Rating: R
Runtime: 3 hours
Director: Christopher Nolan
Writer: Christopher Nolan
Quick Impressions:
Barbenheimer weekend continues. Because of “logistical difficulties” (a somewhat cold way of referring to my eight-year-old son), I couldn’t watch Barbie and Oppenheimer in one long binge, but I did see Barbie Friday night at 7:00, Oppenheimer the next afternoon at 2:50. That was close enough!
Honestly, my experience watching Barbie with my daughter was so positive that it diminished my excitement for Oppenheimer. After seeing both films, though, I have to give the edge to Oppie. (That’s a terrible, obnoxious way of referring to the film, and I will never say it again.)
Perhaps this is because Oppenheimer challenged me less. It felt less triggering. Real life demands that I go to the gynecologist, give away toys, model adult behavior for my children. Nobody’s expecting me to build an atom bomb.
Back at home after the film, I admitted to my daughter, “I feel like one of these movies was an escapist fantasy, and it was Oppenheimer!”
(Please note, I’m in no way trying to minimize the catastrophic, sobering human tragedy of nuclear war. I’m just saying in the face of something like that, who cares what I do?)
What a great weekend for movies, though! I’m not trying to diminish the excellence of Barbie (which I would love to see again and whose infectious, ear-wormy soundtrack I can’t stop humming). But Oppenheimer is an outstanding film. It’s the best Christopher Nolan movie I’ve seen in some time, and I like all of his films. (Not until leaving the theater did I recall, “I’ve been likening Barbenheimer to the weekend we saw Mamma Mia and The Dark Knight, but Christopher Nolan made that movie, too!” And Cillian Murphy was in it, of course. Garry Oldman, too. He plays Harry Truman in Opphenheimer. Have fun spotting him.)
I thought this was a well written film, structured to illustrate that in some conflicts, both sides lose. Defeating an enemy is not the same thing as winning. The characters are fascinating, especially Oppenheimer himself. (That apple business in the beginning had me hooked on the guy the whole movie!) You could easily write an essay about each character’s motivations, ways of operating. The movie doesn’t waste time with endless subplots, yet the abundant characters are so well drawn. The performances are excellent, too. And I love the decision (which I assume is Nolan’s) to film those Robert Downey, Jr. scenes in black and white for the simple, unpretentious reason that it’s so much less confusing for a movie audience on a first watch. Anything that helps us understand what might otherwise be a complicated narrative is always welcome. Compared to Tenet and Dunkirk, this is as effortless to follow as an episode of Murder, She Wrote. We still get some fun, suspenseful, Nolan-eque mini-twists, but it’s always clear what’s going on, and following the story requires no mental gymnastics.
A three-hour runtime often means a film is super self-indulgent, so I went in a bit wary. (I’m usually patient with stuff like that even if it is kind of self-indulgent because as I see it, if I’ve loved the best of your work, I’ll indulge you.) But this was so refreshingly well-paced and easy to follow. The three hours flew by! And the last act is propelled forward with seemingly inexplicable suspense. (I’m impressed by the way the suspense arises from nowhere as a weird surprise, perhaps mirroring the level of control Oppenheimer has over what is happening.)
The Good:
What I noticed first about Oppenheimer was Ludwig Göransson’s score.
I hated it.
At around the same time, I started thinking about Hoyte Van Hoytema’s cinematography. I loved that. I want to watch again, just to look, because I actively loved the cinematography. I found it very effective. But because I was experiencing it for the first time, I’m unable to say why (with specificity, I mean. I can give you my reaction, but not the reason for it, because it was working so well).
I have some ideas, of course. For one thing, we’re shown so many fascinating faces. I started thinking about Sidney Lumet’s Murder on the Orient Express. In that film, we’re always looking at faces, right into faces. Oppenheimer is not up in everybody’s face quite as much as that. But I mention it because I reflected, “You know, I think I love seeing everyone’s face so prominently because it helps filter out distractions. Then I can focus more easily.”
“That’s what’s wrong with this score,” I decided. “It’s too busy. It’s distracting. It sounds like violins are exploding, and my ear is being dragged down each reverberating string. It’s all crescendos. It’s overwhelming. It’s drowning out the dialogue. It’s stressing me out. The score is the one thing in this movie that doesn’t work.”
Then we got to the Bomb Test scene. The score ratchets up in intensity until it reaches an unbelievable, unbearable pitch. Then silence.
Suddenly I realized, “Ohhhhhh. Yes okay. The score is supposed to be overwhelming and agitating because we’re getting Oppenheimer’s interiority through the score. It’s trying to put us into his mindset. So much is always going on in that head. It’s crammed so full of unutterable secrets, overlapping possibilities, potential realities.”
Then I realized, “Okay, I’m an idiot. The score is brilliant.” By the end of the film, I was convinced it was probably the most effective score I’ve heard all year. I’m still not a fan of the way it sounds, though possibly I’d feel differently listening to it in isolation. (I’m not sure why anyone would value my take on this. “This music is just great—except for the way it sounds!” I don’t understand music. But I do understand elements of narrative, and this one’s working.)
