Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” is a breathtaking epic about the rise and fall of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the Jewish-American theoretical physicist known as the “father of the atomic bomb,” who led the Manhattan Project, the World War II secret U.S. program to build an atomic bomb before the Nazis could.
This impressive, engrossing film depicts Oppenheimer’s personal life, follows the race to build the first atomic bomb, and then traces Oppenheimer’s post-war fall, when the scientist, filled with guilt over creating a weapon with the power to destroy the world, pushes for limits on nuclear weapons, only to find himself the target of an investigation. It is a tale of conscience and hubris, set against the sweep of history and a technology that changed the world.
“Oppenheimer” is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer.” The film explores the brilliant but flawed physicist’s life and work, in a tale told largely from his point of view.
Relentlessly gripping, “Oppenheimer” is perhaps Nolan’s best film, a certain Oscar contender. It is epic storytelling, and epic in its length too, at about three hours, but it is so engrossing, so dazzling as cinema, and so brilliantly acted, that one does not feel the length. This excellent film has so much to recommend it, it is hard to know where to start – its riveting storytelling, significant content, timely message about ethical consequences of technology, its outstanding performances (particularly lead Cillian Murphy) – to mention a few. Nolan shot on film, 65mm in a large-format IMAX, with ten times the resolution of standard film, so it is best seen on an IMAX screen at least.
The brilliant young theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer (Murphy) seemed an unlikely choice when he was recruited by Lt. General Leslie Groves Jr. (Matt Damon) to lead the Manhattan Project. The New York-born Oppenheimer was the son of a wealthy Jewish family, an autodidact who read poetry, spoke several languages, and shared his family’s left-leaning political views. Oppenheimer had an interest in Hindu religious texts but a complicated relationship with Judaism. Yet Oppenheimer actively sought the job, partly as a way to join the fight against what the Nazis were doing to the Jews.
Oppenheimer recognized immediately the United States had a hidden edge over Germany, despite the Nazis’ more-than-a-year head start on developing a nuclear bomb. He knew Hitler’s hatred of Jews would drive the Nazis to purge Jewish scientists from their nuclear bomb research. Having visited Europe, Oppenheimer knew many of the top physicists were Jewish. So he set out to recruit as many of them as possible, using Hitler’s hatred against him. And recruit them he did.
Although Oppenheimer and Albert Einstein (Tom Conti) were friends, he did not invite Einstein to join the project. However, he did seek Einstein’s advice and the famous scientist appears in the film at a couple of points.
From the start, ethical and moral questions are part of the equation. Why try to create the most destructive weapon ever seen? In one scene, the physicists discuss those ethics, but one fact remains: Hitler’s Germany is already working on such a weapon. If they can’t be stopped, the next best thing is to get the weapon first.
“I don’t know if we can be trusted to have such a weapon, but I know the Nazis can’t,” Oppenheimer says.
The impressive cast includes Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss, the Jewish non-scientist who led Princeton’s Academy for Advanced Studies where Einstein was based, Josh Hartnett as Ernest Lawrence (as in Lawrence Livermore laboratory) and Matthias Schweighofer as Werner Heisenberg, plus a host of famous faces in small roles. Florence Pugh plays Jean Tatlock, a psychiatrist with whom Oppenheimer had an on-and-off romance, while Emily Blunt plays Oppenheimer’s wife Kitty, a biologist frustrated by domestic life. There are a number of Jewish characters — and Jewish actors — in the film, including David Krumholtz as Oppenheimer’s friend Isidor Rabi.
The specter of antisemitism looms over the first half of the film, set in a time when antisemitism was openly expressed in the United States and the Nazis were on the rise in Germany. Several times we see Oppenheimer respond warily to non-Jewish people he meets, suggesting past experiences. In one scene, a non-Jewish colleague wonders if trying to beat the Nazis to the nuclear bomb really matters, but Oppenheimer cuts him short, reminding him that it is his people, not the speaker’s, who are being murdered by the Nazis.
The film generally gets the history and science right, although it is careful not to overload the audience with the latter. “Oppenheimer” jumps around in time somewhat, as Nolan’s films do, following three narrative threads: Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project, a guilt-racked Oppenheimer’s treatment post-war, and a Congressional confirmation hearing for Lewis Strauss for a cabinet-level post. How the latter connects isn’t immediately clear but becomes devastatingly so by the film’s end. It may sound confusing, but it really isn’t, as Nolan gives us signposts (like using black-and-white for the Strauss thread), and all comes together in the powerful ending.
The pivotal moment in “Oppenheimer,” its showstopper, is the test of the first nuclear device, Trinity. The spine-tingling sequence divides the film’s two parts, before the bomb and after. The scenes of people witnessing the test are jaw-dropping, as what had been only theoretical become now becomes shockingly real, the world-changing moment when Oppenheimer famously quoted the Bhagavad Gita, “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”
“Oppenheimer” is an outstanding epic tale of a complicated genius, a technology with the power to destroy the humankind, and the ethical choices around it.
“Oppenheimer” opened in theaters on Friday, July 21.
