Oppenheimer Review: There’s Only So Much Nolan Could Do With The Concept But That’s No Excuse….
Picking a central concept for the plot of a film can be tricky. There are times when exploring a concept which doesn’t have much to be…
Picking a central concept for the plot of a film can be tricky. There are times when exploring a concept which doesn’t have much to be told becomes the main roadblock of a film; where plot twists are forced, the visuals and screenwriting have to make up for the lack of depth of the concept & the acting and post-production has to come in to save the day.
But there are times when innovation in terms of direction, cinematography, editing, score and execution of a fairly simple concept can turn a film that has an otherwise very unassuming concept into a glorious spectacle; Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is bang in the middle.
On the surface of it, the concept of Oppenheimer is arguably a banal one: The story of the guy who invented the atomic bomb. Maybe not to some, but it was for me.
I went into the movie playing the entire plot in my head already — his early life, his breakthroughs, him being appointed as the director of the Manhattan project, political lobbying and bureaucracy, building the bomb, detonating it, and the moral, ethical and psychological effects of the baggage from after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, until the end, which I was hoping was interesting.
The film played out exactly the same. The only thing that was different is that Nolan executed the story line in nonlinear frames, shuttling back and forth, perhaps akin to Memento. But then again, Nolan almost always shoots nonlinearly. Although Memento was perhaps difficult to grasp(it was a sheer mindf*ck), Oppenheimer was much more coherent but lacked the fascination that we’ve come to expect from Nolan.
For all the hype about special effects and shooting the film on 70 mm IMAX, the visual spectacles were interesting, to some extent, but pale in comparison to Nolan’s other more visually elaborate, VFX heavy and staggering use of the CGI in films like Inception, Interstellar, Tenet and others before and after.
The cutting to footage of stars, space, atoms, molecules, etc, were fine at first but seemed imposed and unnecessary at certain times, almost like Nolan was trying to use them to force the issue to make things more interesting. Sure it looked good visually speaking, but it’s almost like an amateur filmmaker using stock footage to make a low budget short film more intriguing because there’s only so much his shots can do.
The characterization was rather indulgent but weak as well; the film depicts some of the great theoretical physicists from Neils Bohr to Werner Heisenberg and of course Albert Einstein & their intersecting paths with Oppenheimer. But in certain instances it seemed like Nolan was just throwing names of the greatest physicists about to get the nerds excited.
It worked to a certain degree; the geek in me and my inclinations to physics and especially theoretical physics resulted in a few smiles when the physics greats appeared on screen; their conversations and the geeky and cheeky banter and rather intellectual humour was perhaps appealing, but they’re just minor details, not things that define a film nor things that the film could ride on.
Nolan didn’t do a deep dive into the depths of the physics concepts unlike his usual cerebral storytelling style, only just scratching the surface with the concepts which was a huge disappointment and surprise. Maybe he did that to do things differently, which is what I’m assuming, but it was a disappointment that he didn’t delve into the intricacies of the theoretical physics theories and breakthroughs in a more vivid and provocative way, while capturing an era where, in essence, some of the greatest breakthroughs in physics were postulated, discovered and proved.
The female characters were rather objectified, not just by Oppenheimer, but in general, with severe mood swings, indecisiveness and seemed to be largely irrelevant and failed to impose themselves on the film, barring a few scenes like Kitty’s interrogation which was the only time her prominence was felt. Kitty(Emily Blunt) spent about 85% of the film romancing a cocktail glass instead of Oppenheimer and her intellectual side was never really properly shed light on.
Oppenheimer’s mistress Jean Tatlock(Florence Pugh) seemed like a strong character at first glance: she starts of as this headstrong, volatile and independent, driven woman who is committed to her cause and political ideologies, but her relevance in the scheme of the entire film was rather questionable.
Sure she was Oppenheimer’s mistress, but the entire point of her being there in the film was pointless — just for a few sex scenes and unearthing the Bhagavad Gita quote — after starting off as maybe an important cog in the story.
It was almost like Nolan stuck her character in there for only that reason, which was glaringly apparent. The only connection she had with the main plot of the film was the hotel scene that Lewis Strauss’ planted attorney brought up while Oppenheimer was being questioned and to portray Oppenheimer’s womanizing. And killing her off later, for some inevitable death (that needs to be present in most screenplays) further compounded her anonymity and the lack of depth of her character.
