Oppenheimer (2023) * * 1/2

 

Directed by:  Christopher Nolan

Starring:  Cillian Murphy, Matt Damon, Florence Pugh, Emily Blunt, Robert Downey, Jr., Jack Quaid, Josh Hartnett, Kenneth Branagh, Tom Conti, James Remar, Jason Clarke

Oppenheimer's most powerful and suspenseful moments occur during the testing of the atomic bomb weeks before they were detonated at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  After years of secrecy, in-fighting, and hard work in Los Alamos, New Mexico, which was constructed solely to house and feed those working on the Manhattan Project, the tense hours before dawn were the test of whether such a bomb would work.  It does, the rest is history, and J. Robert Oppenheimer spent the rest of his life trying to dissuade others from ever using such a weapon.  His battle with his conscience led to a hearing years later to have his security clearance revoked.  The hearing was the brainchild of Lewis Strauss (Downey), who had personal and political reasons for despising Oppenheimer.  

Oppenheimer clocks in at three hours, which is becoming the norm rather than the exception for movies these days.   The least interesting portions of Oppenheimer take place in the first hour, which cover Oppenheimer's formative years as a physicist at Oxford and later in Germany.   Oppenheimer isn't told in linear fashion, with the movie jumping back and forth quickly between different periods in Oppenheimer's life.  Editor Jennifer Lame is given a workout and will likely win the Oscar for her work for making Nolan's vision make as much sense as it does.  I'm not sure the story needed to be told in such a fashion because it leads to confusion as to who was doing what to whom, but at least it isn't Tenet.  

Oppenheimer spends a lot of time on the hearing in which witnesses are brought forth to either defend or eviscerate Oppenheimer's character.   Through it all, the physicist maintains a sense of fair play even when others are out for blood.   Cillian Murphy, as Oppenheimer and a veteran of Christopher Nolan films, plays the "father of the atomic bomb" with quiet dignity but who is not a saint and forever at war with himself.  Married to Kitty (Blunt), he nonetheless carries on an affair with the unpredictable and unhinged Jean Tatlock (Pugh), who isn't the marrying type but wants Oppenheimer to be at her beck and call.  Murphy avoids the actor's trap of overemoting and instead internalizes Oppenheimer's pressures which would implode a lesser man.  Downey, Jr. and Damon provide the most memorable support as the vengeful Strauss and General Leslie Groves, who oversaw the Manhattan Project with determination and by being a prick when he needed to be.  

The natural climax of Oppenheimer is the successful Trinity Test of July 1945, but then the hearings in a back office away from public scrutiny occur which hold Oppenheimer's professional fate in the hands of Strauss' hand-picked executioners.  Why does Strauss hate Oppenheimer?  Besides his dislike for the fact that Oppenheimer did not embrace his own Jewish heritage, Oppenheimer unwittingly publicly humiliates Strauss during another hearing.   Once we learn Strauss' motives, we root for Oppenheimer to upend them, although this doesn't engross us as much as it could have.   Oppenheimer itself, while superbly produced on a technical level which is par for the course for Nolan's films, is too uneven to be fully effective.