Blockbusters are like buses: you wait forever for one to show up, then two come along at once. However transparent this summer’s “Barbenheimer” hype, Hollywood is finally figuring out how to fill theater seats in an age of post-pandemic fatigue and streaming overload. At the time of writing, Barbie has raked in an eye-popping $780 million in global box office. Its unlikely rival Oppenheimer has earned $400 million, putting it on track to become one of the highest earning biopics of all time. While bubblegum-pink comedies in alternate plastic universes might not be this reviewer’s cup of tea, it is refreshing to see moviegoers coming together in search of a shared experience, whatever that experience might be. But this review is about something entirely different. Yesterday, I caught a matinee screening of the other movie, surrounded by a few old geezers. While Barbie likely pulled in more business at this particular theater, I was eager for the latest offering by the magnificent Christopher Nolan.
Oppenheimer does not disappoint, even as it defies expectations. Drawing on Kai Bird’s and Martin Sherwin’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography American Prometheus, Nolan’s three-hour study of the tortured genius behind the Manhattan Project is simply a masterpiece—not flawless, by any means, but so engrossing that its run time never drags. Whether the experience would carry to an I-Pad screen or a laptop seems doubtful. For a film about the atom bomb, the explosions are spare, sometimes hinted obliquely in the surreal special effects that illustrate the title character’s stream of consciousness, but only once revealed in full force, midway through the movie. Although Nolan’s filmography includes superhero and action movies (The Dark Knight, Tenet) which climax in pyrotechnics, the decision here is made to depict the Trinity test in the deserts of New Mexico rather than the more notorious bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This choice is laudable and compelling: audiences share in the anxiety of Oppenheimer and his colleagues as the detonator implodes (one theory—a “near zero” probability--hypothesized the atom bomb would ignite an unstoppable chain-reaction, incinerating Earth’s atmosphere. Oppenheimer went ahead anyway.) The ensuing blast is one of the most strangely beautiful scenes ever depicted in film. Nolan’s film works best, however, as a human drama, which just happens to be about the atom bomb. Critics might complain that the brutal incineration of Japanese civilians is underplayed, but much of the conflict at the heart of this movie revolves around the dark and problematic realization of a monstrous but arguably inevitable technology. Though troubled by the bomb’s implications, Oppenheimer rationalizes its use. Whether or not America can be trusted with such a weapon, the Nazis certainly can’t. One of the chilling themes of Oppenheimer is how close Hitler came to the atomic bomb, though hampered ironically by racist policies (Oppenheimer and many of the Manhattan Project’s diverse team, including numerous refugees, were Jewish). Like the Greek Prometheus who stole fire from the gods, Oppenheimer’s reward for his labors was to be chained (metaphorically) to a rock for eternity. Though celebrated on the cover of Time magazine, Oppenheimer sadly fell foul of the prevailing McCarthyism of 1950s, tarnished by innuendo (though Oppenheimer moved in left-leaning intellectual circles, he was never a card-carrying communist, much less a Soviet agent). Most pitiful was the vendetta waged against Oppenheimer by Lewis Strauss, Chair of the Atomic Energy Commission, around which much of the film is organized. Strauss, whose vindictiveness eventually sank his own political ambition, is played with Machiavellian glee by Robert Downey, Jr. A star-studded cast also includes Matt Damon, Florence Pugh, Emily Blunt, and Gary Oldman in a memorable cameo as Harry S. Truman. Tom Conte as Albert Einstein is a particular treat. But special mention belongs to Irish actor Cillian Murphy, a stalwart in Nolan’s films, cast here in his first leading role for the director. Murphy nails down the nervous energy and haunted dignity of the brilliant but troubled Oppenheimer, conveying more emotion in a single gaze or gesture than most actors could evoke in a thousand lines. He surely deserves Best Actor at next year’s Academy Awards, but there’s no accounting for taste in this summer of Barbenheimer. Grade: A+
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AuthorMatthew Smith, PhD (History). Public Programs at Miami University Regionals. Historian of Appalachia, the Ohio Valley, & the early American republic. Archives
February 2024
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