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For all the pre-release speculation about how analog epic-maker Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer" would re-create the explosion of the first atomic bomb, the film's most spectacular attraction turns out to be something else: the human face. 

This three-plus hour biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer ( Cillian Murphy ) is a film about faces. They talk, a lot. They listen. They react to good and bad news. And sometimes they get lost in their own heads—none more so than the title character, the supervisor of the nuclear weapons team at Los Alamos whose apocalyptic contribution to science earned him the nickname The American Prometheus (as per the title of Nolan's primary source, the biography by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherman). Nolan and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema use the large-format IMAX film system not merely to capture the splendor of New Mexico's desert panoramas but contrast the external coolness and internal turmoil of Oppenheimer, a brilliant mathematician and low-key showman and leader whose impulsive nature and insatiable sexual appetites made his private life a disaster, and whose greatest contribution to civilization was a weapon that could destroy it. Close-up after close-up shows star Cillian Murphy's face staring into the middle distance, off-screen, and sometimes directly into the lens, while Oppenheimer dissociates from unpleasant interactions, or gets lost inside memories, fantasies, and waking nightmares. "Oppenheimer" rediscovers the power of huge closeups of people's faces as they grapple with who they are, and who other people have decided that they are, and what they've done to themselves and others. 

Sometimes the close-ups of people's faces are interrupted by flash-cuts of events that haven't happened, or already happened. There are recurring images of flame, debris, and smaller chain-reaction explosions that resemble strings of firecrackers, as well as non-incendiary images that evoke other awful, personal disasters. (There are a lot of gradually expanding flashbacks in this film, where you see a glimpse of something first, then a bit more of it, and then finally the entire thing.) But these don't just relate to the big bomb that Oppenheimer's team hopes to detonate in the desert, or the little ones that are constantly detonating in Oppenheimer's life, sometimes because he personally pushed the big red button in a moment of anger, pride or lust, and other times because he made a naive or thoughtless mistake that pissed somebody off long ago, and the wronged person retaliated with the equivalent of a time-delayed bomb. The "fissile" cutting, to borrow a physics word, is also a metaphor for the domino effect caused by individual decisions, and the chain reaction that makes other things happen as a result. This principle is also visualized by repeated images of ripples in water, starting with the opening closeup of raindrops setting off expanding circles on the surface that foreshadow both the ending of Oppenheimer's career as a government advisor and public figure and the explosion of the first nuke at Los Alamos (which observers see, then hear, then finally feel, in all its awful impact). 

The weight of the film's interests and meanings are carried by faces—not just Oppenheimer's, but those of other significant characters, including General Leslie Groves ( Matt Damon ), Los Alamos' military supervisor; Robert's suffering wife Kitty Oppenheimer ( Emily Blunt ), whose tactical mind could have averted a lot of disasters if her husband would have only listened; and Lewis Strauss ( Robert Downey , Jr.), the Atomic Energy Commission chair who despised Oppenheimer for a lot of reasons, including his decision to distance himself from his Jewish roots, and who spent several years trying to derail Oppenheimer's post-Los Alamos career. The latter constitutes its own adjacent full-length story about pettiness, mediocrity, and jealousy. Strauss is Salieri to Oppenheimer's Mozart, regularly and often pathetically reminding others that he studied physics, too, back in the day, and that he's a good person, unlike Oppenheimer the adulterer and communist sympathizer. (This film asserts that Strauss leaked the FBI file on his progressive and communist associations to a third party who then wrote to the bureau's director, J. Edgar Hoover.)

The film speaks quite often of one of the principles of quantum physics, which holds that observing quantum phenomena by a detector or an instrument can change the results of this experiment. The editing illustrates it by constantly re-framing our perception of an event to change its meaning, and the script does it by adding new information that undermines, contradicts, or expands our sense of why a character did something, or whether they even knew why they did it. 

That, I believe, is really what "Oppenheimer" is about, much more so than the atom bomb itself, or even its impact on the war and the Japanese civilian population, which is talked about but never shown. The film does show what the atom bomb does to human flesh, but it's not recreations of the actual attacks on Japan: the agonized Oppenheimer imagines Americans going through it. This filmmaking decision is likely to antagonize both viewers who wanted a more direct reckoning with the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and those who have bought into the arguments advanced by Strauss and others that the bombs had to be dropped because Japan never would have surrendered otherwise. The movie doesn't indicate whether it thinks that interpretation is true or if it sides more with Oppenheimer and others who insisted that Japan was on its knees by that point in World War II and would have eventually given up without atomic attacks that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. No, this is a film that permits itself the freedoms and indulgences of novelists, poets, and opera composers. It does what we expect it to do: Dramatize the life of Oppenheimer and other historically significant people in his orbit in an aesthetically daring way while also letting all of the characters and all of the events be used metaphorically and symbolically as well, so that they become pointillistic elements in a much larger canvas that's about the mysteries of the human personality and the unforeseen impact of decisions made by individuals and societies.

