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Fanboy fave Christopher Nolan is back with his latest interminable offering, the jumbled biopic Oppenheimer. It’s three hours of non-linear storytelling and, as usual for the emperor who wears no clothes, complete emotional inertia.
Millions will insist otherwise, but Nolan’s rep is built primarily on two movies. Moviegoers flipped their wigs over The Dark Knight (2008), almost entirely due to the performance by Heath Ledger as the Joker—an admittedly memorable supporting turn that was disproportionately elevated by Ledger’s premature passing. Before that, Memento (2000) turned heads with its clever but empty conceit of telling its story backwards. It’s not that Nolan is without filmmaking skills (his 1998 Following made for a promising debut). It’s that his movies are mostly style, little substance.
With Oppenheimer he returns to the World War II era for the first time since the baffling Dunkirk (2017). Since all Nolan’s movies this century have been treated as major cultural events, the film found its audience (even despite unnecessary comparisons to the even more commercially successful Barbie). Nearing the $1 billion box office mark, Oppenheimer was an unqualified hit. It also scored with critics (according to aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, it received favorable reviews from 93% of critics). Awards have been racked up, with the biggies still on the horizon (Academy Award nominations won’t be announced until next year).
My advice is to save the three hours of time it takes to sit through Oppenheimer and instead read the Wikipedia bio on J. Robert Oppenheimer. Or if you’re already at least semi-informed about the man, proceed directly to one of the many books that cover his career in greater depth (including American Prometheus, which served as the basis for the movie). The sheer number of characters populating Nolan’s spectacle, coupled with the twisting timeline, render the whole affair confusing and free of any real insights into a pivotal historical figure. Cillian Murphy’s impenetrable, steely performance in the title role is difficult to feel strongly about. He manages to depict one of the 20th century’s most complicated and fascinating figures as a cipher.
Some of the more critical takes on Oppenheimer have focused on its depiction of female characters (Emily Blunt plays Oppenheimer’s wife, Kitty, while Florence Pugh plays his ex-girlfriend, Jean Tatlock). Others have focused on the near non-existence of any exploration on the Japanese victims of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I don’t know that more sensitive or thoughtful explorations of those subjects would have improved the narrative blob that is Oppenheimer. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the Manhattan Project, and World War II as a whole are topics for serious, detailed study. There are documentaries on these topics for those who wish to learn but perhaps don’t have the time to commit to reading volume after volume. Nolan has done history no favors here by trying to shoehorn the complexities of that pivotal time in world history into what is essentially a piece of entertainment.
The Blu-ray edition saves all the special features for a second disc. Those enthralled by Oppenheimer will have plenty to pore over in a seven-part celebration of the film, “The Story of Our Time: The Making of Oppenheimer” (totaling about 72 minutes of self-congratulatory promotional material). Of far greater substance is the feature-length documentary, To End All War: Oppenheimer & the Atomic Bomb (2023), directed by Christopher Cassel, the rare “supplement” that is more essential than the film it accompanies.
