Oppenheimer Was Just as Great as They Said

To follow through on the one-two punch for reviews of the two major Oscar-nominated films from this year's Academy Awards, I want to spend a little time talking about Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer." I'll admit that I hadn't seen the film until recently, and this was due to talk of a decent smattering of adult content in the film that, in all honesty, steered me away from it for a long time, maybe because I'm not used to that kind of thing in a Nolan film? I mean, imagine if Cooper had just casually started taking his clothes off in Interstellar (am I allowed to make that joke on a Christian review blog?) The film kind of just sat in my watchlist collecting dust while I went on to watch some other things, but then I decided simply to skip over some things I didn't necessarily want to see in the movie, and let me tell you: boy, am I glad I ended up watching it. Oppenheimer is an absolute masterpiece in every sense of the word, just like it was hyped up to me, and while I'll probably have to let some of the recency bias settle, after I finished watching this film initially, I found myself asking a question I didn't think I would have even considered before I started it:

"Is this the best movie I've ever seen?"

Just about every aspect of this movie is so perfect and unexpectedly distinct that it's almost intimidating to even talk about it. Its best-picture win was absolutely earned, and I will rightfully riot if it isn't considered a classic one day because it's not just a brilliantly written or brilliantly acted film (which it is on both fronts). It's also an unusual film on a fundamental level and unmistakably a Nolan project from the very core of its being, despite being a historical biopic, which should have and probably did make it considerably more difficult for Nolan to bring his trademark directing style to bear. Beyond that, this film feels fresh. It's a long movie, sure, and this might sound a little bit juvenile to you, but when compared to other films that are similar to it, it's a lot more entertaining, and I think that it reminded me that, despite what I've come to believe, truly great movies can still be a lot of fun. But I don't know. Maybe I just found joy in a lot of the technical aspects that would fly over the heads of others. After the craze that "Barbenheimer" was, I imagined that a lot of more mainstream audiences suddenly attracted to the film would feel, I don't know, bored by it? Even though it's shot to be entertaining, it's still a very grounded story about a very grounded topic, even if it is made in an unconventional way. But I think that a best-picture win speaks volumes, and ultimately, I'm not here to exclusively judge a film's merits based on how many butts it was able to keep in seats. I'm here to judge its artistic merits, and can I reiterate that this film is a masterpiece in every sense of the word?

To throw out the brief, spoiler-free synopsis, Oppenheimer is a biographical film about J. Robert Oppenheimer and his conception and construction of the Atomic Bomb, the weapon of mass destruction that ended World War II.

As I said earlier, this film is unmistakably a Christopher Nolan film, despite being set on the common grounds of history, and in a lot of ways, a high-concept, intellectual story like Oppenheimer was pretty much the perfect film for Nolan to direct. The trademark aspect ratio changes, IMAX-shot scenes, and digital photography that have become synonymous with Nolan added a lot to this film, which is set on American soil. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the film looked very clean and very contemporary. It really hasn't been a long time since World War II ended, and this film's contemporary look and setting really punched in the fact that some of our parents remember these things the rest of us only get to read about. In addition, Oppenheimer used some cinematography strategies I've never seen utilized in a film like this before. Director of Photography Hoyte Van Hoytema didn't shoot Oppenheimer like a biopic or a historical epic. Rather, he shot Oppenheimer like an action movie. Personally, I prefer film stock over digital videography, but this film cuts fast, and in a lot of ways, the cleaner digital look actually helped Oppenheimer, which has a lot of quick and punchy close-ups of things like barbed wire being unrolled, as well as many other similar and equally-dynamic shots, which are often seen in action movies, but almost never seen in three-hour epics. I appreciated this unusual approach to the visual aspect of Oppenheimer because it made this film something usual: it made it exciting. This movie isn't just incredibly written. It can also be pretty fun when it wants to be, and I appreciated Nolan and Hoytema's choice to not be so conventional with the cinematography of the film, while also avoiding going completely off the rails to the point where people on internet forums would jokingly compare Oppenheimer to something like Extraction.

In addition to being exciting, this movie is also artistic, and it's nice to see that art is still appreciated in today's industry landscape. There are a few recurring artistic ticks in this film that are just marvelous, and they really give us a window into the psyche of J. Robert Oppenheimer that was absolutely necessary for a film such as this one to work as well as it did. This movie's habits of show-don't-tell are effectively put to use when they need to be. It's a Nolan film, so you know that dialogue and exposition are going to play a large role, but the most effective moments in the film are the ones where the dialogue takes a back seat, and the sound design and visual cues of this film take center stage. Aiding the excellently-dosed visual storytelling in this film is the almost always present and best-score-winning soundtrack by Ludwig Goransson that adds so much to the sense of wonder and terror that this film captures so well. In all honesty, the first time I was exposed to Goransson's work was in Tenet, and I wasn't quite sure what to make of that particular film's overly-synthetic score. I didn't take into account the limitations that Covid would have put on Goransson and his work on Nolan's divisive time-warping tale. I make it a habit to listen to the score of a film while I write an article about it, and can I just say that Goransson knocked it out of the park with his work on Oppenheimer? Not only does the score sound big and grand yet so intimate, but it also sounds right for this film. I think it is important for the score in a film to capture the essence of the world, and one reason I don't love the MCU is their bland scores that never sound like something that would actually exist in the world that they are trying to portray. I think my eyes (my ears?) were first opened up to the concept of discernable identity in a soundtrack when I watched The Batman for the first time, and ever since then, I've been keeping a close, uh, ear on movies that I go to watch. Oppenheimer captures the heart and soul of the story it's trying to tell with its sound, with all of its wonder, its terror, and finally, its regrets. A good film is often just as listened to as it is watched. A great film is often just as felt as it is listened to. And the makers of Oppenheimer took this fact to heart and delivered us a film with an audio-visual scape that is seen, heard, and felt in full measure.