This is another striking thing about "Oppenheimer." It's not entirely about Oppenheimer even though Murphy's baleful face and haunting yet opaque eyes dominate the movie. It's also about the effect of Oppenheimer's personality and decisions on other people, from the other strong-willed members of his atom bomb development team (including Benny Safdie's Edwin Teller, who wanted to skip ahead to create the much more powerful hydrogen bomb, and eventually did) to the beleaguered Kitty; Oppenheimer's mistress Jean Tatlock ( Florence Pugh , who has some of Gloria Grahame's self-immolating smolder); General Groves, who likes Oppenheimer in spite of his arrogance but isn't going to side with him over the United States government; and even Harry Truman, the US president who ordered the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (played in a marvelous cameo by Gary Oldman ) and who derides Oppenheimer as a naive and narcissistic "crybaby" who sees history mainly in terms of his own feelings.

Jennifer Lame's editing is prismatic and relentless, often in a faintly Terrence Malick -y way, skipping between three or more time periods within seconds. It's wedded to virtually nonstop music by  Ludwig Göransson  that fuses with the equally relentless dialogue and monologues to create an odd but distinctive sort of scientifically expository aria that's probably what it would feel like to read American Prometheus  while listening to a playlist of  Philip Glass film scores. Non-linear movies like this one do a better job of capturing the pinball-machine motions of human consciousness than linear movies do, and they also capture what it's like to read a third-person omniscient book (or a biography that permits itself to imagine what its subjects might have been thinking or feeling). It also paradoxically captures the mental process of reading a text and responding to it emotionally and viscerally as well as intellectually. The mind stays anchored to the text. But it also jumps outside of it, connecting the text to other texts, to external knowledge, and to one's own experience and imaginings.

This review hasn't delved into the plot of the film or the real-world history that inspired it, not because it isn't important (of course it is) but because—as is always the case with Nolan—the main attraction is not the tale but the telling. Nolan has been derided as less a dramatist than half showman, half mathematician, making bombastic, overcomplicated blockbusters that are as much puzzles as stories. But whether that characterization was true (and I'm increasingly convinced it never entirely was) it seems beside the point when you see how thoughtfully and rewardingly it's been applied to a biography of a real person. "Oppenheimer" could retrospectively seem like a turning point in the director's filmography, when he takes all of the stylistic and technical practices that he'd been honing for the previous twenty years in intellectualized pulp blockbusters and turns them inward.

The movie is an academic-psychedelic biography in the vein of those 1990s Oliver Stone films that were edited within an inch of their lives (at times it's as if the park bench scene in " JFK " had been expanded to three hours). There's also a strain of pitch-black humor, in a Stanley Kubrick  mode, as when top government officials meet to go over a list of possible Japanese cities to bomb, and the man reading the list says that he just made an executive decision to delete Kyoto from it because he and his wife honeymooned there. (The Kubrick connection is cemented further by the presence of "Full Metal Jacket" star  Matthew Modine , who co-stars as American engineer and inventor Vannevar Bush.) It’s an example of top-of-the-line, studio-produced popular art with a dash of swagger, variously evoking Michael Mann's " The Insider ," late-period Terrence Malick, nonlinearly-edited art cinema touchstones like "Hiroshima Mon Amour," "The Pawnbroker," "All That Jazz" and " Picnic at Hanging Rock "; and, inevitably, " Citizen Kane " (there's even a Rosebud-like mystery surrounding what Oppenheimer and his hero Albert Einstein, played by Tom Conti , talked about on the banks of a Princeton pond). 

Most of the performances have a bit of an "old movie" feeling, with the actors snapping off their lines and not moving their faces as much as they would in a more modern story. A lot of the dialogue is delivered quickly, producing a screwball comedy energy. This comes through most strongly in the arguments between Robert and Kitty about his sexual indiscretions and refusal to listen to her mostly superb advice; the more abstract debates about power and responsibility between Robert and General Groves, and the scenes between Strauss and a Senate aide (Alden Ehrenreich) who is advising him as he testifies before a committee that he hopes will approve him to serve in President Dwight Eisenhower's cabinet.

