(2023) dir. Christopher Nolan Rated: R
Christopher Nolan has done it yet again. He’s delivered a poignant, masterfully crafted 3-hour epic in Oppenheimer that’s riveted audiences across 70mm IMAX theaters this summer. Much of that is due to the stellar score by Ludwig Göransson (Black Panther, Tenet) and the ensemble cast’s impressive performance. (I haven’t seen Barbie, so I can’t comment on that part of the cinema scene.)
I initially doubted the casting directors’ decision to stack the cast with some of Hollywood’s biggest names; I almost felt like I was sweeping my gaze across the Academy Awards stage reading the list. Understandably, some aren’t given much to work with despite their status, even with the 3-hour runtime (Rami Malek), but Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr. absolutely steal the show as J. Robert Oppenheimer and Lewis Strauss. Can they steal the show even if they’re the main characters?
My only regret is that I couldn’t completely follow the story since I couldn’t understand the dialogue in many scenes. There were widespread complaints about Tenet’s unintelligible dialogue some years back; Oppenheimer might be suffering from the same issue, or perhaps I’m simply losing my hearing.
That isn’t to say the audio effects weren’t executed well. In the most significant moments, we hear this sound - almost like a particle whooshing around a particle accelerator. We recognize the same pattern in the opening track to the score, “Fission”. The opening string melody represents the particles and their constituents’ disordered states. Around the halfway point, the strings give way to a repeated C# note playing in a polyrhythm—perhaps the subatomic particles orbiting at different periods. As for the most recognizable track, “Can You Hear the Music”, the same repeated note accelerates rapidly as the strings crescendo, heavily reminiscent of that particle accelerator.
Accompanied by visuals of glowing nebulous objects streaking across the screen in elliptical trajectories, I can’t help but feel that this audiovisual cue is symbolic of Oppenheimer’s own life. His life’s trajectory—or orbit?—draws closer to the fateful Manhattan Project and Trinity test as he experiences the events in the film: meeting Einstein and Fermi, spreading quantum mechanics to America, obsessively working on bringing the project to fruition, realizing what he had created but powerless to stop it. The visuals begin as separate cutscenes intercut between slices of Oppenheimer’s life. However, as his increasingly troubled mind brings the phantom visions to the screen alongside him and not as intercut sequences, he’s increasingly closer to meeting his fate: becoming the father of the Atomic Bomb, the most destructive weapon humankind had ever known.
To further delve into Oppenheimer’s psyche, sound and the lack thereof are used extensively. The world goes mute—empty—when he is at his most vulnerable, either professionally or familially. In those moments, the single sound effect the Foley artists choose to highlight rings in our ears, swallowing us into Murphy’s acting as the man with the biggest regret in the world.
The Trinity Test sequence is one that executes this exceptionally well. The silent atomic explosion reminds us of the spacewalk scenes in Gravity or Interstellar, where centrifugal forces rip space stations apart without a sound in the cold emptiness of space. As the blast balloons upward in a mushroom cloud of red and orange and black devastation, the film reminds us of the sheer power unleashed by the invisible forces within the bomb on that day.
As the film reaches its conclusion, Oppenheimer’s visceral regret is clear. Despite knowing about the horror his actions and knowledge caused, we can’t help but sympathize with him when Truman calls him a “crybaby scientist” or when he painfully recounts his affair with Jean while his wife listens with a stony face. Murphy speaks few words in the last minutes of the tale, and he does not need to. His expressions alone are enough to convey the existential dread as his marriage crumbled, his reputation tarnished, and his life's work burned people to ashes.
Oppenheimer's success ultimately lies in its ability to show with visuals and music what words cannot. The best poet in the world couldn't do justice to the destruction wrought by the bombs on Hiroshima or Nagasaki or the sea of remorse Oppenheimer faced. ("And Nagasaki," says Oppenheimer to Truman after the latter fails to mention the second city during their conversation. In the physicist's mind, every civilian killed is another weight pressing upon his shoulders.) The shoes beating upon the floor, the crisp body crunching under Oppenheimer's boot, the silent soundscape—all of it conveys his devastation at his own creation in a way that no monologue ever could. That is the beauty, and the horror, of the film.
Overall, this review only reflects my embarrassingly marginal understanding of the film’s plot. I hope to fully comprehend the film’s scale someday, but only time (and my minuscule attention span) will tell if that means revisiting the theater for a 3-hour epic.
End score: 9/10
*****
Some more insightful reviews of Oppenheimer:
Science fiction about nuclear energy:
Dr. Strangelove
WarGames
best review 🤞