Matt Damon & Robert Downey Jr. are both average in their performances as General Leslie Groves and Lewis Strauss respectively. This story was intended to be all about Oppenheimer as several comments from the actors following the film’s release revealed, and it panned out exactly that way. Maybe they too realized (after the film) that they weren’t very good in it, hence the comments, but that debate is for another day.
Sure Downey plays the vindictive, power-hungry, politician looking to orchestrate his vendetta against Oppenheimer to a certain degree of aplomb, and he manages to stamp his authority on the film in a few scenes — the “In the shadows” quote and his dialogue while he fumes at Rami Malek’s testimony were the only standout moments— being the only other character that makes any noteworthy mark on the film’s plot(only the plot), especially when the plot twist about him setting up the interrogation to derail Oppenheimer’s life and career because of the bad blood between the pair emerges, but his acting is mediocre at best.
Despite Nolan stating that he wanted Downey Jr, to diversify and expand his acting repertoire by casting him in this role in interviews after the film released, I’d have to say it was a bad casting decision. He’s the definitive actor of the Hollywood MCU era and a pretty good actor at that and I’m not saying he’s one-dimensional, but he’s better off playing Tony Stark; far better.
Cillian Murphy is brilliant. His acting is phenomenal and this is one of his best performances in a big budget film and in collaborating with Nolan. Murphy as Oppenheimer is his best bit of acting to date. We’ve seen his suave acting style in Peaky Blinders, but it’s safe to say that he hits this one out of the park. Yes, the film is a bio pic, but Murphy does a staggering job, almost like running an F1 race by hitting every turn, chicane and lap to perfection.
The screenplay was moderately interesting yet failed to captivate me. The stereotypical political theme and bureaucracy (which I was expecting) from the start of the whole Communist situation and Oppenheimer’s early flirtations and inclinations to the political ideology along with his quest and thirst for power and fame, the vengeful side of Strauss and his feud with Oppenheimer all got a bit listless, uneventful and banal.
But again, what can you do with the concept other than this?
However, the post-production is the film’s saving grace, that perhaps saves Nolan the blushes. The editing is pretty compelling and very intuitive and well-executed. The parts where Oppenheimer drifts into daydreams, nightmares and visions are depicted absolutely astutely and are on-point in their aesthetic aspects.
The stamping feet, the flashing lights, the silence initially when the bomb goes off with the loud percussion hits that drop in later unexpectedly, and the shots of Los Alamos that cut to the landscape and how the suspense was delivered are just some examples of great sound design and cinematography, but the black and white scenes are just novel and very unnecessary.
The standout aspect of the film, however, is surely Ludwig Goransson’s score. I particularly liked how (maybe because of a combined decision by Nolan and Goransson) the score drives the entire film, especially most of the dialogue. If Goransson’s upbeat and high tempo score to a lot of parts of the dialogue of the film weren’t present, or were very subtle, we’d just have a whole film of people talking.
The orchestration is also intriguingly complex and builds layer upon layer. While simpler themes are often more effective while writing music for a score, Goransson’s complex motifs and instrumentation is as progressive as the chain reactions that the physicists discuss in the movie, and evolves equally as quick as a chain reaction of splitting atoms, culminating in an evocative and explosive masterpiece of a score.
If it wasn’t for Goransson’s composing genius complementing this film, it would have been a sheer debacle.
At times, I was a bit bored and it all seemed dragged and I was eagerly awaiting the interval, which I’m not gonna lie about; something I’ve never experienced while watching any other Nolan film; so it was a first.
This is easily Nolan’s worst film (maybe not at the box-office), but I don’t get the positive reviews at all, it could be because I didn’t watch the movie on an IMAX screen, but on a regular 2D screen but a movie shouldn’t bank on the format it’s shot on and the visual and auditory aspects of the watching experience to be a compelling watch.
In hindsight, it was a good watch, but not something I’d watch over and over again like most of Nolan’s films of the past. I’ve mostly watched all of his movies, every one of of them at least two or three times.
I sort of agree that he perhaps tried to do things differently, which could be why he took the decisions he did. But the war genre is perhaps a genre that doesn’t showcase the best of Nolan’s abilities like his explorations in fantasy and sci-fi which is utterly revolutionary, gripping and mind bending.
A story about a physicist without exploring physics in detail that evolves into a glorified mishmash of science and politics, which then culminates in a trivial personal dispute and a courtroom drama — Oppenheimer is an H-bomb in itself.
Final rating — 7/10
Here’s a piece I wrote about Oppenheimer in March for the platform Movieweb: https://movieweb.com/why-oppenheimer-is-so-relevant-now/