But as a physical experience, "Oppenheimer" is something else entirely—it's hard to say exactly what, and that's what's so fascinating about it. I've already heard complaints that the movie is "too long," that it could've ended with the first bomb detonating, and could've done without the bits about Oppenheimer's sex life and the enmity of Strauss, and that it's perversely self-defeating to devote so much of the running time, including the most of the third hour, to a pair of governmental hearings: the one where Oppenheimer tries to get his security clearance renewed, and Strauss trying to get approved for Eisenhower's cabinet. But the film's furiously entropic tendencies complement the theoretical discussions of the how's and why's of the individual and collective personality. To greater and lesser degrees, all of the characters are appearing before a tribunal and bring called to account for their contradictions, hypocrisies, and sins. The tribunal is out there in the dark. We've been given the information but not told what to decide, which is as it should be.

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

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Film credits.

Oppenheimer (2023)

Rated R for some sexuality, nudity and language.

181 minutes

Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer

Emily Blunt as Katherine 'Kitty' Oppenheimer

Matt Damon as Gen. Leslie Groves Jr.

Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss

Florence Pugh as Jean Tatlock

Benny Safdie as Edward Teller

Michael Angarano as Robert Serber

Josh Hartnett as Ernest Lawrence

Rami Malek as David Hill

Kenneth Branagh as Niels Bohr

Dane DeHaan as Kenneth Nichols

Dylan Arnold as Frank Oppenheimer

David Krumholtz as Isidor Isaac Rabi

Alden Ehrenreich as Senate Aide

Matthew Modine as Vannevar Bush

Gary Oldman as Harry S. Truman

Alex Wolff as Luis Walter Alvarez

Casey Affleck as Boris Pash

Jack Quaid as Richard Feynman

Emma Dumont as Jackie Oppenheimer

Matthias Schweighöfer as Werner Heisenberg

David Dastmalchian as William L. Borden

Christopher Denham as Klaus Fuchs

Josh Peck as Kenneth Bainbridge

Tony Goldwyn as Gordon Gray

Olivia Thirlby as Lilli Hornig

James Remar as Henry Stimson

• Christopher Nolan

Writer (based on the book by)

• Martin Sherwin

Cinematographer

• Hoyte van Hoytema
• Jennifer Lame
• Ludwig Göransson

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‘Oppenheimer’ Review: Christopher Nolan Makes a Riveting Historical Psychodrama, but It Doesn’t Build to a Big Bang

Cillian Murphy gives a phenomenal performance as J. Robert Oppenheimer, who oversaw creation of the atomic bomb, in a film that's ruthlessly authentic and, for much of its three hours, gripping.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

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In the early scenes of “ Oppenheimer ,” J. Robert Oppenheimer ( Cillian Murphy ), an American physics student attending graduate school in England and Germany in the 1920s, with bright blue marble eyes and a curly wedge of hair that stands up like Charlie Chaplin’s, keeps having visions of particles and waves. We see the images that are disrupting his mind, the particles pulsating, the waves aglow in vibratory bands of light. Oppenheimer can see the brave new world of quantum physics, and the visual razzmatazz is exactly the sort of thing you’d expect from a biopic written and directed by Christopher Nolan : a molecular light show as a reflection of the hero’s inner spirit.

Cillian Murphy, with a thousand-yard beam, the half-smile of an intellectual rake, and a way of keeping everything close to the vest, gives a phenomenal performance as Oppenheimer, making him fascinating and multi-layered. His “Oppie” is an elegant mandarin who’s also a bit snakelike — at once a cold prodigy and an ardent humanist, an aristocrat and a womanizer, a Jewish outsider who becomes a consummate insider, and a man who oversees the invention of nuclear weapons without a shred of doubt or compunction, only to confront the world he created from behind a defensive shield of guilt that’s a lot less self-aware.

The film opens with a flash forward to the 1954 hearing of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission that ultimately resulted in Oppenheimer, accused (among other things) of having hidden Communist ties, being stripped of his security clearance. This was the government’s way of silencing him, since in the postwar world he’d become something of a dove on the issue of nuclear weapons, a view that didn’t mesh with America’s Cold War stance of aggression. The hearing was the darkest chapter of Oppenheimer’s life, and using it as a framing device feels, at first, like a very standard thing to do.

Except that the film keeps returning to the hearing, weaving it deep into the fabric of its three-hour running time. Lewis Strauss, played with a captivating bureaucratic terseness by Robert Downey Jr. , is the A.E.C. chairman who became Oppenheimer’s ideological and personal enemy (after Oppenheimer humiliated him during a congressional testimonial), and he’s the secret force behind the hearing, which takes place in a back room hidden away from the press. As Oppenheimer defends himself in front of a committee of hanging judges, the movie uses his anecdotes to flash back in time, and Nolan creates a hypnotic multi-tiered storytelling structure, using it to tease out the hidden continuities that shaped Oppenheimer’s life and his creation of the bomb.

