Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
Nolan, per his refined storytelling prowess, flashes forwards and backwards between the AEC (Atomic Energy Commission) hearings on Oppenheimer's loyalty to the U.S. that includes his past Communist leanings and the possibility of a spy in Los Alamos while creating the atomic bomb, to his less than sparkling marriage to an alcoholic wife, Katherine "Kitty" Puening (Emily Blunt) who was also a Communist, to his recurring affair with a troubled Communist, Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh), where sex, martinis and the quoting of the Hindu verses from Bhagavad Gita result in heated sex, to the truly momentous and riveting sequences where Oppenheimer is testing math equations of Quantum Mechanics while his team of scientists build the bomb in Los Alamos, testing each separate core in a series of explosions.
Though introspective and fascinating in its own right, it is a risky move for writer-director Nolan to invest copious amounts of time to the security hearings with Oppenheimer, his associates and even his wife who handles herself better than expected - these hearings figure heavily in the last hour of the film. Only Oppenheimer is not looking for a fight and never has and Nolan details this man as singularly obsessed with the atomic bomb and nuclear fission (lots of metaphoric shots of raindrops falling on lakes) - the women in his life exist peripherally while the bomb is very real to him. These detailed hearings go on for long stretches of time, testing Oppenheimer's loyalty to the U.S. and if his Communist affiliations are enough to take away his government security clearance. They kind of tested my tolerance as well because they detract from the nature of such a historically infamous powerful bomb that changed the world and Oppie's (his nickname) views on war - no longer were men needed to fight on ground level if Fat Man and Little Boy could decimate entire cities in the blink of an eye. The man himself is depicted as slightly sorrowful and critical of the bomb and filled with some measure of remorse. There is truth to Oppei's change of heart and despite showing his slight guilt as shown by Cillian Murphy (a performance worth a thousand suns burning through your consciousness - yeah, it is a nuclear performance of enormous weight), the real Oppenheimer defended the use of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima until his dying day. Nolan is not invested in that as much, nor does he show much of the destructive nature of the bomb (we get glimpses from Oppie's point-of-view about what it could do to the human body and brief glimpses of charred corpses). The Trinity test merely looks like a regular explosion at first - something that is not powerful yet somehow scaled back as if everyone at Los Alamos saw it as just another explosion. Then you wait and you can see how it becomes increasingly more dynamic and dangerous, particularly the shock wave. Keep in mind, in those days, everyone had the gravitas and imagination to create a powerful weapon but never truly considered the repercussions of such a bomb and the vast amount of radiation. Nolan fills the screen with fire but at first you don't gather the enormity of such a weapon - although I have seen my fair share of actual filmed nuclear tests, they do not compare to those who were there firsthand.
The women in Oppie's life are shown as tortured and belligerent yet they are short-shrifted in the screenplay, and this is one aspect of the film I felt needed more investment. I wanted to have a clearer view of Oppie's wife Kitty and we get mostly a dissatisfied woman who supports her husband yet takes a drink at every interval - Emily Blunt has one moment where she challenges questions at the AEC but that is as deep as her character gets. We just get quick flashes of her pregnancy, their marriage and their life in Los Alamos and she consistently yells at Oppie. Same with the Jean character, an intelligent woman with a mental illness who can't stand receiving flowers from Oppie. Their affair is strained since he is married but there is not much more divulged from their get togethers. You get more of a sense of who the antagonistic AEC chairman Lewis Strauss is (a dynamo of a performance by Robert Downey Jr.) than gleaning any real insights into the women in Oppie's life.
"Oppenheimer" is a titanic, expertly made production full of much sound and fury and some of it could be considered experimental in terms of editing - sometimes you feel you are being pummelled into believing a catastrophe awaits your eyes (again, interesting that the one atomic explosion we do see faintly resembles the magnitude and force it really had). There are times that the soundtrack fills us with thunderous, piercing sounds and feet thumping on bleachers from almost anywhere - you feel the screen is about to be ripped apart by some delayed detonation. Cillian Murphy plays Oppie as a man who doesn't fight back against AEC or anyone - he fights back tears when Jean Tatlock dies from suicide. He almost always threatens to detonate, to unleash some fury upon others and he never does. Only the bombs do the detonating for him.
