Christopher Nolan Turns the Life of J. Robert Oppenheimer Into Grand and Stirring Cinema 

Alci Rengifo

When certain directors reach the pinnacle of success there is the temptation to settle into a comfort zone where they repeat their same formulas. Then you have a case like Christopher Nolan, who decides to push even further and make a grand, bold gesture like “Oppenheimer.” Perhaps only Nolan could be given a $100 million budget to make what amounts to a stirring intellectual drama centered on questions of science, politics, the fate of the species and a great man’s personal battles, while generating the same amount of hype as his mega-budget blockbusters. The life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, certainly deserves a massive canvas. It straddles the key moments of 20th century American history, while raising questions that still haunt us. His shadow looms over the fact that we have the capacity to destroy ourselves. When we hear about the fear of the ongoing war in Ukraine having the potential of turning into a nuclear conflagration between the world powers, here is the seed of such a situation on one man’s chalkboard.

What first strikes about the film is the face of Cillian Murphy, who instantly captures that alluring, wide-eyed stare of Oppenheimer’s. We first meet him as a young physics prodigy always living in his head. He’s impulsive, acting out against a Cambridge professor by attempting to leave him a poisoned apple (a true anecdote). By the 1930s he’s a full professor at Berkeley, making a name for himself as a theorist of quantum mechanics and nuclear physics. The world outside is rapidly changing as well, with fascism on the march in Europe and the intellectual class attracted to radical leftist politics and Marxism. Oppenheimer contributes to the anti-fascist cause during the Spanish Civil War, becoming lovers with the radical Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh). He then settles down with the more focused though no less complicated Kitty (Emily Blunt). World War II then erupts and the U.S. is pulled in after the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor in 1941. Oppenheimer’s dabbling in certain political circles has to be put aside when he’s approached by Lt. General Leslie Groves (Matt Damon) to head the Manhattan Project, the military’s program to develop a nuclear weapon before the Germans. Instantly, Oppenheimer knows he wants to base the lab in a then sparse mesa in New Mexico named Los Alamos.

As cinema “Oppenheimer” is the kind of serious, epic biography that was nearly going extinct. Nolan conjures the bygone days of movies such as Oliver Stone’s “Nixon” or Spike Lee’s “Malcolm X.” These are massive projects that encompass a historical figure’s entire life, with enough room for the intimacies and ideas that formed the person, told with exhilarating visual creativity. Nolan’s particular style of filmmaking with grandiose photography by regular collaborator Hoyte Van Hoytema (who shot on 70mm IMAX stock), visceral music by Ludwig Göransson and practical visual effects is all here, but at the service of a story that’s more about psychological standoffs, battles of will and wit, raging egos and the ambitions of doing great things at high costs. It signals growth as well for the director, who has been building up to this moment with his famous brand of brainy entertainments. The obsession with scientific processes and details in “Inception” and the cryptic “Tenet,” not to mention the cosmic adventure “Interstellar,” which found eloquent metaphors in relativity, explain why Nolan would be attracted to Oppenheimer as a subject. He bases his screenplay on the biography “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer” by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, and it can feel like it gripped him so much he attempted to channel all 721 pages. 

“Oppenheimer” never feels like a dry recap of a subject’s life. Nolan goes for a truly imaginative, cinematically poetic experience. Oppenheimer’s thoughts, dreams and fears are evoked through images of crackling elements or swirling atoms. The literal implications of a calculation are imagined. When Oppenheimer meets with Albert Einstein (Toni Conti) to discuss a warning by Manhattan Project team member Edward Teller (Benny Safdie) that the resulting weapon could set off a chain reaction which might ignite the atmosphere, such a nightmarish image is presented on screen. The vast New Mexico desert is almost a metaphor for the immensity of what Oppenheimer and his team of scientists are attempting in this makeshift town, where Groves keeps a close eye and there’s always the threat someone will snoop into the group’s liberal tendencies. Oppenheimer does utter his famous “destroyer of worlds” quote from the Bhagavad Gita, while in bed with Tatlock when she finds a book of Sanskrit on his shelf. Like Steven Spielberg, Nolan admirably uses his clout to make the kind of project that a lesser known director would never get greenlit. Previous attempts at this story have been flops, such as the terrible 1989 film “Fat Man and Little Boy.” Only Jon H. Else’s superb 1981 Oscar-nominated documentary, “The Day After Trinity” deserves to be seen as prep for this opus. 

More than special effects, this is a film about ideas and being swept by historical currents. Oppenheimer’s world is one where people were seriously debating the merits of revolutionary socialism, while feeling the call to fight Nazism. Idealism was not a joke and to support a labor union meant potentially being tagged as a “commie.” Among the Los Alamos scientists, questions of formulas and calculations are as riveting as a crime thriller. And, what about the much hyped sequence where Nolan opted for practical effects to recreate the Trinity test? The hyper realism of the moment has a great effect because of its eeriness. It’s the closest a viewer will ever get to seeing what it must have actually been like to watch the world’s first nuclear device detonated. The sound design brilliantly sticks to authenticity, as the explosion itself occurs in silence, until the shock wave hits the witnesses with a trembling, ferocious roar. It never looks like a gargantuan CGI creation, but like something real and tangible. 

Nolan then turns the story into a moral crisis of mythical proportions. After Hiroshima is bombed and the device is confirmed to work, Oppenheimer gives what should be a rousing speech at Los Alamos. As he speaks the lens quivers and he imagines a nuclear blast consuming his audience. The scientist has accomplished much, but now he is at the service of the state. Fame instantly gives him the tag of an “American Prometheus,” but when he confesses to President Harry S. Truman (Gary Oldman) that he feels he has blood on his hands, the president dismisses him as a “crybaby.” Oppenheimer isn’t recast as a saint. Instead the material dives into the complications of the situation. Here is a highly intelligent man still caught off-guard by the cutthroat nature of politics, a lesson he learns even harder when he becomes the target of Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.), head of the Atomic Energy Commission, who years later orchestrates the smearing of Oppenheimer out of sheer, petty envy. Only Kitty sees the severity of the dangers ahead, but Oppenheimer is so trapped by his own self that he walks right into the fire. This final battle constitutes the film’s lengthy, intense third act.

“Oppenheimer” boasts a massive cast, with names like Kenneth Branagh, Rami Malek and Josh Hartnett playing excellent smaller roles. But the entire film truly belongs to Cillian Murphy, who is in nearly every scene and creates an Oppenheimer who says much with just his stares. He is a man living forever in his mind, though capable of leading a group and commanding a project. Flawed in his sexual escapades with someone like Tatlock, while lamenting he and Kitty are terrible parents, brilliant but tortured by having created a weapon of mass destruction, Murphy makes every element of the character come alive. Over the years he has played various roles in Nolan films, going back to his deranged Scarecrow in “Batman Begins,” but here he delivers something possibly awards-worthy. The iconic becomes terribly human. That Nolan achieves such dramatic depths with a movie competing with “Barbie” at the box office is in itself an achievement. “Oppenheimer” is three hours long, and some viewers may find the third act particularly taxing, but it may just call you back for another viewing. Nolan, typically a master of suspense, grips with a film that is about great minds put at the service of immense destruction. The story told in these frames is about a life lived but also about the consequences still hovering over us today.

“Oppenheimer” releases July 21 in theaters nationwide.