Movie Review: “Oppenheimer”

By Josh Lasser on July 20, 2023 • ( 0 )

Is a movie compelling because the story is compelling or is a movie compelling due to the manner in which it is told? Ideally, of course, it’s both and regrettably, not every movie succeeds on both fronts. Sometimes one overshadows the other. In the case of Christopher Nolan’s latest, “Oppenheimer,” there are definitely moments when the telling actively hurts the tale.

As we have seen so often with Nolan’s work, the writer-director loves playing with time. Whether it is in repeated flashbacks or time travel or giving the story backwards or using three different time scales for a single movie, it is an obsession and one that has often been used to great effect. In offering the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, one of the men behind the creation of the atomic bomb, it is not. Worse, seeing the movie in Nolan’s seemingly preferred 70mm IMAX format only adds to the distraction. The problem is not that the movie fails to be exciting or compelling, but the overwhelming sense of showmanship Nolan imparts makes it far less elucidating than it otherwise might be.

Beautifully played by Cillian Murphy, we are given Oppenheimer at multiple points in his life. Naturally, we get his work at Los Alamos and the atomic bomb, but we also get some of his life before and a bit of the after. Seemingly (yes, a caveat, but this was definitely my takeaway),Nolan offers whatever the “present” might be in Oppenheimer’s temporal tale in color and the future—whether Oppenheimer’s or that of Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.), and much of it is indeed about Strauss—in black and white. It helps situate the viewer, yes, but there’s also a sense of “aren’t I so clever” giving the future in the way we often view the past.

In one of the future time periods, Strauss, who both served on and acted as Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, is sitting through confirmation hearings so that he might become Secretary of Commerce under Eisenhower. A plethora of the questions he is asked are in regards to Oppenheimer having his clearance revoked while Strauss was on the AEC. So we get as future and present those hearings about Oppenheimer’s security status as well.

As opposed to playing a lot of the scenes from start to finish, Nolan will give us bits and pieces of them only to jump to some other time before (maybe) returning to the scene later. There are reasons of course for when we see what we see, but that doesn’t make it less jolting to constantly be shifting around.

If all of that wasn’t enough, we are offered a plethora of aspect ratios over the course of a movie—in fact over the course of a single moment. And it isn’t just aspect ratios that change, it’s the grain of the film stock as well. If modern action films are plagued by quick cuts that actively hurt one’s sense of what is taking place, Nolan’s biopic is plagued with quick aspect ratio changes that do the same. About halfway through the movie, this reviewer was thrilled to have seen it in IMAX and desperately looking forward to seeing a more traditional presentation as well.

The effect of the time jumps presents a problem similar to that of the ever-changing aspect ratio — we lose character. At one point in the movie, Oppenheimer is described as a “womanizer.” While that may very well be the case, it is not in evidence over the course of the film’s three hours. Yes, he seems to have been involved with three different women at various points in his life (maybe four?), but the implication in the moment is that there have been far more than what we’ve been shown. When that possibly could have happened, or how, is not in evidence. We are given a man who is absorbed by his work, absorbed by what might be.

Or, maybe not. Maybe so much of what we’re shown about Oppenheimer is the view of Strauss looking back on things. Maybe it is an opinion clouded by time and who knows how many other human emotions. What it is not, is clear.

By the time we get to the end of the movie, one has the sense that Nolan has been pulling some sort of heist, that what we think we’ve been watching maybe isn’t what we’ve been watching. It seems unlikely that we are supposed to understand early on exactly what is taking place and are just not smart enough to do so, but rather that we’re getting another “aren’t I so clever” moment from Nolan. The impact of this is lessened, however, due to the film’s jolty nature.

Working in favor of “Oppenheimer,” beyond a doubt, is the incredible story of who this man was and what he helped accomplish, of the idea of bringing together so many great minds for a singular purpose. When the moments at Los Alamos become propulsive enough, even Nolan agrees to sit back and simply let it play out rather than bothering with the other time periods. Even he knows better than to continue with the shenanigans.

Also working for the film is the cast which the director has assembled. It is a list of great people doing great work. It is, if one is looking to make such connections, the acting version of Los Alamos’s scientists with appearances by Matthew Modine, Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh, Kenneth Branagh, Josh Hartnett, David Dastmalchian, Tom Conti, and Benny Safdie to name a few.

Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” is mot definitely a good movie and Nolan’s defenders will undoubtedly hawk the work as the director in top form. For most, however, it will be a great story told in mediocre fashion, imparting the definite sense that it could have been more than it is.