Hello everyone! I realize it’s been almost one year since my last post. This has been an incredibly busy (and productive, but mostly busy) time, and I missed writing, so it’s time to get back to it. This summer brought a certain renaissance to big screen cinema and this can be just the incentive I needed, so here I am talking about the latest work in Christopher Nolan’s moviemaking career.
“Oppenheimer” just opened in theaters this week and I was lucky enough to watch it on the premiere. What follows is my experience (not exactly a “review”, because I am not a critic), and some thoughts on why I think this is a very, very relevant movie considering the times we are living.
I will start by saying that this is a movie that will challenge the viewer in many aspects. It’s awe-inspiring and astounding but it’s not a crowd-pleaser. It wants to open a window onto some extremely elaborate landscapes and it doesn’t even try to simplify the panorama. The viewer will have some work to do.
The story is all about things (the human mind, the international community, relationships, atoms) that get broken into smaller, difficult and unpredictable things. The plot is designed as a consequence.
Things get complicated because this is many movies wrapped in one. There is the biopic, the character study, the genius rise-to-fame story, the war movie (in the background), and a very complex political-legal courtroom drama. All this, all in one, as the plot moves constantly with flashbacks and flashforwards as if space and time cannot really be fixed (which they can’t) and were intimately connected (which they are).
The personal, technical, social and political struggles that defined the second half of the last century and in large part still define the time we are living are brought front and center and fleshed out with an astounding level of detail. So if you have an interest in science, history and/or geopolitics, this will really excite you. In this sense, this is a strange mix between Dunkirk and Interstellar. And it even manages to be more than the sum of its parts – which feels too much, at times.
One term to describe the ensemble of characters is: vast. On-screen we become acquainted with a lot of the scientific celebrities of the time (from Einstein to Fermi, from Bohr to Heisenberg), geniuses that with their studies on quantum mechanics were redefining the way reality was to be perceived at the beginning of the 1900s. It really must have been an interesting time: exciting, but also terrifying – all the reassuring certainties of Newtonian physics had to be set aside to make space for something much bigger and unpredictable.
The movie is centered on the figure of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy in a career-defining role), aka “The Father of the Atomic Bomb” (and I though my kids were trouble sometimes).
We follow him from his youthful, energic and tormented years all the way to a self-aware, and still very tormented maturity. The man certainly lived a larger-than-life life, and that gives a mind – even a first-class mind – a lot to process. The character is described in his complexities and contradictions: he is a genius, but also a seducer, but also a liar, but also a visionary leader, but also a bit of an asshole, but also a devoted family man. For those who need a bit of context, an almost necessary preliminary study can be this video or this other video. I found them both excellent while I was researching for this post.
The problem is that the story gets sometimes lost in its own enormous ambition. I personally didn’t appreciate the level of detail with which we follow Oppenheimer’s trial-not-trial – during the McCarthysm years he was put under official investigations for his left-wing sympathies, and eventually denied the security clearance necessary to be a member of the Atomic Energy Commission. It takes something like half of the total running time, and this doesn’t stop after the long-awaited emotional peak (the successful experiment which detonated the first A-bomb). I found it too long, with too many details and secondary characters. After two hours I was delighted but tired, something like “Ok, we get it already, he was treated unfairly. Can we move on, please? Oh wait, Rami Malek has a character too? And he is introduced now?”.
I understand all this must have been considered essential to tell a story that aims to be nothing less than titanic: ” American Prometheus” is the book that inspired the script, Prometheus was the titan in the Greek mythology who stole fire from the gods to donate it to humans (spoiler, he didn’t end well), so it all sort of makes sense.
So what I am trying to say is, watching this movie is like eating at a fantastic buffet where there is simply so much delicious food, and you will want to try it all. At the end, bloated and tired, you are wondering whether you bit more than you could chew, but your palate is still full of so many fantastic sensations, you know it was worth it.
Plus, like everything Christopher Nolan does, the movie is magnificent and technically superb. Cinematography is from another world: it was completely shot in IMAX 70mm – and it shows whether you are watching a close-up of the protagonists, or an eerie New Mexico aerial view. Production, costumes, audio, sound, the practical effects (no CGI here! So thankful) – it’s all top-notch, and then some.
