Oppenheimer review – Cillian Murphy’s finest hour | Little White Lies

Oppen­heimer review – Cil­lian Murphy’s finest hour

19 Jul 2023 / Released: 21 Jul 2023

Two women, one with short blonde hair and the other with dark hair, sitting in front of a yellow wall with lightning bolt shapes.
Two women, one with short blonde hair and the other with dark hair, sitting in front of a yellow wall with lightning bolt shapes.
4

Anticipation.

What will Nolan do next after the clever if underwhelming Tenet?

4

Enjoyment.

There's a whole lotta movie here, though it’s Murphy who deserves the sashes and garlands.

5

In Retrospect.

A juggernaut historical biopic that you'll want to see again asap, even if it doesn’t all work on the first sweep.

This com­bustible and relent­less­ly-paced biog­ra­phy of the father of the the atom­ic bomb” is a con­tender for Christo­pher Nolan’s best film.

There’s some­thing very mov­ing about watch­ing a film and being able to see dust motes float in the air. Or the red­dened, mot­tled skin on the back of an actor’s neck. Or the abra­sive tex­tures of wood and fab­ric. Or drops of water caus­ing minute rip­ples once they descend into a pond – a visu­al motif that receives its fiery ana­log at the slow burn cli­max of this grandiose new film from Christo­pher Nolan.

All of this is the 70mm effect, the wide-gauge film for­mat that, due to its dimen­sions and design, is able to drink up details that oth­er, less­er film stocks do not have the alchem­i­cal make-up to cap­ture. Maybe some could argue that it’s the job of cin­e­ma to air­brush out these ele­ments and offer a primped and man­i­cured fan­ta­sy of real­i­ty, lest we be remind­ed too much of the lives we’re attempt­ing to escape by going to see such entertainment.

Oppen­heimer, a lux­u­ri­ant, tac­tile and often nerve-shred­ding screen adap­ta­tion of Kai Bird and Mar­tin J Sherwin’s laud­ed non-fic­tion doorstop, Amer­i­can Prometheus: The Tri­umph and Tragedy of J Robert Oppen­heimer’, sees the show­man film­mak­er cre­at­ing a more inti­mate milieu for this urgent­ly-paced and per­son­nel-heavy his­tor­i­cal biography.

It is a film about embrac­ing imper­fec­tion, about being real­is­tic with regards to who we are and what we do in this life, and the rel­a­tive val­ues of tak­ing a chance on a mav­er­ick. Yet is also a film which accepts that the tec­ton­ic plates of his­to­ry often make their earth-jog­ging shifts from with­in cramped offices or out on dusty, depop­u­lat­ed plains.

Indeed, at the time of an in-progress writ­ers and actors strike in Hol­ly­wood, Oppen­heimer oper­ates as a cri­tique by stealth as it lam­basts the scowl­ing mid­dle-men, the steely bureau­crat­ic enforcers, the politi­cians and the back-room oper­a­tors whose job it is to coax in the tal­ent they need to per­form an imme­di­ate func­tion, and then make sure they’re quick­ly dis­pensed of at the point of delivery.

Nolan attempts to be objec­tive in his lush, real­ist por­trait of the father of the atom­ic bomb”, yet there’s a clear sense of awe at both his subject’s inquir­ing mind, his poise and his role as direc­tor” on the Los Alam­os set” that was built to devel­op a nuclear arse­nal before one of America’s many geopo­lit­i­cal rivals can blow them to smithereens.

In his devel­op­ment of the atom­ic bomb, Cil­lian Murphy’s Oppen­heimer dead­pans that the pos­si­bil­i­ty of one such device destroy­ing the world through an atmos­pher­ic chain reac­tion is near zero”, which caus­es his more mil­i­tary-mind­ed col­leagues to per­spire a lit­tle. But tak­ing these chances – turn­ing the­o­ry into prac­tice – is the only way to find out for sure.

That said, despite the char­ac­ter and his world, Nolan doesn’t lean too heav­i­ly on the actu­al quan­tum physics behind this lofty endeav­our. Films such as Inter­stel­lar and Tenet were ham­pered by the need to wrap your head around fan­ci­ful sci-fi con­ceits root­ed in real physics, but this allows for a more imme­di­ate and dra­mat­ic expe­ri­ence by keep­ing the sci­ence sim­ple and off-stage somewhat.

The film com­pris­es a rush­ing, heady con­tin­u­um of scenes which focus on the logis­ti­cal ins and outs of the Man­hat­tan Project and the even­tu­al Trin­i­ty” bomb tests, as well as draw­ing intrigue from the pre­car­i­ous (and, even­tu­al­ly, fero­cious) anti-left polit­i­cal sen­ti­ments of the era. Nolan appears to frame Oppen­heimer as some­one who only sees pol­i­tics in prac­ti­cal terms, not an ide­o­logue or a fire­brand who feels he needs to con­ceal his beliefs.

