“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

Attending Cambridge University to study quantum mechanics taught nowhere in America, native New Yorker Julius Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) is encouraged by Neils Bohr (Kenneth Branagh) to get out of the lab and travel abroad, landing at the University of Göttingen, Germany in 1926. His research leads him to spearheading the theoretical physics program at the University of California, Berkeley, where he dabbled in labor party meetings and consided the astrophysics of stars collapsing into black holes. With a dutiful wife (Emily Blunt), a sometimes mistress (Florence Pugh), and a mandate from Lieutenant General Leslie Groves (Matt Damon), Oppenheimer directed the creation of a nuclear weapon for the United States, earning him international fame… which he turned into a platform urging nuclear armistice. The revoking of his security clearance as a U.S. Energy Commision advisor crushed Oppenheimer’s spirit and activism, but the sum of the man’s life comes down to a brief conversation with a man named Albert Einstein (Tom Conti).

It’s an easy thing to wish Jurassic Park’s Ian Malcolm onto the scientists sequestered at Los Alamos, New Mexico in 1943, or perhaps remind them of the stern warning offered in 1818 by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, subtitled “The Modern Prometheus.” Writer/director Christopher Nolan turns a biopic spotlight with thriller intent upon J. Robert Oppenheimer, dubbed “The father of the atomic bomb” for organizing the Manhattan Project. What few understood was the worry already in the scientist’s mind about using a weapon of mass destruction, but the fear of any foreign power creating it first drowned out those doubts… until it was too late. In a story told from both an inward and outward point of view, how will audiences judge the scientist, the activist, and the mere mortal who forever changed the world?

Big on practical effects and insisting upon creating Trinity atomic test footage without CGI, Nolan builds his tell-all in and around a skewed security clearance renewal, enabling Oppenheimer to recall and recant in-character the details of his life. As an intense three-hour exposé, the story paints a very human version of the man while glossing over some of the details of his anxiety and depression. This delivery vehicle also demands its own closure, such as the conclusion of Lewis Strauss’s Senate conformation hearing (and all the future supporting-actor award nominations later for Robert Downey Jr.’s portrayal). Cillian Murphy eerily becomes Oppenheimer; even a casual glance online reveals how exacting the portrayal was with every nuance. Tasked with the impossible, this is the story of a broken man capable of changing the world and the realization his accomplishments would deservedly destroy him.

With so much to tell, three hours doesn’t seem like enough. The story isn’t exactly linear, moving back and forth across the man’s life in recollection from two points of view: Oppenheimer’s “subjective experience” in color (according to Nolan) and another’s outsider view in black and white. These changeovers are effectively done to group certain plot points together, especially between concurrent events outside of the main character’s purview. With a parade of characters and name actors portraying them, one in particular seems under-served: the brief appearances of Pugh’s Jean Tatlock. As a psychiatrist (a detail that wasn’t clear) maintaining a friends-with-benefits relationship with Oppenheimer, the film makes the pairing feel incidental in spite of a moment of paranoia where he imagined her being targeted. It isn’t clear why Oppenheimer’s documented and similar mental health issues were set aside, reducing Tatlock into a plot point of gratuity. Maybe something had to go to keep the runtime under three hours, but it would have been better if it wasn’t this.

There’s a running theme throughout the film: pretty people in pretty rooms deciding the fate of humanity, some out of fear and some to consolidate their own power. A choice was clearly made not to show existing photos of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that followed the actual bombing, substituting Oppenheimer’s imagination of what it could have been like if Los Alamos were the target instead. This effectively counters any false patriotism gleaned from the destruction of up to 226,000 people in Japan as ordered by President Harry S. Truman (ghoulishly portrayed by Gary Oldman) who was only too happy to take full credit. There was no conscientious objection from Oppenheimer when he set to building a nuclear weapon, naively believing its very existence would procure a lasting peace on Earth… instead of igniting a Cold War with Russia and the subsequent Red Scare which was his undoing.

In a film featuring brilliant minds, advanced math, and theoretical sciences, Nolan doesn’t expect moviegoers to know the minutiae. The script provides clever and concise examples to move the story along, such as glass bowls filled with marbles as a countdown clock to the first atomic test. To paraphrase Bohr in the film, it’s important to grasp the big picture, to hear the music. To quote Einstein, “I want to know (God’s) thoughts; the rest are just details.” Still, the best description of Oppenheimer may be from the Cyberdyne Systems Model 101 Series 800 Terminator: “It’s in your nature to destroy yourselves.”

Oppenheimer is rated R for some sexuality, nudity, language, and gallows humor.

Four skull recommendation out of four

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