If not for the atomic bomb, I might not be here. My father came of age during World War II. He trained to be a pilot in 1945, and even after Hitler shot himself in his Berlin bunker, the common wisdom was that a war was still on, that Japan would never surrender. The common wisdom was that it would take around a million U.S. service members to successfully invade Japan, my father being one of them. The common wisdom was that the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved lives in the long run. It seems to have saved my father’s life.

And yet. The United States, my country, is the only country to use nuclear weapons in combat. So far. It’s bad enough to know that the bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people. It’s worse knowing the details. In Hiroshima, the bomb detonated directly over the Shima Surgical Clinic. Over ninety percent of Hiroshima’s doctors and nurses were killed. A person sitting on the stone steps of Sumitomo Bank was vaporized, and their shadow was burned into the stone. Immerse yourself too deeply in the details and the horror becomes overwhelming.*

The atomic bomb began as a way to end a war. It might also end life as we know it on this planet. The wrong conflict, the wrong circumstances, the wrong leaders, and it ends with silence. Shadows burned into stone. J. Robert Oppenheimer knew this. He understood this paradox well before Hiroshima, and still he spearheaded the development of nuclear weaponry. His story is one of complexity and culpability, and it’s the subject of Christopher Nolan’s biopic Oppenheimer.

Nolan’s films like to play with time – how the characters perceive it, how the audience perceives it, and how a decision made hastily in the past can have enormous consequences in the future. This film is no different. Nolan mostly focuses on two eras, the timeline leading up to the 1945 Trinity test, and a 1954 government investigation regarding Oppenheimer’s security clearance.

In the first timeline, Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) is a young man in a hurry. He’s hurrying to become a major force in the young field of theoretical physics. His encounters with giants like Niels Bohr (Kenneth Branagh) feel less like mentorship and more like a meeting of colleagues. Oppenheimer builds a name for himself, heedlessly leaps into a relationship with the fiery and doomed Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh), then heedlessly leaps into another relationship and soon to be marriage with the already married Kitty Puening (Emily Blunt).

Oppenheimer is also Jewish, and he’s painfully aware of the implacable tide of the Nazi march across Europe. There are whispers of German scientists working on a super weapon, a bomb that could irrevocably turn the tide of the war. Oppenheimer knows this, and when General Leslie Groves (Matt Damon) asks him to spearhead the development of an American bomb, he leaps at the chance.

In the second timeline, it’s 1954 and Oppenheimer is in the midst of the Red Scare. He assumed that his brilliance would allow him to get away with anything, including past meetings he had regarding the Communist Party. He’s wrong about that, wrong about a great many things, including the lengths that a canny political operator named Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.) will go to obliterate him.

It’s too early for me to say if Oppenheimer is Christopher Nolan’s best film, though I do think he’s been building to this for a while. He’s hidden a thriller inside of a biopic. Those thrills mostly come from scenes of people in rooms talking in front of incomprehensible equations. Within their conversations, they grapple with the morality of the bomb, and within that Oppenheimer grapples with his impulsive nature. There are so many concepts and ethical dilemmas bursting from the film that, even with a three hour runtime, it doesn’t feel quite long enough. Scenes often move at a breakneck pace, and if the characters weren’t dealing with the Manhattan Project, you’d swear you’re watching a romantic comedy from the 1940s.

Remember earlier I mentioned most of the thrills come from conversation? The exception to that is Nolan’s masterful sequence of the Trinity explosion. Part of what makes it so special is Nolan’s insistence on using practical effects.** The way it’s shot, edited, paced creates a mixture of awe and terrible dread. We’re with Oppenheimer at the awful birth of the atomic age, and we can feel the power that’s been unleashed.

Back in the day, Great Man biopics were hugely popular. These men (and they were almost always white men), would fearlessly stride through the movie, bending history to their will. I think Christopher Nolan was aware of this with his screenplay, since he’s gone to considerable lengths to contrast Oppenheimer’s virtues with his flaws. For every time we see his brilliance at project management or physics, we also see his carelessness, womanizing, and egotism. We also see him struggling with his legacy as the father of the atomic age. At times he’s a true believer, one who thinks the bomb ought to be used against Japan to “save lives.” There’s also moments of magical realism, where Oppenheimer is confronted with the victims and knows nuclear proliferation ends in a death spiral. Nolan never portrays him as either a virtuous hero or a conniving monster. He’s a conundrum wrapped in the skin of a human being.

It bears mentioning that, just like every other Christopher Nolan film, there are moments of genuine comedy amidst the sturm und drang. It’s gallows humor, to be sure. I particularly liked a monstrous sequence where American officials are picking possible bombing targets. One of them blithely mentions that Kyoto needs to not be bombed since he and his wife had a lovely honeymoon there. If there’s any kind of comic relief here, it’s Matt Damon as the harried Leslie Groves. Damon is always good, and while his performance might not be the awards darling, he’s quietly hilarious as a no-nonsense officer wondering if the bomb might accidentally ignite the planet’s atmosphere.

Like the majority of Nolan’s films, the cast of Oppenheimer is ridiculously stacked. I liked Emily Blunt’s Kitty, her despair that her husband rarely listens to her and her vindication when he does.*** Florence Pugh is also excellent as the mercurial Jean Tatlock, an atomic bomb in human form. Jason Clarke does typically strong work as the prosecutorial Roger Robb, a man comfortable annihilating Oppenheimer’s reputation in the name of national security.

The first and second among equals in the cast are Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr. Murphy has worked with Nolan before, but this is the first time he’s had a leading role. His cadaverous Oppenheimer is brilliant, indecisive, a whiz at running the Manhattan Project and a disaster as a husband and father. He’s also cursed with self-awareness, and comments on his ability to get away with actions that would have short-circuited others. His opposite number is Robert Downey Jr as Lewis Strauss, a man who pathetically reminds nearly everyone he comes into contact with that he’s a physicist, too. There’s a kind of Mozart/Salieri relationship between them. Downey does a masterful job portraying the simmering jealousy and resentment that drives Strauss. I’ve never seen Downey play someone so petty, so small, in a performance that’s so free of vanity. He and Murphy do such strong work that it doesn’t matter if they’re nominated for Oscars or not. Their work will endure beyond awards season. 

Like it or not, J. Robert Oppenheimer is one of the most important people in human history. His actions led to the atomic bomb, and his subsequent actions were an attempt to atone for it. Oppenheimer is a film of towering brilliance and fearsome power. It focuses on a man who met the moment, and the same man may have doomed us all.

 

*I learned that Little Boy, the bomb detonated over Hiroshima, was considered to be inefficient. Only 1.7 percent of the material contained within the bomb fissioned. This information did not make me feel better.

**No, Christopher Nolan didn’t detonate a nuke. Here’s how he did it.

***Pro tip – listen to your spouse.



Tim Brennan
Tim has been alarmingly enthusiastic about movies ever since childhood. He grew up in Boulder and, foolishly, left Colorado to study Communications in Washington State. Making matters worse, he moved to Connecticut after meeting his too-good-for-him wife. Drawn by the Rockies and a mild climate, he triumphantly returned and settled down back in Boulder County. He's written numerous screenplays, loves hiking, and embarrassed himself in front of Samuel L. Jackson. True story.  
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