Oppenheimer

★★★★★

Christopher Nolan makes big movies with big ideas. That’s just his thing. Subtlety and nuance are certainly not foreign to him, but if an innermost thought can be expressed through a steam engine barreling through city traffic or a fifth-dimension wormhole powered by love, that’ll probably be the route he takes. That’s why it’s such an accomplishment that his period biopic about the father of the atomic bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer, a story that from the outset seems lacking in the filmmaker’s trademark explosive flair — except for, you know, that one kinda major moment — is not just electrifying in the way all his work is, but is ostensively rousing and suspenseful specifically in ways his films have never been before.

In place of mind-bending entropy-reversing car chases and converging timelines on the war-torn beaches of France, Nolan creates spectacle through a different manipulation of time: montage. Bending the past, present and future in on each other in referential cutaways and flashbacks, the film shapes the story of the Manhattan Project and its fallout around courtrooms and meetings that are just as hair-raising as the weapon of mass destruction at the centre of it all. In the film’s past, Oppenheimer is a physics professor recruited by the United States government to spearhead a project developing the world’s first nuclear bomb, while in the film’s present, he is interrogated by an unforgiving room of suits for his alleged communist ties. Running parallel, in black and white, is a Senate hearing for chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, Lewis Strauss, a spiteful rival of Oppenheimer’s who presents a more “objective” view on the respected physicist’s actions beyond WWII. Colliding like atoms in fusion, these stories entangle and intertwine, call back to one another and entirely inform one another, erupting into thrilling sequences of cross-cutting tension-raising and fast-paced back-and-forth’s that move with the rhythm of action sequences. It’s almost like a three-hour montage, until the last thirty minutes, at which point it literally becomes a thirty-minute montage. Nolan has never had this much control over his craft, and the film’s puzzle-box construction is as much a product of stellar editing as it is his assured vision.

His collaboration with cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema lends an IMAX-sized scale to even the most minuscule moment. In fact, it is in these more personal moments, devoid of erupting fireballs and vast New Mexican deserts, where the film finds its most striking grandeur. Faces are blown up to skyscraper height, where the slightest eyebrow raise or curl of the lip register with the same impact as a nuclear blast. When individual choices ripple like raindrops in a puddle, and the fate of the world orbits around a figure this enigmatic, it’s a breathtakingly effective tactic to bring us as close to the man’s mind as we can get. We can see his conflict, his turmoil, his hubris and obsession under the magnifying glass of Hoytema’s lens, forcing a profoundly human connection with the viewer that the objective black-and-white segments wonderfully work to oppose. Black-and-white segments that are, by the way, captured with arresting beauty by an IMAX film format invented specifically for use in this film. 

But the real heart-racing images are those Nolan frequently refers to in quick glances; spinning atoms, stars collapsing, particles raising off the surface of the sun. Contorting clouds of fire. Theoretical physics visualized in high-intensity, cinematic form. These visions play off each other and overlap like hazy dreams, which they quite literally are to a young Oppenheimer. A masterful sequence early on centres around his burning obsession with the subatomic world, where a shattered glass becomes an eruption of particles and atoms dance in a violent frenzy before his eyes like a flurry of snow. The sheer enormity of this sequence, not in its tangible physical or emotional stakes but in its metaphysical implications, the future we know is coming for this man and for all of humankind, is staggering.

Which brings us to Ludwig Göransson, whose score is as integral to the film’s evocative, monumental power as any of its towering visuals. Largely centred around the violin, with hordes of stomping feet and rhythmic ticking in place of traditional percussive backing, Göransson paints a rich tapestry of passion and complexity that carries the film to its highest emotional peaks. An early track, accompanying the aforementioned sequence of fantastical nuclear daydreaming, asks us literally through its title: “Can You Hear the Music?” It’s a rousing, nostalgic piece of score, that rises and rises and then continues to add to itself until it is impossible for any visuals set against it to feel like anything less than “the most important thing to happen in the history of the world.” It is such a jaw-dropping achievement, and it’s right at the film’s start.

But “Oppenheimer” is most shaped and molded by its eclectic cast of Hollywood A-listers, fronted by a commanding and nuanced turn from the magnetic Cillian Murphy. In the realm of biopic performance, there has developed in recent years a wicked impulse to recreate, rather than emulate. To augment the body, shift the voice and perfect mannerisms to such an extent that the actor’s job is no longer to emotionally compel, but instead to say a famous quote with the exact inflection, or hit their marks with precise historical accuracy. It’s Rami Malek dancing around Wembley Stadium as Freddie Mercury, each step a calculated effort to match in a side-by-side with the original footage. Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer emulates. He creates a compelling, multifaceted portrait of Oppenheimer that suits the emotional arcs and thematic complexities his character is burdened with, and he does so with a quiet intensity. The power of his performance is in the slight unnoticeables; a self-satisfied smirk, a tremble in the voice, an unreadable vacancy. His watery eyes betray so much as he leaves the Trinity test site beaming. Oppenheimer feels wholly alive in all his confounding, contradictory ways, and it is a true tour de force from Murphy. 

Opposite him, Robert Downey Jr. delivers electric work as Lewis Strauss, shedding his overdone Marvel persona in a role that demands similar snappiness but for an entirely different purpose. He’s explosive and vengeful, and slimy in a way Downey taps into effortlessly. Again, the power is in the details, and Downey manages to provide the entire character in the subtlety of a single reaction shot. Among the film’s expansive Rolodex of recognizable faces — a brilliant casting tactic, by the way, to keep audiences familiar with who’s-who in a wide ensemble of characters — is Florence Pugh, who makes the most of her occasional screen-time, Matt Damon, going wonderfully big in a film of quiet interiority, Jason Clarke, whose callousness is exceptionally aggravating, and Emily Blunt, who simmers for two and a half hours before unloading the best single scene of her career in the home stretch. One particular line reading of hers hasn’t left my mind in months. Of course, there’s also Alden Ehrenreich, Josh Hartnett, Benny Safdie, David Krumholtz, Casey Affleck, Rami Malek and many more, all delivering top-notch work as well.

By and large, “Oppenheimer” is Nolan’s masterpiece. Or, I suppose, his latest masterpiece.  A propulsive, explosive nuclear bomb of a film that feels similarly monumental and game-changing. Applying his signature grandiose blockbuster sensibilities to courtroom interrogations and scientific tinkering, Nolan tackles his first biopic with the structural ambition and enormous scale you’d expect from him, while grounding it all in dense historical analysis and engrossing emotional nuance. It’s his most mature work, formally and narratively, and it marks a clear high-point for a filmmaker always in pursuit of delivering the next big thing. Spectacle often eclipses character in a Christopher Nolan film. “Oppenheimer” is his first where character is the spectacle.