Christopher Nolan has made some of my favorite movies of all time. But every filmmaker has weaknesses, and over the years Nolan’s have crystallized. The tradeoff for his dedication to precision and innovation can sometimes result in a film that feels cold (The Dark Knight Rises) or even gimmicky (Tenet). His characters often serve as ideas, and his films live or die on the success of their respective tricks, such as the unexpected manipulation of time or memory. Suffice it to say that a biopic feels like the last thing that makes sense for a filmmaker like Nolan. They’re often predictable and formulaic, entirely hinging on the success of breathing life into a historical figure.
Oppenheimer not only rises to meet the challenge but surpasses it. With this film, Nolan succeeds by creating one of the most riveting biopics ever made while remaining true to his filmmaking sensibilities.
Oppenheimer isn’t entirely gimmick-free, employing a fairly simple framing device: half of the film, labeled “fission,” is a retrospective of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s (Cillian Murphy) life, unveiled through a panel reviewing a challenge to his security clearance. This half of the film focuses on his assembly of the team that builds the world’s first atomic bomb, which is powered by fission. “Fusion,” the other half of the film, focuses on politician Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.) and the senate confirmation hearing to approve his appointment to Eisenhower’s cabinet. This section of the film, rendered in black and white, exposes the fallout from Oppenheimer’s work on the atomic bomb as the U.S. creates an even deadlier weapon: the hydrogen bomb (powered by fusion).
With Oppenheimer, Nolan creates his most clearly-defined and empathetic characters yet, and a nomination for both Murphy and Downey Jr. seems inevitable. Downey inhabits the flashier character and is probably the likelier of the two to land a nomination, but Murphy’s chameleon-like performances power the movie. In one scene he’s young and emotionally disturbed, in another he’s old and regretful, and everything else in between. It’s what you’d both need and expect from a man so contradictory as to spreadhead the creation of a weapon that killed more than 100,000 people and call himself a pacifist.
The unsurprising part of Oppenheimer’s success is in its technique. It’s a three-hour film that passes in a blur, maintaining an almost unrelenting sense of suspense and dread as it barrels towards an inevitable and pre-determined conclusion. The effect is at times disorienting, particularly as scientist names are bandied about one after the other with little context, and the pieces of the film fall in a non-linear order. But visual flourishes enhance what is largely a movie about people talking, and the score from Ludwig Göransson is both propulsive and unrelenting.
It’s possible there’s also a subtextual meaning behind the twin halves of the film, ‘fission’ and ‘fusion,’ that are meant to provide perspective on the scientific community around Oppenheimer. The politics and new territory of the government recruiting and working with scientists as though they were soldiers is a key focal point of the film. ‘Fission,’ the act of splitting atoms apart, shows us a community around Oppenheimer that is deeply divided on its relationship with the U.S government.
The assembly of the country’s greatest scientific minds starts with a frenetic energy, with just about every actor you’ve seen making an appearance as Oppenheimer rounds up his proverbial Seven Samurai. But as the project grows closer to completion, the community starts to fracture, with some questioning the moral implications of what they’re creating, particularly given that Germany is already defeated before the weapon is ready. It’s easy to forget, but Oppenheimer and his colleagues are also dealing with the more standard politics of the time, such as unionization and communism, and all of these competing ideologies yield division, both within Oppenheimer and his team of geniuses. Fusion, meanwhile, sees most of the same community rally and coalesce in intervening years as they come to terms with their part in the war.
It’s been a lean year for stellar films, but Oppenheimer is an early contender for awards season buzz. Seek it out on the biggest, loudest screen you can find.