We see how the Cold War really started before World War II was over — it was always there, shaping the rapt paranoia of atom-bomb politics. We see that Oppenheimer the ruthless nuclear zealot and Oppenheimer the mystic idealist were one and the same. And we see that the race to complete the Manhattan Project, rooted in the makeshift creation of a small desert city that Oppenheimer presides over in Los Alamos, New Mexico, meant that the momentum of the nuclear age was already taking on a life of its own.      

In the ’30s, Oppenheimer, already a legend in his own mind, brings quantum mechanics to the U.S., even as his field of passion encompasses Picasso, Freud, and Marx, not to mention the absorbing of half a dozen languages (from Dutch to Sanskrit), all to soak up the revolutionary energy field that’s sweeping the world, influencing everything from physics to workers’ liberation. Oppenheimer isn’t a Communist, but he’s a devoted leftist with many Communists in his life, from his brother and sister-and-law to his doleful bohemian mistress, Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh). What really makes his eyes go bright is when the atom gets split by two German scientists, in 1938. He at first insists it’s not possible, but then his colleagues at Berkeley, led by Ernest Lawrence (Josh Hartnett), demonstrate that it is, and he realizes in an instant where all this points: to the possibility of a bomb.

“Oppenheimer” has a mesmerizing first half, encompassing everything from Oppenheimer’s mysterious Princeton encounter with Albert Einstein (Tom Conti) to his far from utopian marriage to the alcoholic Kitty (played with scalding force by Emily Blunt ). Just about everything we see is stunning in its accuracy. “Oppenheimer” isn’t a movie that traffics in composite characters or audience-friendly arcs; Nolan channels the grain of reality, the fervor and detail of what really happened. And the buildup to the creation of the first atomic bomb just about ticks with cosmic suspense. There are Soviet spies at Los Alamos, as well as a sinister comic grace note: the possibility (“a little more than zero”) that the chain reaction begun by the nuclear explosion could spread to the earth’s atmosphere and never stop, an apocalypse that theoretical physics can’t totally rule out.

But the big bang itself, when it finally arrives, as the bomb is tested in the wee hours of that fateful day code-named Trinity, is, I have to say, a letdown. Nolan shows it impressionistically — the sound cutting out, images of what look like radioactive hellfire. But the terrifying awesomeness, the nightmare bigness of it all, does not come across. Nor does it evoke the descriptions of witnesses who say that the blast was streaked with purple and gray and was many times brighter than the noonday sun.

And once Oppenheimer shoots past that nuclear climax, a certain humming intensity leaks out of the movie. We’re still at the damn A.E.C. hearing (after two hours), and the film turns into a woeful meditation on what the bomb meant, whether it should have been dropped, our rivalry with the Soviets, and how Oppenheimer figured into all of that, including his relegation to the status of defrocked Cold War scapegoat. What happened to Oppenheimer, at the height of the McCarthy era, was nothing less than egregious (though it’s relevant that he was never officially convicted of disloyalty). At the same time, there are scenes in which characters take him to task for his vanity, for making the bomb all about him . In one of them, he’s dressed down by no less than President Harry Truman (an unbilled Gary Oldman). Is Truman right?

The most radically authentic line in the movie may be the one where Oppenheimer, just after the Nazis have been defeated, explains to a room full of young Los Alamos scientists why he feels it’s still justifiable to use the bomb on Japan. We all know the dogmatic lesson we learned in high school: that dropping those bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war and saved the lives of countless U.S. soldiers. From the age of 15, I’ve never bought the rationale of that argument. But I buy what Oppenheimer says here: that by using a nuclear weapon, we would create a horrific demonstration of why it could never, ever be used again. (It’s not that that’s a justification . It’s that it’s an explanation of why it happened.)

Reviewed at AMC Lincoln Square, July 17, 2023. MPA Rating: R. Running time: 180 MIN.

• Production: A Universal Pictures release of a Syncopy production, in association with Atlas Entertainment. Producers: Emma Thomas, Charles Roven, Christopher Nolan. Executive producers: J. David Wargo, James Woods, Thomas Hayslip.
• Crew: Director, screenplay: Christopher Nolan. Camera: Hoyt van Hoytema. Editor: Jennifer Lame. Music: Ludwig Göransson.
• With: Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, Josh Hartnett, Casey Affleck, Rami Malek, Kenneth Branagh.

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‘Oppenheimer’ Review: A Man for Our Time

Christopher Nolan’s complex, vivid portrait of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the “father of the atomic bomb,” is a brilliant achievement in formal and conceptual terms.

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‘Oppenheimer’ | Anatomy of a Scene

The writer and director christopher nolan narrates the opening sequence from the film, starring cillian murphy..

