Even beyond the ‘Barbenheimer’ phenomenon, I don’t think there could have possibly been a more fitting time for Christopher Nolan’s magnum opus, Oppenheimer, to have been released. A film *about* the end of the world, in its coinciding with climate change records being broken decades before they were “due” as well as studio greed shuttering the entire American film industry, it’s also a film *for* the end of the world. An urgent, desperate, and staggeringly well-crafted masterwork, it’s the film Nolan has been building to across his already immense career, taking stock of mankind’s original nuclear sin and the world it has damned us to.
Across multiple decades and two separate points of view, Nolan guides us through the life of the ‘father’ of the atomic bomb, J Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) through the eyes of both Oppenheimer himself and those of his key post-war rival on the Atomic Energy Commission, Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr). Naturally, the centrepiece of the tale is the Manhattan Project and the eventual Trinity test of the first atom bomb, but the whopping three hour runtime allows Nolan to dive deep into the lives and consciences of its characters outside of this marquee event.
As both a man and a pivot point of history, Oppenheimer has clearly been on Nolan’s mind for years, and the result is an incredibly complete analysis of a life and legacy that asks fascinating questions and has only unsettling answers. It makes for the best script Nolan’s ever written, Oppenheimer mostly playing out as maybe the first true men-talking-in-rooms blockbuster since Oliver Stone’s JFK, packed to absolute bursting with brilliant performances from both its headline stars and an absolute army of excellent supporting actors.
Murphy is on the form of his life, perfectly pitching a performance as a man who used his brilliance and ability to smother his own moral scruples to become a god amongst men before immediately realising the sickening implications of such a status – the insights Nolan gives into the bloodthirstiness of the men who sought the bomb are unflinching. As we flit back and forth between time periods, we see Oppenheimer’s confidence and determination wax and wane, sometimes the centre of the world, sometimes merely sinking into a corner, and Murphy is transfixing throughout, his fearsome blue eyes always piercing. As his opposite number, Downey Jr is the best he’s been since Zodiac, completely shedding the smarmy charm of Tony Stark and reminding us just how thrillingly talented an actor he really is. A climactic moment cross-cutting between the two is as exciting as anything Nolan’s ever done, and it’s done entirely through two men simply explaining their place in the world to respective sceptical audiences.
Everyone else, from Emily Blunt as Oppenheimer’s unapologetically prickly wife Kitty to Matt Damon as the no-bullshit military overseer of the Manhattan Project, is great too, and there’s a simple but real thrill in seeing what recognisable actor Nolan is going to introduce next – this is a Wes Anderson-level stacked cast. Nolan has always used IMAX to cement his status as Hollywood’s number-one purveyor of epic scale action, but here he makes the format intimate, finding drama in people’s faces where, say, Inception or Tenet would have found it in a physics-bending shootout.
That’s not to say that physics are left un-troubled here – this is, after all, the story of one of the most important physicists of all time. We see the world of atoms and their potential energy through Oppenheimer’s eyes, and it’s both mesmerising and terrifying – the moments later on in which Oppenheimer imagines a nuke going off right next to him will be lingering in my mind for a long while. The effects work and practical sets and designs are as perfect as we’ve come to expect from this team, while Hoyte van Hoytema’s cinematography is gorgeous, whether in the warmth of a tryst between Oppenheimer and his lover Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh, as magnetic as ever) or the monochrome coldness of a Washington DC hearing.
The whole thing is propulsive as all hell, fuelled by Jennifer Lame’s intense and intuitive editing and Ludwig Goransson’s unforgettable score. Though it comes only 2/3 of the way through the film, the grandest culmination of everyone’s respective talents (aside from the truly haunting ending) is, naturally, the Trinity test, in all its grandeur and horror. A breathlessly tense sequence, it pulls off that near-impossible historical biopic trick of making you think maybe, just maybe, the bomb might fail to work, and when it finally does go off Nolan manages to, somehow, make it feel like a huge relief without actually granting catharsis. It’s a moment of triumph, yet also the no-going-back point of one of the most evil things ever built by humanity, and this balance is struck flawlessly.
Over the course of Nolan’s previous 11 films, he’s done weighty, he’s done profound, and he’s done head-spinning thrills in his signature as-practical-as-possible style. Maybe Interstellar is his most purely emotive, maybe Dunkirk is his best work as a pure technician, and maybe Inception or The Dark Knight are his most fun nights out at the movies. Yet, none of them have combined all of his talents like Oppenheimer does, a work of a master filmmaker that he, and very literally he alone, could have got made in today’s movie climate. It’s such a truly immense thrill that this exists (and not just that, that it’s already made a boatload of money), a difficult and deeply personal statement from, quite simply, the only director punching in this weight class.
Jack Blackwell – Film Reviews 
Good review. I felt that this movie was a culmination of Nolan’s work. It was truly cinematic and bold and engaging from start to finish. Definitely worth the hype.