A separate mention goes to the acting, which is consistently superb. It’s a choral drama literally star-studded that oozes mastery: names like Rami Malek, Gary Oldman or Kenneth Branagh get secondary characters with barely a few minutes of screen time. Matt Damon excels as the brash colonel Leslie Groves, the man who had to face an impossible decision (“there is a non-zero chance that this untested superweapon will set the whole Earth’s atmosphere on fire. Should we still use it?” – spoiler, he said yes). But probably it is Robert Downey Jr who gets the mention of honor, giving his consumed, vengeful Lewis Strauss (“it reads Stross“) a timeless, Shakespearian flavor.
The female characters also get the short end of the stick, in what is somehow a tradition in Nolan’s work. Florence Pugh and (especially) Emily Blunt deliver fantastic performances, but they are not given much to work with. Both their characters are somehow mistreated by the unstoppable protagonist, concerned as he is turning the big wheels of History, with a capital H. Which may well be what really happened.
In conclusion, this is a compelling movie that is definitely NOT suitable for an easy popcorn evening. I wanted to see more explosions, clearly presented moral solutions, a decisive condemnation of weapons of mass destruction (but really, I wanted to see more explosions) and instead I got – also – a list of characters so long I kept asking myself “who is this guy? Wait, should I know him?”, and a trial (not trial, sorry) that went on and on and on.
This is maybe not a masterwork but it is an important work, one that will challenge its audience and inspire critical conversations on controversial and difficult topics – which is so badly needed right now.
It’s an authorial piece that wants to explore a very complex character and a crucial moment in the world’s history. And it does it in a technically superb way, making some clear choices, and (probably) leaving a bit of a mess behind.
Many huge topics are presented, and I feel the need for a bullet-point list to put some order in my thoughts.
- the birth of the cold-war logic of mutually assured destruction (are the atomic bombs what effectively prevented World War 3? So are they a good thing now?);
- is killing 200 thousand civilians in two days morally justifiable, if it prevents the (probable) death of a million more?
- wow, I understand atomic bombs now. This thing looks easy to make. It’s like a great Carbonara, all you need are the right ingredients. This is terrifying;
- if you have an annoying teacher, is trying to kill him a venial sin that will leave absolutely no mark on a man’s life and career? With a poisoned apple, of all things. I didn’t think they existed in reality;
- hundreds of thousands of Japanese people were really just sacrificed on the altar of realpolitik, they were only guilty of having the wrong government at the wrong time. Is this what life on Earth is all about?
- two bombs were detonated, not just one, and with different technologies. Just to send a message to the Soviets. This is a war crime without precedents and surely the movie will take a clear position at least on this. We will never see nuclear weapons used again. Right? RIGHT? <shouts against the wall, then shivers in fear>
- wow, science is so cool. I should have been an engineer, like my dad always wanted. Look what a bunch of geeks were able to do in just three years. Ah, and I guess the unlimited budget didn’t harm;
- but also, once the genie is out of the bottle, it’s out of control. The real power is not the mind who designed or even built the gun, but the finger on the trigger. Is a finger more effective than a mind? Well, you can’t conduct a prostate exam using your mind only;
- the nuclear threat is bad, sure. But you know what’s even worse? A person who leans left politically. And this is true today as it was 80 years ago;
- great to have post-traumatic stress disorder and hallucinations after creating the most destructive weapon ever made. Sounds fair. But also, with all your genius you really didn’t see it coming? A bit easy, to enjoy power and privilege when you have them – and when you don’t, you become a “crybaby” (in the words of President Truman, apparently this really happened);
- how much can a gifted man sacrifice in order to achieve greatness? And how many other people must pay the price for one man’s obsession?
- some people really look cool wearing hats. I wish I was one of them.
The list could be longer. But I stop, because the movie doesn’t really seem to fully explore, or even take sides on any of these dilemmas (except for the one about hats, maybe). And maybe that’s precisely the point, since the titular character seems to have had the same enigmatic attitude himself. This is a story as close to life as possible, and life doesn’t offer easy lessons. All we can do is watch, and decide by ourselves. Maybe this is the main theme, now that I think of it.
My final thoughts: this is definitely recommended, a must-watch if you are passionate about science, history, WW2 or Cold-War (or black and white courtroom dramas with a lot, A LOT, of flashbacks).
But I wouldn’t place it right on the top of Nolan’s work, which for me is still The Dark Knight-Inception-The Prestige in no particular order – and then Interstellar for how ambitious it is, even though it botches the ending. I love it all the same.
Go watch “Oppenheimer” on a VERY LARGE screen. As large and awe-inspiring as a mushroom cloud.
To say nothing of the cat 