'Oppenheimer'
In Christopher Nolan’s bio-drama, Cillian Murphy stars alongside every white male actor you’ve ever seen in your life.
“Oppenheimer” Review: An Explosion of Stars
While half of the actors in Hollywood were working on “Barbie,” the other half must have been on the set of “Oppenheimer,” the writer-director Christopher Nolan’s latest opus. At a whopping three hours, this sprawling tale of the success and downfall of the scientist Robert Oppenheimer elevates one man’s life to legendary heights. Unfortunately, “Oppenheimer” is so close to being technically perfect that its foibles — namely its distractingly famous cast and pat morals — are all the more grating.
In classic Nolan fashion, “Oppenheimer” is a series of stories within stories. The central framing devices are a senatorial hearing to confirm Lewis Strauss, played by Robert Downey, Jr., as a member of cabinet, and a post-World War II hearing regarding Oppenheimer’s security clearance. Though Strauss is, at best, tertiary character in Oppenheimer’s overall story, Nolan expertly weaves both narratives together with the guidance of the Pulitzer-winning book “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer“ by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin. We see Oppenheimer grow from a twitchy student struggling with lab work to the father of the atomic bomb, and meet the many men — and handful of women — he pissed off along the way.
Cillian Murphy carries this character study as Oppenheimer, gracefully shifting from youthful idealism to beleaguered middle age. He is commanding and quiet, sardonic and thoughtful. It’s as easy to sympathize with his gaggles of admirers as it is his detractors. Oppenheimer is undeniably brilliant, but, as seems to be the case with many brilliant men of history, he was also a bit of a bastard.
Then again, so is nearly everyone in this movie, in their own, interesting way. Oppenheimer’s wife, Kitty, played by Emily Blunt, is a twice-divorced alcoholic who hates motherhood and openly resents her philandering husband. As Lieutenant General Leslie Groves, the military overseer of the Manhattan project, Matt Damon offers incendiary brashness that comedically complements Oppenheimer’s unflappability. Perhaps the only pure soul here is Albert Einstein, played by Tom Conti, who shows up occasionally to offer Dumbledore-esque wisdom.
It’s one thing to have famous faces behind the key players in a historical drama, but Nolan goes a bridge too far, turning minor roles into cameos. If you’ve been a consistent TV and movie watcher for the last five or ten years, good luck not getting distracted. You won’t see the head of the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development and a random, Chicago-based physicist, you’ll see Matthew Modine — a.k.a. Papa from “Stranger Things” — and Rami Malek. Josh Hartnett and Nat Wolff work alongside Oppenheimer at U.C. Berkeley. Florence Pugh, who is on screen naked as much as she is clothed, plays one of Oppenheimer’s lovers. Josh Peck detonates the first A-bomb.
In an even more disruptive move, as the security hearing compounds its injustices and Oppenheimer’s reputation becomes increasingly under threat, Nolan seems compelled to tell his viewers how to think. Though he mostly portrays Oppenheimer’s nuances — one arresting sequence captures the dissonance between his pride and his morals after the successful bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — Nolan concludes the movie with trite simplicity. This story has a capital-B Bad guy, and it’s not J. Robert Oppenheimer. It would have been more consistent and satisfying to simply have no villain at all.
“Oppenheimer” is many things: beautifully edited by Jennifer Lame, sumptuously shot by Hoyte Van Hoytema, expertly acted. It is certainly worth seeing in theaters, especially for awards season junkies. But this film’s rawness is undercut by its showy cast and the director’s heavy hand. If someone had stopped Nolan from getting in his own way, “Oppenheimer” could have been the game-changer audiences were promised. Alas, nobody did, and it’s not.
Run time: 180 min.
Not recommended if you: are easily distracted by famous faces in a historical drama, are allergic to celluloid, don’t like being told how to feel.
I also reviewed — you guessed it — “Barbie” for my patrons this week. To access that review and many more, head over to my Patreon.