That Oppenheimer is director Christopher Nolan’s most ‘grown-up’ work in years is something we sense from the opening scene, when the protagonist – an astoundingly good Cillian Murphy – stares at ripples in a puddle. The ‘father of the atomic bomb’ is probably thinking about legacy. And yet, nothing quite prepares us for a scene when an unclothed Oppenheimer is slinkily seated on a sofa with his legs crossed, across from his lover Jean (Florence Pugh) in a hotel room.It’s a flashback linked to a hearing, where the pioneer scientist is being grilled about his past ‘transgressions’ while being vetted for security clearance. Oppenheimer was married to Kitty (Emily Blunt) at the time, and Jean was known to be a card-carrying communist, especially on the brink of the Cold War. The hearing seems determined to discredit the man behind the Manhattan Project.Seated at the hearing wearing a crisp suit, the camera slowly pans from behind a character and we see stark-naked Oppenheimer in front of the committee. We soon realise we’re watching the scene from Kitty’s point-of-view, who is seeing her husband stripped of all dignity. She imagines Jean seated on his lap, staring directly at her. It’s an ingenious and confident swing by a director who hasn’t filmed a sex scene or nudity in nearly two decades.Nolan – one of the most hotly-debated filmmakers among cinephiles – revered for his big canvas ideas and, simultaneously reviled for writing himself into corners, is on solid ground in the biopic of one of the most important figures of the 20th century. Adapted from Kai Bird and Martin J Sherwin’s Pulitzer-winner, American Prometheus: The Triumph & Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer – this is arguably Nolan at his most socially conscious. Like most of his heroes, obsessive men each of them, Nolan mines Oppenheimer for a haunted guy, long before he manifested the power for humans to become destroyers of the world. When he’s asked about his time studying amongst the world’s greatest scientific minds in Europe, he testifies to being homesick, terrible in the laboratory, and unable to sleep because of visions of ‘another world’. Nolan’s filmmaking is dynamic in this part – filling the screen with wondrous images.He tells the story of Oppenheimer primarily through two sets of hearings – one where the scientist is asked about his alleged links to the Communist party, while his colleagues and friends are being made to testify about patriotism for America. Another is a congressional hearing of Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.) being vetted for a Cabinet position and asked about his dynamic with Oppenheimer over the years. Nolan differentiates the two timelines by showing Oppenheimer’s hearing and flashbacks in radiant colour, while Strauss’ flashbacks and hearing appear in sharp black-and-white. It’s an efficient way to distinguish, prompting a rhythm for the visuals.Oppenheimer is a busy film with familiar faces in abundance. Downey Jr, who spent the better part of the last decade playing the smartest man in most films, plays a slimy politician with a chip on his shoulder. Matt Damon, who had a sensational special appearance in Interstellar (2014), gets a sizable role in this one as Lt. General Groves – who recruits Oppenheimer to be the director of the Manhattan project. Damon’s portly physique and self-assured tone is nicely at odds with Cillian Murphy’s frail build, but high-powered rebuttals. As Jean, Florence Pugh burns bright like a shooting star, for the few minutes she is on screen. Emily Blunt as Kitty is ferociously no-nonsense, which reminded me of Claire Foy’s turn as Janet Armstrong in First Man (2018). Casey Affleck is chilling in a cameo as Boris Pash – in-charge of security of the Manhattan project – sneaking up on his subjects with his boyish, unassuming manner, before quietly trapping them.The film, however, belongs to Cillian Murphy showcasing the many sides to Oppenheimer’s personality. A brilliant scientist, he’s also equally immersed in social justice. We’re told he contributes a portion of his paycheck to help German colleagues escape the Nazi regime. He’s the “mayor” and “sheriff” of the town built around the Los Alamos laboratory in New Mexico but sobs like a teenager after being delivered bad news about a loved one. He’s curious and ambitious about accomplishing something dangerous – because he says it’s better he discovers it, as opposed to fascists in Germany or Russia. However, he’s also equally torn about where this game of one-upmanship stops. A colleague accuses him of having become a ‘politician, who has left science far behind’, while trying to convince him to be their voice in the ears of the bigwig politicians in D.C, who haven’t fully grasped the direction they’re taking the world in.As much as Oppenheimer is a showcase for its lead actor and director, the film also benefits tremendously from Ludwig Gorranson’s terrific score and Richard King’s excellent sound design. Especially, in three of the biggest scenes that Nolan sets up – the Trinity tests, the scene in which Kitty is summoned to testify about her husband’s character, and the ‘victory’ speech that Oppenheimer has to find his way through after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are announced as a ‘success’. Gorranson’s score is equal parts delicate and muscular, creeping up on the visuals or otherwise enhancing them in every which way. King’s impeccably designed silence fills up our senses about the magnitude of the Trinity test, without having us hear it.It’s probably for the best that Nolan fell out with long-time producers, Warner Bros, after the botched-up experience of releasing Tenet (2020) in theatres. It obviously resulted in every major studio and streaming service lining up outside the writer/director’s house for Oppenheimer. This has resulted in Nolan’s most unambiguously personal film in a long time, where he takes the life of a scientist – treated like a prophet during a World War, and later demoted to a mortal as soon as he began casting doubts on his own breakthrough. Gary Oldman as president Harry Truman – is outstanding in the one scene, becoming the face of an establishment that winces at Oppenheimer’s “cry-baby” attitude, when he asks them to scale down on nuclear weapons.One of the most stirring things about this excellently dense and jumpy biopic is that Nolan never tries to reconcile his subjects’ contradictions. If anything, he realises the futility of trying to know the unknowable. Who was J. Robert Oppenheimer? A film can make an educated guess based on recorded actions and anecdotes. There will always be gaps, and Nolan doesn’t pretend otherwise. Instead, choosing to grapple with a larger question – what does Oppenheimer’s predicament mean for the generation today? Only our lives depend on it.