Hi, I’m Christopher Nolan director, writer, and co-producer of “Oppenheimer.” Opening with the raindrops on the water came late to myself and Jen Lane in the edit suite. But ultimately, it became a motif that runs the whole way through the film. Became very important. These opening images of the detonation at Trinity are based on the real footage. Andrew Jackson, our visual effects supervisor, put them together using analog methods to try and reproduce the incredible frame rates that their technology allowed at the time, superior to what we have today. Adapting Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin’s book “American Prometheus,” I fully embraced the Prometheun theme, but ultimately chose to change the title to “Oppenheimer” to give a more direct idea of what the film was going to be about and whose point of view we’re seeing. And here we have Cillian Murphy with an IMAX camera inches from his nose. Hoyte van Hoytema was incredible. IMAX camera revealing everything. And I think, to some degree, applying the pressure to Cillian as Oppenheimer that this hearing was applying. “Yes, your honor.” “We’re not judges, Doctor.” “Oh.” And behind him, out of focus, the great Emily Blunt who’s going to become so important to the film as Kitty Oppenheimer, who gradually comes more into focus over the course of the first reel. We divided the two timelines into fission and fusion, the two different approaches to releasing nuclear energy in this devastating form to try and suggest to the audience the two different timelines. And then embraced black-and-white shooting here. Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss being shot on IMAX black-and-white film. The first time anyone’s ever shot that film. Made especially for us. And he’s here talking to Alden Ehrenreich who is absolutely indicative of the incredible ensemble that our casting director John Papsidera put together. Robert Downey Jr. utterly transformed, I think, not just in terms of appearance, but also in terms of approach to character, stripping away years of very well-developed charisma to just try and inhabit the skin of a somewhat awkward, sometimes venal, but also charismatic individual, and losing himself in this utterly. And then as we come up to this door, we go into the Senate hearing rooms. And we try to give that as much visibility, grandeur, and glamour to contrast with the security hearing that’s so claustrophobic. And takes Oppenheimer completely out of the limelight. [CROWD SHOUTING]

By Manohla Dargis

“Oppenheimer,” Christopher Nolan’s staggering film about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the man known as “the father of the atomic bomb,” condenses a titanic shift in consciousness into three haunted hours. A drama about genius, hubris and error, both individual and collective, it brilliantly charts the turbulent life of the American theoretical physicist who helped research and develop the two atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II — cataclysms that helped usher in our human-dominated age.

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The movie is based on “ American Prometheus : The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer,” the authoritative 2005 biography by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. Written and directed by Nolan, the film borrows liberally from the book as it surveys Oppenheimer’s life, including his role in the Manhattan Engineer District, better known as the Manhattan Project. He served as director of a clandestine weapons lab built in a near-desolate stretch of Los Alamos, in New Mexico, where he and many other of the era’s most dazzling scientific minds puzzled through how to harness nuclear reactions for the weapons that killed tens of thousands instantly, ending the war in the Pacific.

The atomic bomb and what it wrought define Oppenheimer’s legacy and also shape this film. Nolan goes deep and long on the building of the bomb, a fascinating and appalling process, but he doesn’t restage the attacks; there are no documentary images of the dead or panoramas of cities in ashes, decisions that read as his ethical absolutes. The horror of the bombings, the magnitude of the suffering they caused and the arms race that followed suffuse the film. “Oppenheimer” is a great achievement in formal and conceptual terms, and fully absorbing, but Nolan’s filmmaking is, crucially, in service to the history that it relates.

The story tracks Oppenheimer — played with feverish intensity by Cillian Murphy — across decades, starting in the 1920s with him as a young adult and continuing until his hair grays. The film touches on personal and professional milestones, including his work on the bomb, the controversies that dogged him, the anti-Communist attacks that nearly ruined him, as well as the friendships and romances that helped sustain yet also troubled him. He has an affair with a political firebrand named Jean Tatlock (a vibrant Florence Pugh), and later weds a seductive boozer, Kitty Harrison (Emily Blunt, in a slow-building turn), who accompanies him to Los Alamos, where she gives birth to their second child.

It’s a dense, event-filled story that Nolan — who’s long embraced the plasticity of the film medium — has given a complex structure, which he parcels into revealing sections. Most are in lush color; others in high-contrast black and white. These sections are arranged in strands that wind together for a shape that brings to mind the double helix of DNA. To signal his conceit, he stamps the film with the words “fission” (a splitting into parts) and “fusion” (a merging of elements); Nolan being Nolan, he further complicates the film by recurrently kinking up the overarching chronology — it is a lot.