On a more conventional level, the actual plot of Oppenheimer is very, very good, and far more focused with a lot more momentum than even top-of-the-line historical biopics like The Irishman or 2024's runner-up for Best Picture, Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon. Some of this can be chalked up to the editing of the film, which I discussed earlier in the article, but on a larger scale, this film's overall writing is a lot tighter than is usual in a sprawling biopic such as this one. Good movies move, and Oppenheimer moves at a brisk pace. It gets a lot done in its three hours of screen time without ever feeling rushed or overstuffed. Nolan's trademark non-linear storytelling pops up from time to time in this film, and this is just the cherry on top of a film that always seems to be working towards a single point: the climactic test detonation of the atomic bomb at Trinity in New Mexico (not a spoiler because it happened in real life 79 years ago). This could possibly be the most intense thing I've ever seen in a movie, not necessarily because of the actual explosion, but because of the anticipation that Nolan builds up before detonation. It's nothing short of an incredible feat, and I think it needs to be seen to be believed. It takes the storytelling idea that presenting a gun is far more effective than using it and pushes that rule to its absolute logical extreme. I could end the article here, and a lesser writer might, just as a lesser filmmaker may have ended Oppenheimer following the detonation at Trinity. Nolan certainly didn't. His decision to focus on the fallout of Oppenheimer's actions and decisions after the bomb was tested was absolutely essential for this movie to work. Lewis Strauss's (real-life) attempts to hurt Oppenheimer's public image in the decade or so following the end of World War II feel a lot like punishment for Oppenheimer's sins; punishment for his faithlessness with his wife Kitty and punishment for his giving the world the power to destroy itself. It's heavy and intimately personal stuff, grounding a grand narrative around one truly tortured man. On top of all that, all of this surprisingly intense courtroom drama made the film interesting even after the detonation.

And finally, I want to say that while all the actors involved gave excellent performances, Cillian Murphy's portrayal of Oppenheimer is incredibly haunting. He rightfully won Best Performance at the Oscars for a subdued and subtle acting job that really added layers upon layers of intimacy that were needed for this film to work. Murphy's acting did the legendary scientist justice while also keeping the film grounded and realistic, and really is a testament to the power of subtle performance in a world where people seem to think that the louder and more attention-getting the performance, the better. This is unmistakably J Robert Oppenheimer's film, and every character involved either influences him directly or is directly influenced by him and his tumultuous personal life. The cast of this film is large, but not a single player feels wasted or unnecessary. And this brings me to Emily Blunt's portrayal of Kitty Oppenheimer, which is spectacular. Pretty much every scene she's in seems to hit like a sledgehammer, as she serves as a reminder that her husband has been horrible to her. But appropriately, she plays second fiddle to Oppenheimer, as this is his movie, and never seems to steal the spotlight from the father of the atomic bomb, which is as it should be. I guess what I'm trying to say here is that she's the most notable representation of Oppenheimer's failures in this film, especially his failures as a husband, and so she brings a lot of weight to the film, even if she might not be doing as much to push the story forward. The rest of the cast is great, and I can now say that I live in a world where Gary Oldman has played both Winston Churchill and Harry S. Truman (now he just needs to play Stalin as well, and we can have a spin-off movie of the Yalta conference with Oldman as the only actor). But jokes aside, this movie's acting is somber and down-to-earth, and I approve of this approach wholeheartedly if we can get results like this.

I could keep going on and on about Oppenheimer because I don't really have enough good things to say about this movie to really do it justice. Every so often, I'll watch a movie that will change how I view the film industry, and this was one of them. It will most likely go down as one of the all-time greats, and in my opinion, it's Nolan's best film, even better than the powerhouse that was 2008's The Dark Knight. Now, to bring you back down to Earth, I was surprised when the MPAA reviews for this film first came out. I want to remind you that there are a couple of instances of pretty graphic sexuality in the film, and I do need to make it clear that Oppenheimer is a movie made for adults in every aspect, from its content to its runtime to its almost unbearably weighty themes and ideas that arise from an almost unbearably weighty story. And now I want to juxtapose that by saying that this film is an absolute must-watch, if not now, then sometime later on in your life. It's powerful and potent filmmaking, and one of the greatest films ever made appropriately brought to us by one of the greatest directors who ever lived. Nolan is firing on all cylinders in this film, and it's a remarkable feat to witness. Is it worthy of the man who created a weapon that will probably destroy the world as we know it one day? I don't know if I would take things quite that far.

But between you and me, I think it's pretty close.

Oppenheimer - 10/10

2 Peter 3:9-13