This weekend saw the nationwide debut of possibly the most-anticipated film of the past decade, director Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, a cinematic biography of the man considered the father of the atomic bomb. Like many of Nolan’s films, Oppenheimer is a work of technical brilliance, but Nolan marries that technical genius to a gripping story, well told and rich with both emotional and moral depth, brought to life by strong performances from a host of gifted actors.
Oppenheimer rises above blockbuster status and becomes a cinematic masterpiece, centered around that most American of virtues and vices: ambition. The only blemish on this otherwise impeccable film is the needlessly graphic nature of its sexual material.
As many know, Oppenheimer tells the story of theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project. In Nolan’s hands, though, the creation of the atomic bomb is but one chapter in a much longer story of remorse, recklessness, the horrors of the modern age, and the triumphs and dangers of ambition. Irish actor Cillian Murphy (a frequent Nolan collaborator) portrays with poignancy Oppenheimer’s internal war, as fiery as the bomb he creates — raw ambition vying for supremacy against remorse for the actions that ambition has wrought.
Oppenheimer’s ambition-and-remorse cycle isn’t relegated to the bomb. Before being approached about the Manhattan Project, the scientist flirts with communism and whips up students and colleagues into a frenzy in efforts to unionize; when he realizes what a threat his left-wing dalliances pose to his career, he regrets them. Before marrying Kitty, Oppenheimer has an affair with a student named Jean Tatlock (played by Florence Pugh) and is remorseful both when their relationship ends and when he returns to that affair after his marriage; his return to the affair (which is unnecessarily graphic, in a manner both unlike and unbecoming of Nolan) results in Tatlock’s death, said to be by suicide but implied to be murder, for which Oppenheimer is — you guessed it, remorseful.
The other side of Oppenheimer’s ambition-resulting-in-remorse coin is the political machinator Lewis Strauss, portrayed by Robert Downey Jr. with brilliantly uncharacteristic malice and cunning. Oppenheimer’s blind ambition drives him to wild successes he later regrets, while Strauss yearns for the fulfillment of his ambition. Oppenheimer only stops after achieving success to ask whether he has, in fact, realized an untold horror, while Strauss is willing to do awful, unscrupulous things to realize his own goals.
A Perfectly Casted Film
Nolan assembles a wide and talented cast to populate this almost-Shakespearean narrative. Emily Blunt does well as Oppenheimer’s unhappy, alcoholic wife, but she particularly shines when recollecting her husband’s infidelity, locking eyes with an imagined Tatlock straddling Oppenheimer during a hearing, her face a contorted mess of horror, hurt, and rage. Florence Pugh also performs admirably as Tatlock, balancing offhanded callousness against explosive passion. Matt Damon turns in a top-notch performance as Col. Leslie Groves, another ambitious figure who pushes Oppenheimer and his team to deliver the world’s deadliest weapon as quickly as possible while simultaneously hampering their success with all manner of security measures. Josh Hartnett embodies the role of Ernest Lawrence, Oppenheimer’s friend and counselor and the moral center of the film. Veteran thespian Kenneth Branagh portrays gravitas as the manifestation of cautionary wisdom in the person of legendary scientist Niels Bohr. (READ MORE: Whither Ukraine? Part Two)
The film is cast perfectly, and even those in the most minor roles perform well, but one of the strongest performances comes from Gary Oldman. Although practically unrecognizable and only onscreen for perhaps less than five minutes, Oldman’s President Harry S. Truman is terrifying. When Oppenheimer voices his fear that he has blood on his hands, Truman claims that awful glory for himself: “You think anyone in Hiroshima or Nagasaki gives a shit who built the bomb? You didn’t drop the bomb — I did. Hiroshima isn’t about you.”
Oppenheimer Provides a Lesson in Ambition
Truman serves as a warning, not just to Oppenheimer but to Oppenheimer’s audience: He is ambition unbound by scruples or morals. Even the scheming Strauss recognizes that he must keep up appearances, saying that “power stays in the shadows” and one must only reveal one’s abuses of power if he is assured of success. Truman disregards even this purely pragmatic wisdom, seizing for himself the means to destroy the world and, in his unbridled hubris, using it.
Nolan himself was ambitious in making Oppenheimer, and it appears to have paid off. From shooting the film in under two months to assembling such a stellar cast to creating his own real-life bomb (Nolan is famously and admirably devoted to practical effects over CGI), Nolan has more than earned his reputation as a master filmmaker. After all, the director of The Dark Knight has managed what few in Hollywood have: to consistently create films that are both quality cinema and absolute blockbusters. Many of those successes were distributed by Warner Bros., but after the studio prioritized streaming over cinemas, Nolan looked elsewhere for Oppenheimer. His success with Universal has proven that Nolan is a force in his own right, not reliant on partnerships with particular studios and their coffers and marketing teams. (READ MORE: Volodya & Vika)
With previous films, Nolan has crafted cerebral narratives that emphasize plot over emotional narrative, though he’s always managed to weave profound thinking throughout his work. The emotional maturity of Nolan’s films has grown over the years, with Inception, Interstellar, and Dunkirk standing out as progressive examples. With Oppenheimer, the ambition of Nolan’s technical genius has been fulfilled, resulting in a perfectly crafted cinematic experience worthy of being called a masterpiece — and perhaps worthy, too, of being called Nolan’s greatest film.