I love Cillian Murphy. He has such a cinematic face. His features are so dramatic. (Too bad there’s not an actual Barbenheimer movie. I would pay to watch Cillian Murphy and Margo Robbie make faces at each other for three hours. That sounds fun.)
I’ve always enjoyed Murphy’s acting, so I’m thrilled to see him star in a movie that’s bound to be successful.
Like Barbie, Oppenheimer is a character who defies being put in a box being chased around by boxes and institutions. Everything he does is way outside the box. (Maybe he won’t get in because he’s afraid there might be a dead cat in there, and as a theorist, he can’t close off the possibility.) I guess not everything he does is outside the box. He appears to be polyamorous by nature. That makes sense because usually his thinking is theoretical, and to him, every possibility might be real. He holds so many moving pieces in his head and juggles them all perpetually so that everything fits. I found him easy to identify with because…I also invented the atomic bomb. (Just kidding.) I’m finding it hard to put into words why I find him so relatable. I guess it’s that I do a lot of head juggling myself. The difference is, he does it all the time—like it’s an endless chain reaction in there—and I sometimes reach a point where I drop everything and can’t pick it up for a good while.
His palpable frustration when he’s trying to communicate felt so real to me. People demand an answer, and he must be thinking, “I just gave you every answer. What I gave you was the best answer. It was all the possibilities from every side.” I think like this, too. I’m certainly not a science genius who will change the world with my theories. But I think and communicate more like an academic or an artist than like a military officer or politician.
Murphy’s portrayal of Oppenheimer communicated the character’s nature to me so clearly. My husband pointed out how thoroughly the film shows him to us as someone who’s unusually meticulous about keeping secrets but quite unorthodox in his thinking.
The other characters are well drawn, too. (The supporting cast for this is just unbelievable. Between Oppenheimer and Barbie, I must have seen everyone in Hollywood on a movie screen this weekend.) Were they so minded, Mattel could launch a line of Oppenheimer dolls. Matt Damon is quite good as General Groves. Of course, Robert Downey, Jr. gives a charismatic, compelling performance as Lewis Strauss. (I want to write ten pages about each character!) I can’t comment on every performance.
Watching fifty famous men discuss physics, politics, espionage, and bomb building might leave you asking, “Where are the women?” They’re all at Communist party gatherings! Some of them are at Los Alamos, too. (On the surface, Los Alamos does give Kendom vibes—patriarchy, men, horses.) But the few women who are showcased in the film do have compelling parts.
Florence Pugh would make an eager Communist of me, I’m afraid. I like the way her character is presented because Oppenheimer never tries to control or define her. He only interacts with her. The film succeeds by showing its characters in action rather than limiting them. Everybody just goes around being who they are, and Oppenheimer interacts with them sometimes, taking them as they are. It’s an effective method of character development and narrative advancement, one that mirrors how Oppenheimer thinks and reveals him to the audience.
Emily Blunt’s character is interesting, too. Throughout the film, I kept thinking, “I wish we got a clearer understanding of her, that we spent more time with her.” But then by the end of the movie, I realized, “Well, we understand her perfectly, and he always has.” It’s such a quietly pleasant revelation. I was pleased to see that her post-partum depression was not her character.
In general, I liked the relaxing method of receiving all the characters. Oppenheimer takes everyone as they are. In many ways, he’s a bit like me. (The difference is, I would fail to produce the bomb. I sure might inexplicably poison someone, though!) (I’m kidding. I’m not a murderer. But I did once know a murderer. That acquaintance and this movie continuously made me think about what it must be like to cause such harm. I don’t believe I could ever do something so consequential.) (I don’t mean that I aspire to! I mean, it’s sobering to reflect on the power of our actions, the serious ramifications thoughts and simple steps can have.)
For those concerned about ideological brainwashing, I’d be less worried that Barbie will make audiences radical feminists and more worried that Oppenheimer will make them eager Communists. In Oppenheimer, there’s a villain all right, someone unmistakably (and so watchably) concerned with selfish pursuits. There’s no hero. The only hero is the group. (Meanwhile, Oppenheimer seems apart from all the rest of it, even though he is, without question a part of it. Are his final lines of movie, “We’ll see,”? It’s something like that. He says it very late. He remains confirmed to theory, never closing off possibilities right to the bitter end. He probably never knows for sure what’s going on with him. We for sure don’t know. He’s so enigmatic!) Despite my tendency to reject overly neat solutions in real life, I love a neat work of fiction, and this character who mysteriously poisons an apple never changes. A neat narrative about a complex person. We don’t know what he’s doing. We get to watch conflict between the villain and the group. Oppenheimer somehow keeps at a remove, practically excises himself from his own story.
In fact, the ideas expressed in Barbie aren’t radical at all. If you’ve never heard any of those concerns or takes you must not talk to any women, or any other people, or have the internet. Barbie does have a vibe of empowerment and accountability. Oppenheimer illustrates that even becoming Death, the Destroyer of Worlds doesn’t give you any lasting power.
