Dallas Film Now.

Cillian Murphy stars in a movie by Christopher Nolan.

Tearing pages out of a book and throwing them on screen, writer/director Christopher Nolan fashions Oppenheimer as an indie drama about An Important Subject. 

Supported by an all-star cast, including Robert Downey Jr., Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh, Jason Clarke, and Kenneth Branagh, Cillian Murphy stars as J. Robert Oppenheimer, a prickly intellectual with a thinly-veiled contempt for people in general, who all call him a genius and/or ‘the greatest mind of our generation,’ to the extent that it’s taken for granted that he must be a great man, even though the film never truly conveys why he is viewed as such an exalted man and with such awe and respect. 

It’s kind of like The Wizard of Oz, except that Toto, played by Christopher Nolan, never succeeds in pulling the veil of mystery completely away from the Great and Powerful Oppenheimer. We’re left with the clear impression that he is unknowable, cloaked in mystery, his true nature never to be revealed. 

Beginning with his first feature film, Following (1998), Nolan has manifested a great interest in the why and the when of human behavior, often framing his inquiries in a series of interlocking puzzles, as can be seen in Memento (2000), Insomnia (2002), The Prestige (2006), Inception (2010), Interstellar (2014), and Tenet (2020). His Batman trilogy, together with Dunkirk (2017), are painted on a different sort of canvas, where characters drive their actions, motivated by comic book logic or historical records. 

Returning to World War II and endeavoring to understand the environment that led to the creation of the Atom Bomb, obviously a turning point in human history, Nolan focuses on J. Robert Oppenheimer as a means to tell a larger story. He also plunges into Oppenheimer as a man out of his time, starting with Oppenheimer post-fame and glory as the so-called ‘father of the atom bomb’ to a time when he is under investigation for his past actions. 

The motivation for the investigation appears to be a slight suffered by Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.), former head of the Atomic Energy Commission during World War II and later under consideration for a cabinet position in the U.S. Presidency. During World War II, Strauss approached Oppenheimer about heading up the Manhattan Project, which ultimately developed the atomic bomb. During that ‘approach,’ Oppenheimer spoke with Albert Einstein (Tom Conti) in private; as Einstein walked away from the meeting, he ignored Strauss when the latter greeted him and was ignored. 

We’re meant to understand that, infuriated by what he perceived as an intentional slight engineered by Oppenheimer, Strauss proceeded to act against Oppenheimer after the war, leading to Oppenheimer being humiliated, subjected to insulting questions from a senate judiciary panel, with Jason Clarke as lead bully/insulter Roger Robb, losing his standing in the scientific community and the world at large, and so forth and so on and on. 

The endless questioning composes the majority of the third act of the movie, which is also when Oppenheimer himself, in the years after the atomic bomb killed hundreds of thousands of people in Japan, experienced heartfelt regret, even nightmares, over his actions at the behest of his government. The entire movie, then, is about how one man allowed his intense intellectual brilliance to blind him to what he was doing. 

Really, it’s about how one man, obsessed with solving a puzzle, ignored the possible consequences of his actions, to the point that he blocked out what he was doing to the people around him, especially his destructive relationships with two women: the doomed Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh) and, later, his wife Kitty (Emily Blunt). At one point in the movie, he is called ‘a ladies’ man,’ though it’s difficult to see why, since he pays little attention to them beyond using Jean for sex and using Kitty for the facade of a family life, complete with children he rarely sees. 

Perhaps that’s a commentary on how men viewed women in the 1940s. To be certain, though, it’s difficult to see how Oppenheimer inspires any friendships, though loyalty from a few men emerge much later. Mostly, it’s Oppenheimer, obsessed. 

Raw in her emotions, Florence Pugh plays a pitiable character with burning intensity. Emily Blunt does her best to navigate a character whose motivation is never entirely clear. Matt Damon plays a military man overseeing the Manhattan Project and lends the movie its few lighter moments amidst his commanding actions as General Groves. 

Robert Downey Jr. effectively portrays the multi-nuanced role of Lewis Strauss. Cillian Murphy is more intense than the atomic bomb itself, since he is the fulcrum. He is scary good in the role.  

Even with all the fine performances and the absorbing production design, I’m sorry to say that Oppenheimer didn’t work for me. Certainly, I appreciate Christopher Nolan’s ambition, and desire to tell a story that needs to be told, but I felt like I was stuck in a classroom for three hours while a series of learned professors lectured me, hectoring me for being stupid, unable to understand or grasp the meaning of a Very Important Subject. 

Ultimately, the movie portrays J. Robert Oppenheimer as an inscrutable character who deserves great accolades for making it possible for the U.S. to kill hundreds of thousands of people in Japan. Because Christopher Nolan consistently flashes back and forth in time, it’s difficult to grasp the import of his actions as they’re happening. 

When the movie returns to the time period when it began, it also shifts the focus from Oppenheimer as an active participant, the leader, to a glum and unhappy victim of persecution by people who are themselves the true evil. Thus, it seems to equate the facilitating of mass murder with character assassination. 

Now, certainly it can be argued that dropping the atom bombs shortened the war and saved American lives. Oppenheimer, as a movie, does not make that argument. Instead, it stays carefully away from presenting the Japanese perspective or the German perspective of the Russian perspective or the perspective of people who were living in Los Alamos, New Mexico, when the Manhattan Project came to town. 

Very clearly, this is a portrait of one man and the times in which he lived, through his perspective. Memories and their haunted, destructive power play a part as well. Really, Oppenheimer is a giant puzzle that Christopher Nolan endeavors to decipher, and is not able to do so, to understand why he did what he did. 

Note: Review expanded 7/24/23.

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Note: this review is based on a single viewing, a local screening that was a complete disaster. Even though most of the audience arrived by 6:30 pm for the scheduled 7:00 pm screening, we were not allowed into the non-IMAX AMC Northpark auditorium until 7:43 or so, with the movie starting about 10 minutes later. 

No reasons were given for the delay, but as soon as the movie started, I wondered why it looked so … terrible, like a videotape on a huge, 35mm screen, like we were watching through a screen door. At first I thought it was an artistic decision to make the opening scene or two different from what was to follow, but no: that was the entire movie!

Perhaps needless to say, this made the entire experience rather miserable, with some scenes going out of focus to a distracting degree. I’m partially disabled, so I couldn’t go running down the stairs to ask an usher or the publicist what was happening. I sat there and tried to make the most of what I was watching. 

Eventually, I concluded that the likely reason for the long, unexplained delay was that the projectionist was trying to fix whatever was wrong with what was on screen. Eventually, the decision was made — by someone, I don’t know who — that nothing more could be done, and so it was best to screen the movie as it was, and hope that no one would notice. 

First as a festival screener, then as a film critic, I have watched many movies in less than optimal conditions, from worn VHS tapes to low-resolution DVDs to online screeners with my email address plastered across the middle of the screen. This, however, was the worst I have ever seen any movie projected in a movie theater. 

To claim that it didn’t affect my opinion of the movie that I watched would be dishonest. Truthfully, it was like sitting with a burr under my backside for three hours. 

Even so, given all that, I’m sorry to say that Oppenheimer didn’t work for me. Certainly, I appreciate Christopher Nolan’s ambition, and desire to tell a story that needs to be told, but I felt like I was stuck in a classroom for three hours while a series of learned professors lectured me, hectoring me for being stupid, unable to understand or grasp the meaning of a Very Important Subject. 

Maybe I’ll do better with a second viewing at home. Eventually. 

The film opens Friday, July 19, via Universal Studios, at multiple locations throughout Dallas and Fort Worth. For more information about the film, visit the official site.