It also isn’t a story that builds gradually; rather, Nolan abruptly tosses you into the whirl of Oppenheimer’s life with vivid scenes of him during different periods. In rapid succession the watchful older Oppie (as his intimates call him) and his younger counterpart flicker onscreen before the story briefly lands in the 1920s, where he’s an anguished student tormented by fiery, apocalyptic visions. He suffers; he also reads T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” drops a needle on Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” and stands before a Picasso painting, defining works of an age in which physics folded space and time into space-time .

This fast pace and narrative fragmentation continue as Nolan fills in this Cubistic portrait, crosses and recrosses continents and ushers in armies of characters, including Niels Bohr (Kenneth Branagh), a physicist who played a role in the Manhattan Project. Nolan has loaded the movie with familiar faces — Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Gary Oldman — some distracting. It took me a while to accept the director Benny Safdie as Edward Teller, the theoretical physicist known as the “father of the hydrogen bomb,” and I still don’t know why Rami Malek shows up in a minor part other than he’s yet another known commodity.

As Oppenheimer comes into focus so does the world. In 1920s Germany, he learns quantum physics; the next decade he’s at Berkeley teaching, bouncing off other young geniuses and building a center for the study of quantum physics. Nolan makes the era’s intellectual excitement palpable — Einstein published his theory of general relativity in 1915 — and, as you would expect, there’s a great deal of scientific debate and chalkboards filled with mystifying calculations, most of which Nolan translates fairly comprehensibly. One of the film’s pleasures is experiencing by proxy the kinetic excitement of intellectual discourse.

It’s at Berkeley that the trajectory of Oppenheimer’s life dramatically shifts, after news breaks that Germany has invaded Poland. By that point, he has become friends with Ernest Lawrence (Josh Hartnett), a physicist who invented a particle accelerator, the cyclotron , and who plays an instrumental role in the Manhattan Project. It’s also at Berkeley that Oppenheimer meets the project’s military head, Leslie Groves (a predictably good Damon), who makes him Los Alamos’s director, despite the leftist causes he supported — among them, the fight against fascism during the Spanish Civil War — and some of his associations, including with Communist Party members like his brother, Frank (Dylan Arnold).

Nolan is one of the few contemporary filmmakers operating at this ambitious scale, both thematically and technically. Working with his superb cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, Nolan has shot in 65-millimeter film (which is projected in 70-millimeter), a format that he’s used before to create a sense of cinematic monumentality. The results can be immersive, though at times clobbering, particularly when the wow of his spectacle has proved more substantial and coherent than his storytelling. In “Oppenheimer,” though, as in “ Dunkirk ” (2017), he uses the format to convey the magnitude of a world-defining event; here, it also closes the distance between you and Oppenheimer, whose face becomes both vista and mirror.

The film’s virtuosity is evident in every frame, but this is virtuosity without self-aggrandizement. Big subjects can turn even well-intended filmmakers into show-offs, to the point that they upstage the history they seek to do justice to. Nolan avoids that trap by insistently putting Oppenheimer into a larger context, notably with the black-and-white portions. One section turns on a politically motivated security clearance hearing in 1954, a witch hunt that damaged his reputation; the second follows the 1959 confirmation for Lewis Strauss (a mesmerizing, near-unrecognizable Downey), a former chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission who was nominated for a cabinet position.

Nolan integrates these black-and-white sections with the color ones, using scenes from the hearing and the confirmation — Strauss’s role in the hearing and his relationship with Oppenheimer directly affected the confirmation’s outcome — to create a dialectical synthesis. One of the most effective examples of this approach illuminates how Oppenheimer and other Jewish project scientists, some of whom were refugees from Nazi Germany, saw their work in stark, existential terms. Yet Oppenheimer’s genius, his credentials, international reputation and wartime service to the United States government cannot save him from political gamesmanship, the vanity of petty men and the naked antisemitism of the Red scare.

These black-and-white sequences define the last third of “Oppenheimer.” They can seem overlong, and at times in this part of the film it feels as if Nolan is becoming too swept up in the trials that America’s most famous physicist experienced. Instead, it is here that the film’s complexities and all its many fragments finally converge as Nolan puts the finishing touches on his portrait of a man who contributed to an age of transformational scientific discovery, who personified the intersection of science and politics, including in his role as a Communist boogeyman, who was transformed by his role in the creation of weapons of mass destruction and soon after raised the alarm about the dangers of nuclear war.

François Truffaut once wrote that “war films, even pacifist, even the best, willingly or not, glorify war and render it in some way attractive.” This, I think, gets at why Nolan refuses to show the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, world-defining events that eventually killed an estimated 100,000 to upward of 200,000 souls. You do, though, see Oppenheimer watch the first test bomb and, critically, you also hear the famous words that he said crossed his mind as the mushroom cloud rose: “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” As Nolan reminds you, the world quickly moved on from the horrors of the war to embrace the bomb. Now we, too, have become death, the destroyers of worlds.