During several scenes of the movie, I thought, “Human beings are a social species—like ants.” This is probably because he keeps going to cocktail parties and Communist meetings and cocktail parties that are Communist meetings. He’s not one of them, though. He just moves among them.
Oppenheimer and Barbie aren’t so dissimilar. She figures out that she has agency and power. He harnesses power, but the agency has him.
His way of life is certainly more comfortable. He never closes doors, just lives out possible paths.
If you often feel crushed by delusional guilt or frustration at being a poor communicator, Opphenheimer is certainly a freeing watch. He unleashed endless death and destruction, moved inscrutably through all his relationships, made enemies in high places, never seemed to figure it all out. Yet in the end, someone decided, “Let’s make a movie about that guy!”
It’s a hugely successful film, even though in the end, the take on Oppenheimer is ultimately, “Yep, we sure never did understand that guy. What a mystery!” Meanwhile, thanks to his work, the world could blow up tomorrow. It’s very reassuring. (Barbie makes me feel so guilty, makes me think, “If you’re too scared to make a gynecologist’s appointment, you’ll never teach your daughter to be human.”) (Please note, that’s not what Barbie is saying. That’s what my inner critic says as I watch it. But I take comfort in Oppenheimer’s confirmation that reality is incomprehensible, truth is unknowable, and people who have it all figured out are really just Robert Downey, Jr., charismatically pretending.)
The films touch on similar themes. If you remain Stereotypical Barbie and let them put you in a box, you will never live. But if you stay outside the box like Oppenheimer, maybe nobody will live. If you asked me which film more harshly criticizes the patriarchy, I’d say Oppenheimer. He has it so much easier than Barbie. His wife loves him. The world made by powerful men looks much worse in Oppenheimer (because their clothes look so uncomfortable, and they never dance).
Barbie says, “You are the only one who can help yourself and make the world good through your actions.” Oppenheimer says, “But if your actions kill everyone and destroy the world—oh well.” So naturally Oppenheimer is the less distressing watch.
This is a terrible review. I’m sorry. I keep changing my mind.
Best Scene/Best Action Sequence:
I love the Bomb Test. It’s set up to be like, “This is the biggest scene in the movie!” But it actually feels like that as you watch it. Too often those moments fail (or are kind of lackluster.) I liked this. And it’s when I began understanding the score, too.
Then, of course, in that moment, we also begin to think, “Oh, he’s been in charge up to this point. This has been his little world.” You start to realize an end of Zero, Dark Thirty kind of moment is coming now that the government has gotten what it needs from him.
The scene with Truman is quite interesting, too. Imagine being told you’re not responsible for what you did. I love the way these two men are not living in the same world. (I could write an entire essay on this, so I’ll quit while I’m ahead.) This scene is also a nice parallel to a certain point in Robert Downey, Jr.’s storyline.
Best Scene Visually:
I always love a good cinematic nightmare party, a warped interior experience of what should be a joyous event. When Oppenheimer gives his rallying speech about how he bets the Japanese didn’t like it, the contrast between what he’s saying, the mood of the crowd, what he’s imagining is powerful to watch in part because we begin to anticipate that it will come. Also, this man thinks like me. His nightmarish interior world is easy for me to embrace. This particular flavor of the pathetic fallacy always grabs me by the soul.
The Negatives:
Everything I know about J. Robert Oppenheimer I learned from this film (other than the basic, barebones, trivia-card level facts). On a good day I could tell you that he was “the father of the atomic bomb” who built the bomb and did tests in Los Alamos. On a bad day, maybe I would tell you he was Chaka Khan. Who knows!
What I’m saying is, this is not my area of expertise. Every time I see historical movies about subjects I have studied, I pick them apart relentlessly. I have no idea how accurate this is. I know it was adapted from a biography. It watches more like it was adapted from a novel (because of the neatness of the plot, how readily it lends itself to literary analysis).
For all I know, it could be full of factual errors.
Another potential problem is that Oppenheimer himself seems to have a different “moral” than the story happening around him, making several entirely different readings of the events totally supported by the film. That’s not really a problem.
Personally, I find Oppenheimer easy to relate to because he forms judgment by observing things (and people) and taking them as what they are and appreciating them for that. Then people tell him, “You aren’t taking a stance. You’re not giving an answer.”
In keeping with the spirit of Oppenheimer, I’ll say I’m more interested in the ways the film is working than in seeking its flaws.
Overall:
Both Oppenheimer and Barbie are smart, well-crafted, well-acted films. On a personal level, Barbie made me feel inadequate. Oppenheimer said to me, “The world is unknowable. It’s okay not to understand. It’s okay to think differently. It’s okay to love people because you do. It’s okay to describe truth in honest rather than catchy terms. It’s okay to try to poison somebody and never know why.” You can see it’s by far the more dangerous film.
On a serious note, please watch both Oppenheimer and Barbie. This is shaping up to be a fantastic year for movies, and these two are both exceptional.