Christopher Nolan has always been a great visual storyteller. His use of IMAX and practical effects has made him a household name, and one of the more marketable filmmakers in the 21st century. With Oppenheimer, he created one of his greatest works and made committee meetings and physics lectures into an exciting 3-hour story of one of the most significant events in world history.
This isn’t just the story of the atomic bomb, it’s about the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the theoretical physicist put in charge of the Manhattan Project. It’s about his life leading up to his appointment, as well as the making of the bomb and his efforts, post-war, to halt nuclear proliferation that Oppenheimer feared could end life on Earth.
Finding the right actor to play Oppenheimer was probably the most important decision. Giving the role to Irish actor Cillian Murphy was about as perfect casting as possible. Murphy, who deservedly won his first Academy Award for the role, brought a real authority to his performance. He’s a confident scientist when he needs to be, a sharp political activist, and a wounded man when confronted with the mistakes and failures he lives with. Much of the film is centered on three main relationships in Oppenheimer’s life. His relationship with the government, his relationship with the women in his life, and with science.
Science seems to be the only thing in Oppenheimer’s life that he understands. His relationship with his wife and his lover Jean Tatlock is complicated and messy. With the government, he feels used and unappreciated. He’s a tool for a country at war, and he’s easily brushed aside when his allegiances are no longer palatable for those in power. There isn’t a bad performance anywhere in sight. Emily Blunt and Florence Pugh play his wife and lover respectively. Both women do a terrific job of playing the two sides of Oppenhiemer’s personal desires. The cast of scientists all feel like honest portrayals of the men and women who built the atomic bomb. Even character actors like Jason Clarke does a stunning job as Roger Robb, the partisan prosecutor who spends much of the film grilling Oppenheimer about communist associations in his past.
Oppenheimer’s best performances belong to the two men at the center of the story. One is, of course, Cillian Murphy who finally steps out from being a supporting character in many of Nolan’s films, and shines in the spotlight. The other is Robert Downey Jr., whose turn as Senator Lewis Strauss, is the film’s great villain. Downey plays him as a bitter insecure man who takes offense wherever he can find it. Like Murphy, Downey deserved his first Oscar for his performance. The two men are at odds throughout the movie and it provides a great conflict and asks questions about the morality of everything they’ve done together.
While the actors bring their characters to life, it’s Nolan who makes the movie a visual masterpiece. It’s arguably his best work. There is a lot of creativity on display here, from the stylistic color choices to the marvelous effects on display during the Trinity test sequence. Nolan once again worked with cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema to bring the IMAX images to life. Like most Nolan movies this is a film begging to be seen on the biggest screen, which is quite a feat when so much of it is filmed in committee rooms and laboratories. Hardly the beaches of Dunkirk or the streets of Chicago dressed up as Gotham City, but visually stunning all the same.
Nolan also never shies away from presenting us with difficult questions. He explores the morality of the bomb first and foremost. Murphy’s performance stands out here, Oppenheimer is constantly at odds with what he’s built. Even while building it he worries that it will be far more dangerous, but finds ways to justify its creation. It explores loyalty in the age of McCarthy. It’s not afraid to show how the paranoia towards communism took us to the brink of destruction.
I don’t think what made this such a great film was that it had exciting practical effects, great cinematography, and outstanding acting. However, those things helped. What made this one of the best films of last year was that it created a time and place in history where, in a flash, everything changed. It put one man at the center of a significant moment and didn’t make him a hero, but rather show him as the complicated human that he was.