Oppenheimer (2023) Review

I dismissed the potential success of this film for its subject matter and approach the day Nolan confirmed he was working on a biopic about the father of the atomic bomb and the events that lead to its construction, detonation, and implementation. Despite what people have come to believe, World War II films have lost their luster, due in part by their over saturation in the media landscape and how often they’re used to garner attention that’s neither relevant nor applicable to our current time and place.

Filmmakers have essentially been scraping at the bottom of the barrel to find any story that’s associated with World War II and have failed miserably to capture our attention for more than a decade as a result. Regardless of Nolan’s success with DUNKIRK, this was my mindset going into the theater, anxious to see if my skepticism was either justified or unwarranted. But when the film began at the sound of that 70mm projector, Nolan presented me with his most ambitious and provocative film since INTERSTELLAR. What I saw on that screen that night wasn’t just an achievement, but a triumph in filmmaking unlike anything I’ve ever seen before or since.

Nothing is wasted in this sprawling three hour epic. Its stacked cast is used to its fullest extent and its pacing never feels too encumbering for the average viewer to grasp. Although it is a movie about guys talking in a bunch of rooms, the way it’s edited and structured leaves you with this uneased haste to see if Oppenheimer can complete the Manhattan Project before Nazi Germany as he struggles against colleagues and rivals who seek to use this opportunity for their own benefit. This is pretty typical in your run-of-the-mill biopic, but that’s only the first half of it. The other half is a gripping thriller that delves deep into the social, political, philosophical, and psychological ramifications a weapon like the atom bomb had on our society during the early, tumultuous days of the Cold War.

Nothing could’ve prepared us for what that meant to humanity, nor could any individual fully comprehend the cosmic, existential horrors it would have on our planet. But Oppenheimer did. He understood what the bomb meant for humanity and he carried that heavy burden throughout his life, despite being undermined and attacked by the same country he was trying to save from further slaughter.

Yet the tragedy of Oppenheimer is more than just seeing him be betrayed by his friends and country. It’s him realizing that he now has the blood of humanity on his hands and he grapples with that fact while he tries to justify that his actions were done in the name of freedom and peace. But murder is only in the name of the murderer, and Oppenheimer understood that. It’s not hard to see how much of an impact it had on him and Cillian Murphy conveyed that emotional turmoil brilliantly.

In what can only be described as a career best, Murphy’s performance shines brightly in the film’s foreboding world. His eyes alone emit the deep existential sorrow a person of Oppenheimer’s caliber contended with while the film’s intense sound design complements Murphy’s performance and thrusts us into Oppenheimer’s perspective. It seems as though Murphy and Nolan were biding each other’s time to cash in on the day their 20 year long friendship would culminate in spectacular fashion. Making this film all the more special.

Nolan doesn’t pull any punches either, particularly in the script. The film is adamant in its condemnation on America’s paradoxical motivations for creating the Atom Bomb, as well as the powers that be who sought to proliferate and exacerbate the Atomic Crisis that came later. Even so, the film could also be looked at as a meditation on Nolan’s influence on the current Hollywood landscape.

Like Oppenheimer, Nolan ushered in a new, transformative era when he rebooted the Batman franchise to great acclaim in 2005. The success of BATMAN BEGINS and THE DARK KNIGHT laid the groundwork for the reboot genre to thrive, and as such, he inadvertently opened Pandora’s Box for subsequent films to follow suit. Hollywood has been addicted to the reboot for almost 20 years to the detriment of original stories and filmmaking, with Nolan himself stating on numerous occasions his disdain for streaming and Hollywood’s insistent favoritism of content over art. In this way, not only is this film his most poetic but also his most personal, and it’s about as close we’re going to get to an apology on his part.

As for the film’s climactic attraction, however, a few things stood out to me when I sat in the theater. When the Trinity Test lit up that cold, dark room for more than a minute, I took the opportunity to quickly look at the audience’s reaction. Few people smiled, few people were awed, most were silent. The silence both in the film and in the theater illustrated to me the enormous tasks our species is able to accomplish when we set our minds on a common cause. Be it to help each other or kill each other, our capacity to work together has been the backbone of our success for half a million years, but the question remains just as it did 80 years ago - can we trust ourselves to continue together in spite of our meaningless differences? Unfortunately, however, that remains to be seen.

4/5