Any excitement I had for “Oppenheimer” stemmed largely from my anticipation of “Barbie” and the Barbenheimer meme (which was immense). Unfortunately, due to timing complications, as of writing this article, I still have not seen “Barbie,” but I think I have been turned into a Christopher Nolan fan.
The most remarkable achievement of “Oppenheimer” is that I always knew what was going on. For older generations, this story, this political climate, and many of the figures mentioned throughout the movie will be familiar. But they are not to me. I know the names and greatest achievements of Oppenheimer and Einstein. I know where the atomic bombs were dropped and the impact they had on Japanese cinema. And that is about it. This movie details the lives of dozens of characters, all of whom have identical German/Jewish-sounding names, as they talk in rooms about physics, political ideologies, and legal theory, and yet it managed to hold my attention and understanding for three hours.
Christopher Nolan, at his best, creates movies so engaging I forget to critique them until after I leave the theatre, and “Oppenheimer” falls into that category. Not a second of this movie is wasted or boring. That doesn’t mean it felt short, if anything “Oppenheimer” felt longer than its runtime. But it never fails to captivate.
There is no clear way to tell the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer, nor an approach that will not be, justifiably, criticized for telling the story of the bomb, and not its victims. But Oppenheimer’s life, creation, and the many stances that have been taken surrounding him and it since World War II are given a fair platform through this movie. The best way to describe the structure of the film is two hours of setup followed by an hour of analysis. In the first act, the complex story is told, themes and characters are laid out, and world-altering decisions are made. In the second act, all of the relevant opinions on what we just watched are expressed. We find out what everyone in the first act, as well as the government, thinks about what they did five to ten years down the line. This system of storytelling followed by dissection was a smart and effective way to tell a big polarizing piece of history.
This system also created a stark change of pace from one section of the movie to another. “Oppenheimer” outlines Oppenheimer’s life with incredible speed. The audience is thrown from plot point to plot point, introduced to a new major character every few minutes, all while being harassed by a ground-shaking soundtrack, and it is incredible. When the movie finally slows down and the music drops a few decibels you are left in awe of how much you just experienced. And the residual hype from the first two hours gives the second act an intensity that it otherwise would not have had.
Sound design is central to “Oppenheimer,” as well as probably the movie’s most common critique. Every Nolan film has a recognizable and immoderately used soundtrack, but “Oppenheimer” easily has the most overwhelming. It did not hurt the film though. I sympathize with those who are particularly sensitive to loud, vibrating, occasionally unexpected film scores. Do not hesitate to bring earplugs if watching this movie in a movie theatre. But this is a movie about a bomb. A bomb that, at the time that the movie takes place, was the most powerful to have ever existed. A very notable feature of which is that when it initially explodes, despite being powerful enough to disintegrate a human being, it does so quietly. The devastating sound of the explosion is delayed for a few seconds. It thus thematically and atmospherically works for the soundtrack to mirror this. There are certain scenes in which the music becomes so intense the dialogue is washed out or a scene feels more like a cut for a trailer. The score is excessive but, for the most part, not to the movie’s detriment.
This movie would not have been possible without the incredible slew of actors elevating a high-quality but inherently intellectual (easily boring) script. The praise for Cillian Murphy is completely deserved but well acknowledged. There are many actors who spend the majority of this movie as background characters that when featured in one or two scenes do so incredibly well. Not just making their characters memorable but substantially improving a sequence or arc. Macon Blair, Benny Safdie, and Emily Blunt (who plays a big part but an often lacking character) were particular standouts.
The last aspect of this film that deserves praise, because it is of personal interest to me, is how it approached the many Jewish characters in a story told entirely on the periphery of Nazi Germany. Oppenheimer’s relationship with his Jewish heritage was complicated and something he rarely talked about but it affected much of his life and was a likely part of his motivation to build the atomic bomb. The Manhattan Project was also worked on by many Jewish scientists, some of whom had escaped the Nazi regime. Further, the second Red Scare, which is the inciting incident for much of the second act, was a political movement that heavily targeted Jewish individuals. This story is filled to the brim with Jewish people and issues and, while it is not a massive focus of the film, I felt the occasional blunt references to that reality enhanced the whole movie for me, a Jewish person.
If you are an enjoyer of history or historical dramas or just big epic but dialogue-heavy movies, I cannot recommend “Oppenheimer” highly enough. If you can, definitely try to see it in theatres. I do not think that seeing it in IMAX is necessary but it certainly would not hurt your experience.
