Leaving the theater after a Christopher Nolan film often feels like stepping back on the planet after a long period in another dimension. His movies have been the best visual spectacles in the industry since the early 2000s, and he is known for shooting his big-budget action sequences in IMAX, creating the clearest and most immersive experience possible. His new film, OPPENHEIMER, is hardly an exception, but there is a key difference: the movie is a dialogue-driven character drama with only brief glimpses of spectacle throughout its three hour runtime. Yet, OPPENHEIMER sets a precedence as being the first movie in history to be filmed completely with 70mm IMAX cameras. How could this possibly compare to his other big-budget blockbusters?
Not only does OPPENHEIMER fit right in with Nolan’s best work, but it is the most emotionally complex work of his career, leaving the audience shell shocked from the fallout of its moral implications. The ambitious vision of films like Inception and Tenet can still be found, but the truly remarkable thing about this biopic is how deep it dives into the psyche of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy), the man who is credited with creating the atomic bomb. By the end of the movie, the audience knows the ins-and-outs of the complex man that Oppenheimer was, and also feels the weight of his crushing moral dilemma — one that literally puts the fate of the world in his hands. Imagining what I would have done in his shoes is hard to fathom, yet that’s exactly what Nolan does with OPPENHEIMER: places the audience in his position and asks them what they would do during one of the most difficult decisions in human history.
In true Nolan fashion, the story of OPPENHEIMER is told in a non-linear fashion, starting at a renewal hearing for Oppenheimer’s security clearance, and both flashing back to the important events of his rocky career, while also flashing forward to the confirmation hearing of Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.). Immediately striking to the audience is how Nolan shoots the different timelines he creates: all of the events told from Oppenheimer’s perspective are in color and the events told from Strauss’ perspective are in black-and-white. Sometimes viewers even see the same events twice — one from each perspective — showing the importance of both characters in the story that depicts the creation of the deadliest weapon in human history.
From the very first frame to the very last, two things are evident: first, that Christopher Nolan has not lost his touch in the slightest as a director, with the technical aspects of OPPENHEIMER being spot-on. The visuals from cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema are staggering, both during the sweeping wide shots of Los Alamos (the site in New Mexico where Oppenheimer conducted the Manhattan Project) and during quiet moments of intimacy and emotion. Editor Jennifer Lame also does an incredible job of keeping up with Nolan’s complex non-linear storytelling — making a potentially confusing story full of jargon into an accessible film that anyone can understand and enjoy. The real standout here from a technicality standpoint is Ludwig Göransson’s score, which creates an atmosphere of tension and dread even when there is nothing on-screen to indicate any immediate threat. Viewers feel guilt and paranoia mainly because of Nolan’s script, but the score is constantly present to reflect the consequences of Oppenheimer’s scientific exploration.
OPPENHEIMER also contains some of the best performances in a Nolan film to date, including a gargantuan A-list cast full of Oscar winners, Nolan-film veterans and new phenoms. However, even with the cast full of heavy hitters like Matt Damon, Florence Pugh, Kenneth Branagh, and many more, the film is entirely stolen by two performances: Cillian Murphy as Oppenheimer and Robert Downey Jr. as Strauss. Downey gives a performance that cannot be compared to any of his previous work, playing a smart and slimy rising politician that crosses paths with Oppenheimer many times throughout his life and career. Strauss is a fascinating political foil to Oppenheimer, and gives the film a different perspective that makes the moral dilemma of the story even more pressing.
Despite Downey’s excellence, no performance will ever compare to Murphy, who delivers the best performance in a wide released film so far this year. Murphy disappears into Oppenheimer — even Peaky Blinders fans will forget who they’re watching — and his eyes carry the weight of the world in a more harrowing manner than any other actor would have been able to reach. If Murphy wasn’t absolutely perfect, then this three hour-long epic about one man’s moral conscience would have been boring and confused — luckily, he was more than up to the task.
It is almost a shame that Nolan typically releases his films early in the year, because OPPENHEIMER is ripe for awards’ contention with all of the wonderful work mentioned above. Hollywood still has half a year to forget that this film (along with Barbie) even existed. However, if there is one thing that absolutely needs an Oscar nomination here, it would be the mesmerizing sound design, which puts the audience on the ground during the atomic bomb Trinity test explosion. If you choose to see OPPENHEIMER in IMAX, the sound is absolutely deafening in the best way possible, jarring the whole crowd out of their seats. The excellent sound design also enhances scenes where Oppenheimer’s guilt begins to set in near the end of the film — the mix interpolates the sound of feet stomping with the sound of segmenting atoms, and even sometimes adds screams, creating dread when imagining the real effect of creating the biggest bomb in the world.
OPPENHEIMER is a true Nolan movie in every sense — it is a masterpiece in its own right, but it also contains some of the storytelling pitfalls that hold back some of his past work. The main decision that bothered me was the lack of characterization for all of the female characters in the film. Two incredible actresses are in this film as two people who proved to be very important to Oppenheimer’s personal life and career: Florence Pugh as Jean Tatlock and Emily Blunt as Kitty Oppenheimer.
Tatlock was a huge part of Oppenheimer’s life — he named the Trinity test after her favorite poem, went out of his way to visit her when she needed him, and her affiliation with the Communist Party put his security clearance from the US government at risk. But for some reason, we only get three to four scenes with Pugh (two of which she has no clothes on), which causes the audience to have little emotional investment in her, even though we are constantly reminded of her impact. The same applies to Emily Blunt’s character Kitty — she is Oppenheimer’s wife, and yet we only get an insight into her feelings near the end of the film. Before that we receive no character development, giving a character that holds a large place in this story nothing to hold onto. Unfortunately, this flaw has been a distraction in multiple other Nolan films before this (Tenet, The Prestige, all three films in The Dark Knight Trilogy), which makes me wonder whether he even knows how to write a solid female character.
But also similar to Nolan’s previous films, this flaw does little to deter the fact that OPPENHEIMER is a monumental achievement in filmmaking. It is almost unthinkable that a three hour biopic/character drama about the moral implications of war has made over 150 million dollars worldwide in its first week, but Nolan seems to have a magic touch that elevates even the most literary of material into big-budget blockbuster filmmaking. In an environment where sequels and reboots are the primary money-makers, a movie like OPPENHEIMER making money is a godsend for passionate, original filmmakers. The fact that it also happens to be an incredible and unique film is icing on the cake, and is why Nolan has been lauded as one of the greatest working directors for years now.
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