The existential threat posed by the atomic bomb has always felt like an abstract concept to me. Being born after the bubbling conceptualising of it during WWII, and its position as the final safeguard during the Cold War, I haven’t really considered that kind of devastation as something real. Or, at least, beyond the perplexing optimism of the time that, should one of these bombs go off, the public would be perfectly fine if they just hid under a table with their arms over their heads. Part of my struggle with dealing with media in the context with which it was made (usually when dealing with anything made pre-1995) extends beyond just media and even for actual shit that has happened, and could very well happen again. And yet, for the longest time, I’ve always treated it as something historical, something academic, rather than anything concrete.
Watching this film changed that for me. Big time.
Christopher Nolan’s expected labyrinthine storytelling looks at the life and career of the titular physicist at three stages of his life: Studying physics in university laboratories around the world, heading the Manhattan Project that would lead to the creation of the H-bomb, and both the literal and political fallout of its use. The narrative is as dense as a collapsing star as it digs into Oppenheimer’s personal baggage, from his personal ego as one of the smartest men in the room at any given time, to his copious womanising, to his determination to beat Hitler to the creation of the bomb, to… well, harrowing depictions of how the weight of that creation bore down into his resolve.
Every single actor in this cast does fantastically with the material, making for the ideal kind of ensemble piece where everyone is performing at such a high level that no-one really upstages anyone else, but Cillian Murphy’s turn as Oppenheimer still manages to stick out as something this production needed. In a film that tries to deal with Oppenheimer, his flaws, and his ultimate place in the history books, as even-handedly as possible for someone so submerged in moral ambiguity (to the point of this making the greyer questionings in films like The Dark Knight look rather elementary by comparison), Murphy manages to sell all of it and genuinely get across that Oppenheimer was such a complicated man that it would take a film at least three hours to do justice.
And speaking of the run time, credit is absolutely due for how well this film’s pacing works in keeping my ADHD-riddled arse occupied for its entirety. The first half deals in a lot of build-up for the much larger implications later, right down to a quite ingenious bit of symbolism involving an apple injected with cyanide. Now, the reason for that prop in-context is… kind of bizarre all on its own, but as a thematic instrument, it’s kind of beautiful. An item so intrinsically linked to the field of physics, as part of the legend behind Isaac Newton discovering the mechanics of gravity, but turned into something that can kill; the poisoned fruit of physic’s labour, if you will.
From there, as it keeps building and building the tension (aided in no small part by Ludwig Gรถransson’s ominous and clicking soundtrack, which sounds like it was made at least partly out of the sound of Geiger counters going off), we reach the scene where the Trinity test finally takes place… and it all stops being so theoretical. The event that Oppenheimer himself is shown claiming wasn’t even possible because the numbers didn’t add up, not only being very possible but shining brightly in his face with its sheer possibility. Nolan’s reliance on practical effects makes that scene, presented in utter silence to emphasise the force of the explosion itself, one of the most haunting I can recall seeing in a film. I don’t just mean as a review subject, but ever. There’s just something about that moment, presented in as realistic a fashion as possible without just supplying their own nuke, that really bit into my pacifist tendencies. To call it confronting would be an understatement.
And in the aftermath, the film takes on the tone of a political thriller as it delves into the possibility of this atomic discovery getting into the hands of the Nazis or the Soviets, along with a lot of McCarthyist questionings about who would leak such information, and then we get into Oppenheimer’s own hearings. This is where the true murkiness of the film and its approach to the story really gets to the good stuff, as we essentially watch the U.S. government and military look at a man who gave them the most powerful weapon in their arsenal… and then proceed to do everything conceivable to destroy his reputation once he starts saying that, y’know what, maybe we shouldn’t be so casual about something that could potentially destroy everything.
While the on-screen presentation of Oppenheimer’s famous quoting of the Bhagavad Gita (“I am now become Death, destroyers of worlds”) hits an odd note, given that it is introduced during a sex scene between Oppenheimer and Florence Pugh’s Jean Tatlock, the way it is used as a defining part of the film’s main message still rings true. The atomic bomb may not have caused the atmosphere-igniting reaction that physicists feared it might before the first one went off, and there’s an argument to be made that the quote itself was taken out of context to be used to describe the force of atomic power in the first place… but there’s still truth to it. Out of a desire to learn more about the makings of the universe, at a time when such studies in the U.S. were practically nonexistent, Oppenheimer helped pioneer one of the darkest avenues for that area of study. An avenue that is now a bona fide option for those engaged in war or even just ‘foreign policy’ at large. Before Oppenheimer, we didn’t live in a world where that was the case. And now we do. We still do.
This is likely to be one of the most confronting films I’ll see in 2023. I felt physical chills throughout most of this, as the effect created by Nolan’s spellbinding presentation of the story really dug into my nerves and refused to let go for the full three hours. It’s the kind of dark spectacle that works best in the context of the physical cinema, where the disquieting power of the production and the communal experience of engaging with it is brought to full power in that environment. And judging by how busy the screenings for this film have been, to the point where (for the first time in seven years) I got turned away from my first attempt to see it because all the sessions were booked up, it looks like the effect has well and truly taken hold. Even beyond the marketing blitz of Barbenheimer, this is the kind of heady and intricate fare that doesn’t seem like that big of an audience draw on the surface, but absolutely is when you get into the nitty-gritty of it. In short, it’s another Christopher Nolan movie, and one of his best in recent memory.
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