Oppenheimer

Oppenheimer hit theaters July 21, 2023, Christopher Nolan’s dramatized retelling of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer’s work during World War II. With Nolan’s The Odyssey on the way, this is a look back at his last film.

It is a biographical drama about the father of the atomic bomb: student years before the weapon’s conception, the Manhattan Project and Trinity test, and the aftermath of the bombs dropped on Japan. Dramatized, not documentary-straight. The security clearance hearing and Lewis Strauss’s Senate confirmation hearing run as backdrop through the film and land as the climax.

It opened to near-unanimous praise, thirteen Oscar nominations, seven wins including Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Picture. It earned those, except one. Ludwig Göransson’s score is great. That award should have gone to Godzilla Minus One.

Bits aside, Oppenheimer is a genuinely great movie and worth the three-hour ask. I cannot swear to every historical beat in a dramatization. On filmmaking merits, watch it. You know the Allies win. You know the bombs get built and used. Acting, dialogue, and structure still build suspense. Trinity is the clearest example. You know it works; the hook becomes how they pull it off and how it will look. In the theater the room went silent. Remarkable. Testing the bomb could have been the climax. It is the end of act two. This is a character drama: Oppenheimer’s life with peers, friends, and wife, and how clashing scientific and political egos drove the decisions.

Three hours is long. Even great films that long make you feel it. What carries you is story, and more than that, performance. This one drags in places; you feel the runtime. The cast keeps you hooked. No real weak links, plenty of standouts. Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr. won Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor and deserved both. When they are on screen, you stay. Murphy plays the thrill of discovery and the dread of what that discovery means for the future. Amazing work.

I joked about the score Oscar. Clarifying: Göransson’s music makes the film work. Without “Can You Hear the Music?” in act one, this would be significantly worse. That scene is the buy-in for the movie and for caring about Oppenheimer’s life. Still does not change my vote. Minus One was the better overall soundtrack.

This is a movie you watch once. In three years I have never felt pulled to revisit it. Partly the runtime. Mostly, the first viewing gives you everything you are going to get. Not good or bad. A beige flag, as the kids say. You should see it. I would not blame you for never putting it on again. I do not go out of my way to.

Weird theater note: the intimate scene with Florence Pugh’s character, where he reads the Hindu line, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” the same line from the 1956 news interview. Nothing inherently funny about it. In the moment all I could think was, wait, was he thinking about Florence when he said that on TV? Not the face of a man crushing under history. Face of a man thinking about fun times with Florence. Oppenheimer, you dirty dog. Not what the scene implies. Stuck in my head anyway.

Great movie. Worth your time for at least one viewing. Nine out of 10.