Oppenheimer (2023)
Oppenheimer is an excellent film. But it is also a difficult one, which I’m afraid because of how dense, content-heavy and fast-paced it is, may be unfairly dismissed as overwrought by some viewers. My opinion is that it’s not. If anything, given just how vast the story it tells is, Christopher Nolan did a fantastic job with the decisions he took. He manages to cover all bases, aided by a deft script, creative editing and an impeccable sound design that compliments the non-linear narrative structure of the film. His direction justifies the 3-hour runtime, which in all honesty flew by quite quickly.
For his twelfth film, and his first biopic, Nolan chose the subject that is J. Robert Oppenheimer, the brilliant nuclear physicist who invented the atomic bomb and rose to international fame as the director of the Manhattan Project. The film traces his rise and fall, marked by a reduction to ignominy and subsequent exile by the American government, over his reluctance and ambivalence towards the development of more nuclear weapons, as well as his leftist political views.
Using source material that is Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s authored biography, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, Nolan painstakingly depicts Oppenheimer throughout as a tortured genius who, like many great men and women, is riven through with contradictions and personal shortcomings. He’s an excellent theory student but is dismal during practicals; he becomes a great lecturer and mentor to students and juniors, but somewhat ill-at-ease around peers and non-scientists; he is devoted and is a saving grace to his brilliant wife Kitty but commits adultery; his beliefs are a strange mishmash of Eastern philosophy, cutting edge physics and a naivety bordering on credulity towards Communism.
It is this portrait of a complex man, drawn off the simplicity of scholarly desire, that becomes the bedrock of Oppenheimer. A genius’ thirst for knowledge, that grows into hunger for expertise and the opportunity to contribute meaningfully to a cause he believes is for the greater good, only to realise once all is said and done, what the gravity of the choices he has made really is. As with every tragedy, the fall is always louder and more visceral than the climb. But Oppie never simply falls from grace. He is instead pushed, at first by his own blind ambition and belief in his own immortality, and lastly — perhaps more violently, by the betrayal of those he trusted not only with his mind, but with his soul.
From a technical point of view, Oppenheimer is crafted with such dexterity, you can’t help but marvel at the prowess behind its auteur. One of the techniques that Nolan employs is making the film’s narrative relentlessly transverse between different timelines, aspect ratios, colour schemes and palettes, and perspectives. This works extremely well because sans timestamps, it may be a little difficult to follow as to when certain events being depicted are taking place. It plays like a taut thriller and a tense biopic reminiscent of the Morten Tyldum directed Imitation Game (2014), just with heavier dialogue.
Housing a star studded cast that includes Robert Downey Jr (in a career best performance), Emily Blunt’s excellent Kitty — wife and confidant to Oppie, Josh Hartnett, Florence Pugh, Matt Damon, Rami Malek, Gary Oldman, Bernie Safdie and Casey Affleck, among others, it has some of the best acting you will see this year.
It is Cillian Murphy, of course, playing the lead role, who gives a performance of a lifetime. A very interesting thing that Nolan does frequently is to invite you, the viewer, to stare at Cillian Murphy’s face in shallow-focus close-ups. Regardless of how often this happens, we never get to really figure out conclusively who this man Oppenheimer is, especially from his own perspective. The close-ups seldom offer real insight as to what’s happening behind his marble-blue eyes and I suspect this is intentional on Nolan’s part. By the time we get to the last act of the film, we have seen everything that has happened to him but it is up to us to conclude how he really felt through it all.
Oppenheimer is a film about many things. It’s about quantum physics. It’s about nuclear energy. It’s about war. It’s about the military. It’s about Communism. It’s about ambition. To me, it’s a film that shows us how the very thing that we spend all our lives working towards and view as the ultimate purpose of our lives, can be the very source of the rest of our lives’ misery.
Oppenheimer open in South African cinemas on Friday 21 July 2023.
