed that the proper bombs would be made, and used. And when the bombings in Japan proved successful, the world irrevocably entered the nuclear age.
Conclusion
This film is, to me, a sort of sombre ‘Dr. Strangelove’ for the 21st century. l haven't watched that Kubrick classic, though. I’ve only read a little about it.
'Oppenheimer' is a masterfully realised ensemble film about a gifted man, gifted people, trying to use their gifts for the greater good, to leave a meaningful legacy, while navigating the privileges and perils therein.
It asks; when threatened by great evil, do you use your gifts, your means, to do great evil, to end the great evil that threatens you, and ultimately do what appears to be greater good? Or do you do nothing?
This film is, without a doubt, one of Christopher Nolan's finest, thus far.
P.S. In Nolan’s earlier ‘Tenet’ (2020; PG-13), which, as of the time of writing, I still mostly don’t understand, one of the character’s makes reference to Oppenheimer. It’s a stretch, but it makes me wonder whether Nolan was indirectly telling us what his next film would be.
P.P.S. It's amazing that such a 'politically' sensitive film can be conceived of, made, and widely shown. Liberty is conducive for the flourishing of art, it would appear.