Submitted by movieanon

The film industry is in such disarray that Tom Cruise himself comes onscreen to thank you for seeing his new big budget film in the theater. Writers are on strike. Actors are on strike to help them. Will AI replace both? Would anyone notice? Coming in to save the industry (for at least one weekend) are Barbie and a biopic on a scientist from nearly a century ago. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer delivers a salvation while explaining the damnation or baptism of the world into the atomic age.

Oppenheimer is not a standard Nolan film. There is no great action plot with a payoff. If you are looking for Michael Caine, sorry, he does not appear in this one. This is a biopic. It is a frame story set as the titular character faces a bureaucratic grilling. That this film is exceeding box office expectations is a shock.

Nolan can write and direct a great film. The audience knows this. The visuals are slick and polished as one would expect from Nolan. Cillian Murphy, a Nolan regular, puts in an emotionally heavy performance of the immodest scientist with some flair who has to grapple with what he has unleashed on the world and in his personal life. The music hits the right emotional triggers for scenes. This is all normal Nolan content. That’s table stakes.

This will not satisfy some Nolan fans. It may not even measure up to more serious critics expectations. It drags on a bit at the end as the film gets into bureaucratic minutia and procedural means of sidelining opponents. Criticize that if you wish but you live in an era where a two tier justice system that manipulates law and procedure in a clearly anarco-tyrannical manner is on full display. This is very appropriate for our time. Forget the big names caught in the sick government game; this is hitting small players. “Did you or did you not share that meme in 2016 soldier?!?!” Good luck getting passed on a Standard Form 86.

That drag period though makes the film more interesting. Nolan could have ended Oppenheimer with the Trinity test and success, leaving Oppenheimer answering a final question to reflect on his moral feelings about the bomb. This would have fit standard Nolan “there is a task/MacGuffin” plot structure with that triumphant post-test celebration ending the film with a single scene of Oppenheimer years later conflicted about what he did in the small interrogation room.

The film does not end though and we get to something Hitchcock did on occasion and so successfully in Vertigo. In Vertigo, the big reveal is not that the tartish brunette Judy is the supposedly dead, glamorous Madeleine. That is not the payoff. That reveal is earlier in Vertigo creating anticipation for the bigger payoff of what will the mentally crushed Scottie do when he finds out Judy is Madeleine. This is a biopic and exploration of the man Oppenheimer. The payoff is not Will The Big Bomb Go Off. We already know it did. The build and focus is on what does the big bomb going off take from and do to a man? Was creating the bomb an albatross he carried, weighing down his soul? Oppenheimer was a boastful man who enjoyed the media attention, but popular acclaim is a slim hammock to rest in. The procedural grilling was a fantastic frame story for showcasing his glories and misdeeds. It was not a trial, but his soul was on trial in a manner.

Oppenheimer was a fellow traveler communist at best and communist party member at worst. He did not pass on secrets. He did take odd stances on things as time went on, and maybe this was seeing the effects of atomic weapons or maybe this was Soviet sympathies playing out. I highly recommend Dark Sun for greater exploration of Oppenheimer’s change and mercurial behavior. Oppenheimer developed cold feet about nuking opponents after the Nazis surrendered. He had peculiar ideas about sharing nuke knowledge with the world to prevent use. He did not want to develop an H-bomb, which would regain the atomic advantage for America.

Oppenheimer, the film, tackles these issues, superficially, but paints a full picture of Oppenheimer, the man. He is not a god, not death destroyer of worlds, but a man. An egotistical, cheating, selfish and driven man. He was also brilliant and delivered on a promise to the government and indirectly to the American people to create a weapon to end the war. To see this film succeed is an encouraging surprise in the stumbling environment that is 2020s Hollywood. Hopefully, the film nudges some viewers to look into the weirdness of all those communists working in federal projects. The revisionist biographies, forgotten memoirs and dives into Venona are out there, and Hollywood will never turn them into $100 million blockbusters.