On July 21, one of the most long-awaited films of the year, Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer about the “father of the atomic bomb,” is released in cinemas. The film director made a film about humanity, which is always torn between creation and destruction.
In recent years, the most intelligent director of mainstream cinema, Christopher Nolan, has not been very lucky. He constantly has to save this cinema. In the midst of the pandemic in 2020, his Tenet movie became an experiment in bringing audiences back to theaters. Three years after these events and after the official end of the pandemic, the state of the film industry turned out to be even more deplorable. And many are wondering: is there anything left to save at all? Nolan’s long-awaited “Oppenheimer” project about the “father of the atomic bomb” is released not only on the same day as Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, but also during the first joint strike of the Hollywood Writers Guild and Actors Guild in 60 years.
A Movie In the Unknown
Oppenheimer, one of the most anticipated premieres of 2023, is jumping into the unknown. Will Nolan’s new brainchild manage to beat Barbie and collect a high box office? How will the hardcore fans of the British director and the general public react to an incredibly serious three-hour philosophical reflection on atomic weapons? There is more intrigue around the film itself than in its plot. It is as intriguing as gambling with egt slots, where you would feel both passion and risks.
“Oppenheimer” is based on the book “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of Robert Oppenheimer” by Kai Byrd and Martin Sherwin and tells about the life of a theoretical physicist, one of the creators of the atomic bomb, played by Cillian Murphy. The film develops in several time periods. One shows Oppenheimer during his studies in Europe, then as a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, and later as the leader and one of the main inspirers of the Manhattan Project. The second reveals his attempts to contain the nuclear race after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the third shows the scientist during the FBI investigation of his activities for treason. Also, the narration is conducted immediately on behalf of several characters, which is why the color film periodically changes to black and white.
A Headache Between Dialogues and Visuals
In Oppenheimer, Nolan goes back to his roots and uses technical devices to present on the screen an incredibly complex image of the protagonist, and does not replace the narrative with them.
The director’s technique is expressed in the film’s cinematic language. Masterly editing interferes with scenes from the present and the future, changing points of view, interspersing them with visions of microparticles and distant stars to the accompaniment of the cosmic soundtrack of the Swedish composer Ludwig Göransson (“Black Panther”, “Tenet”). The film crashes down on the viewer with fast-paced scenes, music, characters, and over-detailed dialogue, causing a real sensory overload.
Controversy Around Oppenheimer Himself
The debate about Oppenheimer’s identity continues to this day. A brilliant physicist, one of the creators of the atomic bomb, who perceived it as the final guarantee of peace. But at the same time witnessed how it wiped Hiroshima and Nagasaki off the face of the Earth. An ardent supporter of containing the nuclear race; a patriot who has been persecuted in his native country; bearer of leftist views; lover of women who cheated on his wife; a politician who has forgotten about science; unpredictable megalomaniac. Both Nolan and Kilian Murphy do a masterful job of delineating the facets of Oppenheimer’s personality at various points in his life. Fascinated by the mysteries and paradoxes of space and time, the director finally found a suitable hero for himself, who was more fascinated by the work of elementary particles than by living people.
This is both an advantage and a disadvantage of the picture. Nolan’s romantic relationships are still not successful, although they are present in all his works. Two supporting actresses are responsible for them, Emily Blunt as Kitty’s wife and Florence Pugh as a communist, journalist and lover Jean Tetlock. Some argue that Tatlock played a big role in Oppenheimer’s fate, but the film clearly doesn’t pay enough attention to her and relegates several scenes to Pugh. In most of them, she appears naked before us, which is in no way justified by the plot. Blunt has little to no opportunity to prove herself either, and most of the time she is reduced to the function of a great man’s wife.
Cillian Murphy’s Performance
“Oppenheimer” is not inferior in scale to the most ambitious projects of Wes Anderson, who filmed all of Hollywood. Nolan can afford to shoot famous actors in cameo roles, so the film can see Josh Hartnett, and Alex Wolfe, and Gary Oldman, who overshadowed everyone with just one scene, and Ben Safdie, who turned from an independent director into one of the main young character actors in Hollywood, and excellent Robert Downey Jr., evoking memories of his role in Good Night and Good Luck by George Clooney. However, the main burden lies on the shoulders of Cillian Murphy, and “Oppenheimer” is the first opportunity in his career for the 47-year-old actor to turn around at full power.
Most of the picture is the conversations of tense men in suits and in unremarkable rooms. Universal Studios, for lack of anything better, built an advertising campaign around the only spectacular element of the film – a nuclear explosion. But he is as muffled as possible in the picture, and even in the first bomb test, Trinity, Nolan focuses not on the destructive power of nuclear weapons, but on the reaction of people who witness one of the most important and terrible events in the history of mankind.
Responsibility On the Government
Despite the ambiguity of Oppenheimer’s personality, the main villain, according to Nolan, is the American government, for which the atomic bomb becomes a way of revenge and a show of force. The state persecutes the scientist solely because disagreement with the actions of those in power is equated with treason, and sympathy for the ideas of communism is more terrible than fascism. Such a vision of the world is much closer to the present than it might seem, and the director hints at the fact that many things do not change over time.
In nuclear testing, science is far from the first place. It is relegated to the background by politics, ego, resentment, fear, mistrust, and power struggles that have killed not only Oppenheimer, but also the hope that humanity will be able to truly appreciate the consequences of its actions. Nolan not only tells the biography of one of the most important people of the 20th century. He raises philosophical and ethical questions about the relationship between the creator and his creation. The inability of people to comprehend the power of technological progress, and human nature, torn between creation and destruction.
