Geologists divide time into epochs, which can last tens of millions of years. The end of one epoch and the beginning of another is marked by clearly definable features in the geological record, such as the layer of extraterrestrial iridium laid down at the end of the Cretaceous by the asteroid which killed the dinosaurs. All of human history has taken place in the Holocene epoch, but recently, the effects of climate change and industrial society have led scientists to the conclusion that we are living in a new epoch. The Anthropocene is defined as the time when human actions became more important to the state of planet Earth than natural activity. The Anthropocene’s beginning is represented by a layer of radioactive fallout from Cold War atomic bomb tests which will remain visible in the soil and rocks for millions of years.
The first atomic bomb was detonated in New Mexico in July, 1945, and the man history calls its father is J. Robert Oppenheimer. He was a brilliant physicist who had led a titanic effort to win a war by harnessing the very essence of the universe. Twenty years later, as the growing nuclear arsenals of the United States and the USSR threatened humanity with mass extinction, Oppenheimer was interviewed on television about what it was like when his bomb went off. He said he remembered a quote from Hindu scripture: “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”
Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is about how a person can go from the pinnacle of scientific achievement to a hollowed-out husk of a man trying to atone for the evil he unleashed on the world. The three-hour epic, shot on IMAX film stock specially formulated for the task, is ostensibly based on Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s biography American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. But Nolan owes a conceptual debt to Michael Frayn’s Tony-award-winning drama Copenhagen. Frayn used repetition and multiple points of view to tell the story of a fateful conversation between physicist Werner Heisenberg, head of the Nazi nuclear program, and his mentor Niels Bohr, who was about to flee to the United States.
Nolan takes us through Oppenheimer’s rise and fall from two different points of view: One POV, titled “Fission,” is Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) defending his life choices to a committee which would ultimately revoke his security clearances and end his career. The other POV, titled “Fusion” is Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey, Jr.), the first Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, as he faces a Senate confirmation hearing to become Eisenhower’s Secretary of Commerce. Fission, which covers Oppenhimer’s chaotic personal life and the development of the bomb, is in color, while Fusion, which details the anti-Communist witch hunt which destroyed him, is in black and white.
In the color memories, Murphy embodies the quiet, enigmatic charisma described by those who followed Oppenheimer into the darkness of Los Alamos. In the creamy black and white of Fusion, he becomes the skeletal embodiment of the industrial death machine. Downey is unrecognizable as the duplicitous social climber Strauss. Matt Damon is outstanding as Gen. Leslie Groves, the back-slapping Army Corps of Engineers officer who is in way over his head overseeing the Manhattan Project. Jason Clarke gives the performance of his life as Roger Robb, the attack dog prosecutor who exposes Oppenheimer’s darkest secrets.
Nolan’s always had problems writing female characters, so the women don’t have much to work with. Emily Blunt is all drunken hysterics as Kitty Oppenheimer. Florence Pugh puts up a good fight as Jean Tatlock, Oppenheimer’s doomed Communist mistress.
The Trinity bomb test, which comes about two hours into this three-hour epic, is a near-silent tour de force of fire and portent. The scientist’s queasy victory party, held in a cramped Los Alamos gymnasium, may be the best single scene Nolan has ever done.
If only the whole movie were that great. Oppenheimer is both too long and has too many cuts—a cinematic quantum paradox! At times, Nolan seems acutely aware that he’s making a movie about a bunch of weirdos writing equations on blackboards for years on end. He tries to spice things up by editing dense conversations about physics, philosophy, and politics like frenetic action sequences. In one gorgeous shot, we see Oppenheimer finally alone with The Gadget that will define a new geological epoch. It should be the tense calm before the storm, but Nolan and editor Jennifer Lame bury that gold in a blizzard of mediocre images. I found myself wishing Ludwig Göransson’s relentless, pounding score would just chill for a minute. The nonlinear structure that works so well in Copenhagen hobbles the forward momentum, and makes the complex story even more confusing.
Oppenhiemer is a return to form for Nolan after the fiasco of Tenet. There’s a great movie hiding amidst all of the formal pyrotechnics. But I guess it’s too much to ask for a lighter touch from a director who is about as subtle as an atomic bomb.