Oppenheimer Rated R for disturbing images, and adult language and behavior. Running time: 3 hours. In theaters.

Audio produced by Kate Winslett .

An earlier version of this article misidentified J. Robert Oppenheimer as director of the Manhattan Project. He was director of its clandestine weapons laboratory, Los Alamos.

How we handle corrections

Manohla Dargis is the chief film critic of The Times, which she joined in 2004. She has an M.A. in cinema studies from New York University, and her work has been anthologized in several books. More about Manohla Dargis

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Review: 'Oppenheimer' emerges as a monumental achievement on the march into screen history

"It's kind of a horror movie," understates director Christopher Nolan of "Oppenheimer,"

his brilliant, bruising take on the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy), the dark knight of the atomic age. Murphy's pale blue eyes become a path into a tortured soul as Nolan—a true film artist in works as diverse as "Memento" and "Dunkirk," creates a new film classic.

Based on Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherman's 2005 biography, "American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer," Nolan's three-hour-plus masterpiece fills up our senses with the details of quantum mechanics to ignite the story of an American theoretical physicist who helped invent the ultimate weapon of mass destruction and lived to regret it.

Murphy's performance, flawless in every detail, encompasses how Oppenheimer's Manhattan Project team relocated to Los Alamos, New Mexico, to accelerate development of the weapon that would help end WW2 through the cataclysmic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, and usher in the threat of nuclear annihilation that's only escalated over time.

Nolan uses radio reports to detail the effects of those bombs, saving the eye-searing visuals for the 1945 Trinity test in the New Mexico desert to bring home the destruction being unleashed. The superb sound design in which silence alternates with waves of reverberation to bring the unthinkable to devastating life is unmissable, unforgettable and scary as hell.

Shot with Imax cameras by the great Hoyte van Hoytema, "Oppenheimer" deserves to be seen on the biggest screen with a state-of-the-art sound system. This despite the fact that the film is often a series of debates among scientists arguing in close-ups that find endless fascination in the geography of the human face.

The actors in "Oppenheimer could not be better. They include Matt Damon as General Leslie Groves, the blustering military supervisor at Los Alamos, Benny Safdie as Edward Teller, who pushed to develop the even more dangerous hydrogen bomb, and Gary Oldman in a sensational cameo as Harry Truman, the president who ordered the use of the bomb on Japan and dismissed Oppenheimer as a "crybaby" for objecting.

Oppy, as intimates called him, had a personal life that mirrored his professional turbulence. Though he mingled with such greats as Albert Einstein (Tom Conti), Ernest Lawrence (Josh Hartnett), and Niels Bohr (Kenneth Branagh), Oppy's sexual entanglements, notably with psychologist Jean Tatlock (a mesmerizing Florence Pugh) made the wrong kind of headlines.

His marriage to biologist Katherine "Kitty" Puening (Emily Blunt), an alcoholic suffering from postpartum depression, added to the chaos. Kudos to Blunt for building the role with a fierce independence as Kitty defended Oppy from the political gamesmanship that plagued him.

In the riveting last section of the film, Nolan shows us Oppenheimer fighting against those eager to discredit him, first in the Sen. Joseph McCarthy commie witch-hunts of 1954 and five years later during the Senate confirmation hearings for the nomination of former  Atomic Energy Commission chair Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.) as secretary of commerce.

Nolan shoots both these sections in a vivid black-and-white to underscore the resentment Strauss feels for Oppenheimer for hiding his Jewish roots, communist proclivities and fears about government backed nuclear energy.

In a film of standout performances, Downey delivers a tour de force of festering animosity that blows the doors off. All his time in the Marvel universe might lead you to forget that Downey is one of the best actors on the planet. Here's a reminder. Prepare to be wowed.

"Oppenheimer," set to Ludwig Göransson's thundering orchestral score, is one of the best movies you'll see anywhere. With Nolan's extraordinary talent shining on its highest beams, the film emerges as a monumental achievement on the march into screen history.

