It’s not every day that a biographical thriller set against the backdrop of history can build excitement ahead of its release like the Christopher Nolan produced and directed movie Oppenheimer (2023) has. Detailing the role American scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer had in the development of the atomic bomb, Nolan wrote this movie based on the Pulitzer Prize winning book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer written by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin. The dynamic personality of Oppenheimer the man comes through with an energy equal to the explosive with which the Manhattan Project developed.
The movie-making personality of Christopher Nolan shines through his telling of the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer, with the theoretical physicist’s portrayal being offered by Cillian Murphy. Alternating between black-and-white and color, using a non-linear model of accentuating the personal drama of a slowly growing explosion of the revealing the contradictions within the scientist’s personality, it strikes me as relevant that I find a parallel to the Nolan film Memento (2000), reviewed here, in the experience.
The movie offers much based in fact surrounding the Oppenheimer biography from Cambridge, England to Los Alamos, New Mexico. We see Oppenheimer‘s security clearance hearing in 1954. Finally we Lewis Strauss‘ confirmation hearing for Secretary of Commerce from 1959. Then there are the relationships with Jean Tatlock, Katherine Oppenheimer, Frank Oppenheimer, Haakon Chevalier, Leslie Groves and scientists such as Patrick Blackett, Niels Bohr, Edward Teller, Isidor Isaac Rabi, David Hill and Albert Einstein.
The epic quality of the J. Robert Oppenheimer‘s relevance stands shoulder to shoulder with the accomplishment in atomic energy, his philosophical positions on energy and political justice, and the tangled web these played on those levels alongside the notions of his public and private reputations explored with a force equal to a Christopher Nolan movie as well as the reality so strongly present in biography by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin.
The story of the Trinity test, or the first detonation of a nuclear weapon, is the story that makes the Oppenheimer movie. The many layers of complexity for Oppenheimer the man, both interpersonally for him with wife Katherine Oppenheimer and mistress Jean Tatlock, thunder home in the growing tension of the detonation of the nuclear device as presented in moments of quiet and explosive sound that lead to an enthusiastic aftermath of celebration following the success of the Trinity test. That Nolan‘s treatment of the Oppenheimer story bring us back to Lewis Strauss and Albert Einstein, narratively structuring the threat of Germany, the meaning of Hiroshima, Japan and Nagasaki, Japan, and the decision of Harry S. Truman to end the Pacific conflict, within the story of Strauss, interpersonal matters of the heart, and the nature of celebrity and power with Einstein all fascinate me.
There’s little doubt for me that the power of the movie Oppenheimer is high. Offering this review 3.5-days after watching the movie leaves me a bit transfixed by the question of whether I am undervaluing or overvaluing my admiration for the achievement of what I saw in the film. Regardless, I grant Oppenheimer as produced, directed and written for film by Christopher Nolan 4.5-stars a scale of 1-to-5.
Matt – Wednesday, July 26, 2023
Matt Lynn Digital 