“Did you think that if you let them tar and feather you, they’d forgive you? They won’t.”
Story: Robert “Oppie” Oppenheimer was a complicated man. Interested in possibilities, fascinated by science and social justice, and ultimately broken by the system that asked him to create his greatest work. With looks into his private, public, and scientific life, we get a better feel for one of the most famous – and infamous – American creators.
Genre I’d put it in: Long-ass Biopics Of Historicalness
Release Date: 2023
Remake, Sequel, Based-On, or Original: Based on the life of American scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer. More specifically, the time immediately before, during, and after he helmed the Manhattan Project.
Gotta say: I find it hard to critique Oppenheimer. It’s fascinating, intellectually stimulating, and tugs at my heart strings as well as my scientific curiosity. But at times it’s also convoluted, messy, and overcrowded. However, the second half of the film brings all the various pieces together, making it an edge-of-your-seat experience. How’d I get her? I’m glad you asked. Oh, you didn’t ask? Well, buckle up, buttercup. You’re getting it anyway.
Christopher Nolan loves to mess around with time, space, and reality. From Memento to Interstellar, his ideas on how time flows, and how we perceive our world, have been putting butts in seats, for good reason. Here in Oppenheimer, Nolan creates his own version of Oppie’s Trinity; Oppie’s life pre, post, and during WWII. Nolan weaves these moments in time together, causing a strange patchwork of moments, interspersed with special effects that show the inner turmoil of Oppie’s mind as his life’s work becomes the dawning of a terrible new age. It’s an incredibly ambitious storytelling device, and it almost always works.
Why almost? Well, while I typically applaud films that don’t spoon-feed viewers information that common sense would provide naturally, in Oppenheimer there’s so much thrown at the screen so fast, it took my bb-ratting-in-a-tuna-can brain more than a moment to latch on to all the various characters, timelines, and who’s where, when. Of course it gets easier as the film progresses, but the sink-or-swim immersion that worked so well in Dunkirk only served to have me distanced from the characters here. There are too many, too soon, with little to no introduction. So when I’m asked to connect dots later in the film, my brain did a bit ol’ 429 Error, and my brain went bloink. Well, not so much my brain, but my heart went “meh, don’t care, too many people, not enough time to connect”. Which is not a good feeling when watching a biopic that asks you to care about the lead and those immediately around him.
That’s not to say that I wasn’t moved. Quite the opposite, at least when the second half of the film hit. Because Oppenheimer feels like two different films sandwiched together; each with a different, compelling plot progression, but separate ideas on how to get the story across. In the first half, we get Oppie as an older man, enduring what can only be described as an interrogation for the renewal of his Q Clearance in 1954. Then we see a CGI nuclear explosion, then we’re guided back and forth, from the 30s to the 40s to the 50s, in no particular order, but with an overall goal of getting us to the Trinity test. It’s a lot to take in, and as someone with only a passing knowledge of all that went on at that time, it took more than a bit of time to let it all sink in. Add in quick scenes of Oppie and his wife (an excellent as always Emily Blunt, but more on the cast in a tic) dealing with the strain of married life? I have to admit there were a few times where I was completely lost, trying to figure out who I was supposed to care about, and why.
Things take an upswing in the second half, and keep going up into absolutely sublime. Instead of moments that tell bits of story, we get full scenes of Oppie’s life in Los Alamost during the Manhattan Project, his work with his fellow researchers as they struggled to make a literal life-or-death deadline, and how that work got picked apart – and his character assassinated – during his 1954 clearance appeal. The “July or Bust” timeline lends further urgency to the already thrilling storyline, which adds empathy and pathos to an older Oppie, as he’s torn apart by the Commission, and betrayed by those he’d considered friends. McCarthyism was a helluva drug, kids. The cast is given room to breathe, and the brief first-half glimpses of the powerful performances by Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, David Krumholtz, and Robert Downey Jr. become absolutely breathtaking here. And while it took me a while to figure out this review’s special shout-out, while I’d love to say RDJ, we all know he can sink into a role. And yeah he’s incredible. But today? It’s Jason Clarke’s Commission prosecutor Roger Robb, who wields his legal intellect like a cudgel. It’s horrifying and captivating in equal measure. I hope the Academy remembers these mid-year performances come award season.
As Nolan is wont to do, there is a wee, soupçon, of bombast. In Oppenheimer, it’s at the very end, when we’re quite literally bombed with images that make Independence Day and Dr. Strangelove seem restrained. Sure, there will be folks that feel this final moment as a gut punch. But for me, it was so over-the-top I had to giggle.
tl;dr? Oppenheimer is a beautiful, well crafted, but oftentimes messy film that drops you into the life if its titular character and dares you to hold on for the ride. A ride well worth taking, as the film only gets better with each passing minute. Or in this case, hour. Three hours in total. Plan your sodas accordingly, y’all.
#Protip Fun Fact: My dad retired from the Federal Government in the late 80’spending time in the Atomic Energy Commission, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and Nuclear Regulatory Commission. He’d had a Q Clearance, because he had to go “audit” various nuclear power plants and research facilities. His favorite place to go, the place he’d keep for himself while sending others out to “lesser places”? Los Alamos. I still have a few pieces of turquoise he’d bring me from his trips. And when I saw that Cillian Murphy’s Oppie had a silver and turquoise belt in his Los Alamost scenes? I thought “Ahh, so that’s A Thing with the energy-type folks out there. They love their turquoise.” And well they should, the craftsmanship in New Mexico is some of the best in the world.
