OPPENHEIMER

Rating: 5

Christopher Nolan’s OPPENHEIMER demands that we consider the father of the atomic bomb’s life in context, the which he does with stunning clarity considering the paradoxes the film considers. Like the quantum world revealed by the new physics that Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) brought to the United States between the world wars, things can work even if the underpinnings of why defy rational explanation. That can mean a relationship between adults, or the construction of a bomb that will change the world even if the math behind it doesn’t work. Searching for the reality behind it is, as opined by a character, fruitless, even if it is a fascinating intellectual exercise. And that is what Nolan has constructed here, a peerless intellectual thriller told with urgency and embracing the paradox until it resolves into a bittersweet poetic sort of justice proving Einstein’s (here an an avuncular Tom Conti) conjecture that God does not play dice.

Told in flashbacks and flashforwards, the narrative structure mimics the fluidity of time in that ci-mentioned quantum world. The facts of Oppenheimer’s life are stripped down to details that move the story along without weighing it down. Key moments and elegantly simple montages telescope time and speak to the revolution in physics, as well as the culture, that enthralled Oppenheimer, including the left-leaning politics that would come to haunt him. They also highlight the contradictions of a troubled young man who once tried to poison a tutor that he particularly liked. These resolve themselves into a man who is both a genius and an innocent, who understands that theory will only get you so far, as he puts it, but who is continually baffled by the shifting realpolitik of life where everything is relative. Again, thank you Albert.

Shifting between color and black & white, between Oppenheimer’s security clearance hearing before the Gray Board in 1954, and the Senate hearing of Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey, Jr.) in 1959, a proceeding that comes to hinge on the former, Oppenheimer’s life from troubled post-grad with no talent for experimental physics, to the most influential scientist of his day is recounted, not chronologically, but in a series of juxtapositions that compare and contrast testimony while also creating an atmosphere of intrigue and danger that ranks with the very best suspense films. Underpinning that is Nolan’s dialogue of rigorous precision that, ahem, paradoxically exposes the vagaries of language, be it a mathematical formula or a cross-examination or a defining the end of the world as we know it.

It is the mark of a master that he can take an incident, in this case the explosion of the first atomic bomb, and make it unbearably tense. Yet Nolan does just that. With skillful editing, a hand (Josh Peck in a pivotal role) hovering over a large red button, and jittery set of strings building to a musical crescendo that explodes into silence, the Trinity explosion telegraphs not just the uncertainty of what will happen when the countdown reaches zero, but the weight of two hundred years of physics distilled down to a moment that might end life on the planet, or prove that that everything they believe is wrong. Here and throughout, Nolan gives us the facts, and the revelations, but also judicious foreshadowing by externalizing Oppenheimer’s inner struggle to navigate the real world with cuts to the quantum world that obsesses him.

Murphy, and his incandescent blue eyes, capture that peculiar innocence and passionate curiosity that comes of living in a reality that is only tangential to the rest of the world’s. Stymied by the imprecision of language, and adhering to a moral certitude that may be evolved, may be misguided, might very well be both, it results in his crowning achievement and his downfall. The innocence has a childlike quality that expects the world to make sense, and a delicacy that is continually surprised and wounded when it isn’t.

That world is populated by great love Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh) whose emotional instability is matched only by her own passion and intelligence, and wife Kitty (Emily Blunt), a whip-smart, emphasis on whip, biologist at a time when the world had no use for one. Her own instability, so often glibly pigeon-holed as “difficult”, is presented with compassion, and the relationship she had with Oppenheimer is less analyzed than explicated in all its messy complexity as something that worked for them, and that without which, neither would have been able to thrive, leaving us with the pointed question, who are we to judge?

The early days in Europe learning the new physics bring us Niels Bohr (Kenneth Branagh) who sees Oppenheimer’s potential being wasted, Isidor Rabi (David Krumholtz) who overlooks Oppenheimer’s innocent (there’s that word again) arrogance to become his biggest supporter in good times and bad, as well as the voice of ethics and reason. The Manhattan Project, four years and $2 billion, brings Gen. Leslie Groves (Matt Damon) as the ultimate pragmatist, tasked with wrangling the best minds at his disposal to do the impossible and build the atom bomb before the Nazis do; the formidably arrogant Edward Teller (Benny Safdie) playing with paper airplanes to emphasize his contempt for everyone around him, and Lt. Col. Nichols (Dane deHaan) as the ultimate functionary, as easily imagined, like the head of security, Col. Boris Pash (Casey Affleck), heiling as saluting if an accident of birth had landed them in Germany rather than America.

Then there is Strauss, politically entwined with Oppenheimer, the embodiment of vain egotism and the ultimate politician untethered to anything but power. Downy’s performance is never simple and has the underpinnings of a tragic hero in a mold diametrically different from that of Oppenheimer, and in its own way, replete as it is with a self-awareness that Oppenheimer lacked, the quintessence of tragedy.

OPPENHEIMER is a masterpiece of image and word, of complex ideas made manifest, and all kept at a very human level to maintain that constant immediacy. I sincerely hope that there is a longer director’s cut, if only to extend the pleasure of watching an artist at work. And maybe giving Richard Feynman (Jack Quaid), more than a few words and some bongo riffs.