Many of the strongest, most tense scenes chart Oppie’s attempt to score secu­ri­ty clear­ance for a range of poten­tial­ly dis­rep­utable but bril­liant sci­ence col­leagues while fight­ing a war of words against the men whose job it was to fil­ter out and elim­i­nate pos­si­ble spies (a small role by Casey Affleck offers a deli­cious ear­ly high­light). As a view­ing expe­ri­ence, it’s a film which trav­els at the speed of Oliv­er Stone’s JFK, one which is also suc­cess­ful at keep­ing many plates spin­ning at one time. It’s rare that a film which com­pris­es so many scenes of men talk­ing in rooms should whip by at such a clip, espe­cial­ly as Nolan’s fram­ing, block­ing and move­ment of the cam­era is rarely what you’d call artis­tic (though it more than does the job).

Headshot of a man in a suit gazing upwards with a pensive expression against a blurred green background.

Of the famous­ly gigan­tic ensem­ble cast roped in to tell this sto­ry, there’s not a sin­gle play­er who feels like they’ve been giv­en short shrift. I can see some argu­ing that Flo­rence Pugh as Oppenheimer’s com­mu­nist lover, and Emi­ly Blunt’s tip­sy wife Kit­ty are side­lined in favour of the many male pro­tag­o­nists, yet they both con­tribute small but impor­tant scenes. I would argue that Blunt is respon­si­ble for the film’s strongest moment, as she sto­ical­ly takes the stand for her hus­band at a sham secu­ri­ty hear­ing and brings home the back­bone that he’s cur­rent­ly lacking.

But the lion share of plau­dits need to go to Mur­phy who is extra­or­di­nary in the title role, trans­mit­ting both a boy­ish pas­sion for learn­ing and dis­cov­ery and a deep if shroud­ed sense of para­noia and guilt that would come from reveal­ing the con­tents of a Pandora’s Box for which he has the only key. His gaunt, grey­ing, unglam­orous fea­tures are empha­sised by the cig­a­rettes he smokes which look like giant white batons dan­gling from his lips.

On that front, he has not­ed that he was phys­i­cal­ly mod­elled on David Bowie’s char­ac­ter from Nicholas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell To Earth, which feels appo­site as this too is a film about a genius out­sider com­ing to terms with how he has been exploit­ed from the off. Mur­phy is a reli­ably great actor, but this is on a dif­fer­ent plateau, a mus­cu­lar and effort­less­ly charis­mat­ic turn in which he com­mands every frame he appears in.

The film fal­ters in its final act, as the focus shifts to the back­room machi­na­tions of Robert Downey Jr’s one-time chair of the US Atom­ic Ener­gy Com­mis­sion, Lewis Strauss. It’s nice to see Downey out­side of a met­al one­sie, yet his arc feels manip­u­lat­ed as a way to give the film some con­ven­tion­al clo­sure. This is when the witch tri­als are at full pelt, and Nolan can’t help but present Oppen­heimer as the new­ly-moral­is­tic mar­tyr, even if he him­self didn’t appear to want that end. And yet there’s a para­dox: if Nolan was more objec­tive­ly ambiva­lent about his sub­ject, does that remove some of the impe­tus to make the film in the first place? Does he see him­self as the lone genius who just about slips out the back door with a moral victory?

Oppen­heimer shares facets with Nolan’s great­est film, 2006’s The Pres­tige, in that it is about a man who builds a machine that, if placed into the wrong hands, has the abil­i­ty to destroy lives. It also has a cer­tain messi­ness to it, avoid­ing the hok­i­ly rigid plot schemat­ics of Dunkirk, Inter­stel­lar and Incep­tion. Robert Oppen­heimer, too, oper­ates in the same shady moral domain as Bruce Wayne’s Bat­man, a self-start­ing mer­ce­nary who’s bot­tom­less finan­cial cof­fers allow him to mete out pun­ish­ment on those he believes to be wrongdoers.

This film is less about offer­ing some neat, cycli­cal nar­ra­tive, and more about nav­i­gat­ing the twisty moral maze that comes from har­ness­ing the pow­er of the atom to do great dam­age on the world and its peo­ple. And it’s per­haps kudos to Nolan’s writ­ing (and Murphy’s intu­itive inter­pre­ta­tion of the text) that all this comes out so clean­ly. It’s not a fault­less film, but it’s one that sits with­in the high­er ech­e­lons of the oft-tawdry biopic form, and also reveals hid­den depths to the Nolan project and, excit­ing­ly, sug­gests that we should brace our­selves for any­thing the next time around.

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