Oppenheimer (2023)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Oppenheimer (2023) – C. Nolan

I had a very ambivalent response to Oppenheimer, both the man as presented (by Cillian Murphy) and the movie as a whole.  I suspect director Christopher Nolan intended the former response but perhaps not the latter. There is a lot to chew on here but the complicated flashback/flashforward structure (sometimes but not always signaled by a change from colour to B&W) doesn’t make things easier. Early in the film, it is difficult to grasp the numerous characters and the cursory but seemingly deep discussion of physics. This doesn’t necessarily become easier as the film unfolds and we meet Oppie’s allies (General Matt Damon) and antagonists (Edward Teller played by Benny Safdie).  Let’s break down my issues with the film.  First, like it or not, this is a bio-pic and Nolan doesn’t limit himself to the pivotal years of the Manhattan Project but includes formative events before and after the development of the A-bomb.  Fair enough. However, when the film shifts gears to mostly focus on Oppenheimer’s fight to keep his security clearance during the time of the McCarthy red scare along with the influence of Robert Downey Jr’s Lewis Strauss on that hearing (and Oppenheimer’s subsequent influence on Strauss’s hearing to become Commerce Secretary), the film begins to feel overlong and it loses some of its focus.  I recognize that these later scenes do allow Nolan to interrogate whether Oppenheimer felt regret for being so actively involved in an invention that was used to kill 100s of 1000s of innocent Japanese citizens, but as a vehicle for that opportunity to make this point, it feels rather indirect.  Which brings me to the main source of my ambivalence. I understand that Nolan needed to tell this story authentically and in context, so it isn’t surprising that he presents Oppenheimer as experiencing a felt moral imperative to build the bomb before Germany (or the Soviets?) did the same – but the lengthy applause after the atomic test at Los Alamos seems to go on just a bit too long.  Did Nolan do this on purpose to highlight the convergence of American patriotism and scientific satisfaction?  Watching the film with my Japanese spouse may have intensified my discomfort at this cheering for a weapon of mass destruction.  Later when Oppenheimer is announcing the “successful” dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Nolan does introduce some hints that this can’t be seen as positively as it is being recounted – Oppenheimer seems frantic, the American flag-waving audience seems to suddenly contain people who may be crying rather than laughing -- but it is all rather difficult to discern.  Is this a manifestation of Oppenheimer’s guilty conscience? To its credit, the film raises all the old defenses for dropping the bomb (it ended the war sooner and saved lives) and then raises the counter-arguments later (the Japanese were ready to surrender already, many more lives were lost in horrible ways).  Of course, this is a work of entertainment rather than something more serious and Nolan and his team manage to keep things moving at a very rapid pace for much of the film’s 170-minute run-time.  Brief visual interludes/special effects help to punctuate events and give the film visual variety. The recreation of the time and place feels apt, something one can expect from a big-budget Hollywood film.  But despite the presence of Florence Pugh and Emily Blunt as Oppenheimer’s love interests, the film fails the famous Bechdel test (as they do not talk to each other nor exist independently as characters beyond their relationships with Oppenheimer – plus Pugh spends most of her screentime nude). Whether all of the various plot threads are needed or not is something one could spend hours debating – and I guess that is one thing the film does have going for it: it provides the opportunity for discussion and debate about one of the most distressing contributions of science to modern life that has had lasting implications for geopolitics and life today and over the past 80 years.