Butler's Cinema Scene

Cillian Murphy as J.Robert Oppenheimer

“OPPENHEIMER” My rating: B+ (in theaters)

180 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Christopher Nolan’s monumental and astoundingly dense “Oppenheimer” is a study in contradictions.

It starts with contradictions of one man — physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy), who led the Manhattan Project to develop the first atomic weapon and later wondered if he’d done the right thing — but throws an even  wider net. 

Such as: The contradictions between scientific inquiry and the fear of what we might discover. The contradictions in the rules we live by, when we bend them and when they stiffen.

The three-hour film follows the creation of the atom bomb, but while that provides the plot it isn’t really what “Oppenheimer” is about. Looming over it all is the fallout (not the radioactive kind) of that literally earth-shaking moment in history.

We’re talking about big moral questions and writer/director Nolan presents them in all their maddening complexity, without telling us which side we’re supposed to take.

“Oppenheimer”is less an emotional experience than an overwhelmingly intellectual one.  I can think of no other film in recent years that left me thinking so long and hard about the questions it raises…and the answers it cannot give.

Long a lover of warped time lines (“Memento, “ anyone?), Nolan here cuts back and forth between several of them.  

Of course there’s the race to beat the Nazis in making an atom bomb, with Oppenheimer creating a small city from scratch in the New Mexico desert so that his scientists and engineers (and their families) can work in secure isolation for as long as it takes (more than two years, as it turned out). 

Another timeline centers on a 1954 Atomic Energy Commission hearing, a McCarthy-ish kangaroo court called to determine if Oppenheimer — by now a critic of America’s Cold War policies — should be stripped of his high-level security clearance.

And then (in black-and-white footage) we witness the 1959 Senate confirmation hearing of Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr., in a career-high performance). Strauss is the former AEC chair and Eisenhower’s nominee for Secretary of Commerce. Many of the questions aimed at him  concern his relationship over the years with Oppenheimer, whose reputation by this time is marred  by the widespread belief that he was a Communist sympathizer.

Robert Downey Jr.

Nolan’s screenplay deftly weaves together these threads, and while we may not at first understand just what is going on (why so much emphasis on Downey’s Strauss, surely a minor figure in all this?), the setup pays off with a last-act revelation that most viewers won’t see coming.

At the heart of it all is Cillian Murphy’s brilliantly contained portrayal of Oppenheimer.  What’s amazing about all this is that Oppenheimer was not a demonstrative character — he wore a mask of scientific calm and reason. Yet Murphy’s eyes suggest all that’s churning in that head. 

Only after the film is over does the viewer realize he’s been totally sucked in by a performance that ignores the usual big actorish moments. 

Instead he is quietly intimidating. Oppenheimer is a genius who taught himself Dutch in six weeks so that he could present a lecture on molecular physics in the audience’s language. He’s not a great mathematician or lab guy, but he sees/imagines  what others cannot.

He’s arrogant. Gently dissing young leftists he advises that to  really understand Das Kapital it should be read in the original German. 

He’s a moral puzzle, described as “a dilettante, womanizer and Communist,” yet he’s a man whose conscience will not leave him alone.

I’m not sure I’d even like J. Robert Oppenheimer…but he was precisely the man America needed at the time.

Getting far more stirm und drang screentime  are the women in Oppenheimer’s life. Florence Pugh plays Jean Tatlock, whom he meets in a  gathering of college Commies and with whom he maintains a sexually-charged relationship even after it’s obvious she’s slipping into mental illness. 

And then there’s Mrs. Oppenheimer, played by Emily Blunt.  For much of the film Blunt seems little more than window dressing, but in the third act she becomes a fireball of righteous indignation when her husband’s patriotism is questioned.

Matt Damon is terrific as Gen. Leslie Groves, heading up  the project’s military component. Groves is a mix of old-school discipline and pragmatism…he was willing to waive objections over political purity to get the brains he needed.

Cillian Murphy, Matt Damon

Then his job is to keep a lid on scientists whose natural inclination is to share information, not compartmentalize it. There’s not much humor in “Oppenheimer,” but Graves’ cat-herding frustration provide most of it.

There are dozens of other speaking roles here, some taken by familiar faces who may have only limited screen time.  Just a few of them: 

Oscar winners Rami Malek, Casey Affleck and Gary Oldman (the last as President Harry Truman). Josh Hartnett. Jason Clarke. Matthew Modine. Tony Goldwyn. James Remar.  Kenneth Branagh. Tom Conti (as Einstein!!!). Dane DeHaan. Kansas City’s own David Dastmachian. 

Nolan masterfully keeps all these balls in the air.  His accomplishment is doubly impressive because “Oppenheimer” has so few look-at-me-ma moments.  Very few directorial flourishes.

But those he does indulge in are woozies.  

Early on Nolan delivers almost abstract visions of swirling sparks and dividing cells to suggest the workings of Oppenheimer’s imagination.

The buildup to the detonation of the first atomic bomb outside Los Alamos is a tension-packed slow burn. The emphasis isn’t on the nuts and bolts of making the bomb, but on the nervous anticipation of Oppenheimer and his crew.

Would it work? Would it, as some members of the team suggest, start a chain reaction igniting Earth’s atmosphere and killing everything?

We already know the answers, but audiences nevertheless will be on the edge of their seats.

And in the midst of a rowdy, patriotism-drenched celebration of the end of the war, Oppenheimer looks out over his audience of cheering colleagues and imagines their faces dissolving in the heat of a nuclear blast.

It’s an image that says more than pages of dialogue.

“Oppenheimer” is the ultimate yes/but experience.  For every argument it presents there pops up a counter argument. Was it immoral to drop the big one on civilians?  Would it have been better to sacrifice 500,000 American lives in an invasion of Japan?

Those who want to be spoon fed answers will find “Oppenheimer” frustrating.  Tough. The film tells us the world doesn’t work like that. Black and white is rarely that.

Like I said, contradictions.

| Robert W. Butler

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