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Oppenheimer review – Christopher Nolan’s volatile biopic is a towering achievement

As the ‘father of the atomic bomb’, Cillian Murphy is a 20th-century Frankenstein whose catastrophic creation unravels across a tangle of timelines in Nolan’s expansive drama

I t’s billed as a biopic of theoretical physicist J Robert Oppenheimer, dubbed the “father of the atomic bomb”. But “biopic” seems too small a word to contain the ambition and scope of Christopher Nolan ’s formidable if occasionally unwieldy latest. Oppenheimer is a dense and intricate period piece, playing out in a tangle of timelines. It weaves together courtroom drama, romantic liaisons, laboratory epiphanies and lecture hall personality cults. But perhaps more than all of this, Oppenheimer is the ultimate monster movie. Cillian Murphy ’s Oppenheimer is an atomic-age Frankenstein, a man captivated by the boundless possibilities of science, realising too late that his creation has a limitless capacity for destruction. Ultimately, however, the monster in this story is not Oppenheimer’s invention but the appetite for annihilation that it unleashes in mankind. It’s a realisation that plays out, inexorably, in Oppenheimer’s hollow, haunted face as the film unfolds. Murphy’s far-seeing ice-chip eyes have never been put to better use.

In fact, Murphy’s physicality as a whole is one of the most potent weapons at the film’s disposal. He seems impossibly slight, a theoretical idea of a man in contrast to the robust certainties of the military figures he works alongside ( Matt Damon ’s Lt Gen Leslie Groves, for example, is bullish and solid, a clenched fist looking for something to punch). In one shot we see Oppenheimer hauling an armful of books into a new classroom, and it looks as though he’s buckling under the weight of his accumulated knowledge. At other times he’s calm and glassily composed, somehow removed from jostling egos and the fusion of ideas that will take shape into the ultimate weapon.

The version of Oppenheimer that we see on screen at any given time is a marker, an indication of which timeline we are currently inhabiting. Insights into his stellar early academic career are punctuated by glimpses of a later humiliating security clearance hearing that picked over every aspect of his life; the development of the bomb – the so-called Manhattan Project – is cut together with another hearing, this time in the Senate, to establish whether Oppenheimer’s former colleague Lewis Strauss ( Robert Downey Jr , excellent) should be appointed in a federal government role. It’s a knotty mesh of a structure. Time in Oppenheimer doesn’t feel entirely linear – there are moments, in particular a pivotal encounter with Albert Einstein, that seem unmoored from the rest of the film. Nolan’s films frequently require a couple of viewings to unravel fully, and while it lacks the baffle-factor of Tenet , Oppenheimer is no exception.

There are other problems: the cursory treatment of the female characters is one. Florence Pugh , as Oppenheimer’s mistress Jean Tatlock, gets short shrift. And Emily Blunt , as J Robert’s wife Kitty Oppenheimer, spends much of the first two hours mutinously clutching a martini on the edge of the frame. She does, however, claim a couple of terrific moments later on: a skin-flaying interrogation scene; a wordless glare that conveys the full nuclear winter of her animosity towards a disloyal colleague.

But, for the most part, the film is a towering achievement. Not surprisingly, given Nolan’s preference for shooting on Imax 70mm film, the picture has a depth of detail you could drown in. There’s no shortage of scenes of furious blackboard scribbling, the accepted cinematic signifier of scientific genius. But more interesting are the abstract moments; it’s as though we are venturing into the heart of the atom itself. Equally inventive is the way the sets seem to quake at moments of tension. Oppenheimer’s world is literally rocked by the shockwaves of the reaction that has been set in motion.

Most effective, however, is the use of sound and music. Like Jonathan Glazer’s upcoming The Zone of Interest , this is a film in which the horrors of war are not shown but conveyed inescapably through what we hear. Ludwig Göransson’s score is masterful and mercurial, surely one of the finest of the year. And there’s a recurring motif in the soundscape, a crescendo of thunderously stamping feet. It’s taken from a moment of triumph and glory, the high point of Oppenheimer’s career. But it takes on a mounting sense of threat with each use, as the catastrophic potential of the physicist’s work becomes clear.

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Oppenheimer First Reviews: Breathtaking, Ballsy, and One of the Best Biopics Ever Made

Critics say this may be not only christopher nolan's most impressive film but one of the best of the year, period, anchored by an award-worthy performance from cillian murphy..

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Here’s what critics are saying about Oppenheimer :

Is this possibly the best movie of the year?

“ Oppenheimer isn’t just an epic masterpiece but one of the most important films of the year.” – Danielle Solzman, Solzy at the Movies

“The most breathtaking film of the year.” – Jordan Hoffman, The Messenger

“This is a big, ballsy, serious-minded cinematic event of a type now virtually extinct from the studios.” – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

“Unless Hollywood has a sleeper hit waiting in the wings, Oppenheimer is primed to be 2023’s best film.” – Maggie Lovitt, Millennial Falcon Reviews

“The film stands as the best of 2023.” – Sheraz Farooqi, Cinema Debate

“2023’s best.” – Nick Schager, The Daily Beast

“The best film of 2023 and one of the greatest biopics ever.” – David Gonzalez, The Cinematic Reel

(Photo by Melinda Sue Gordon/©Universal Pictures)

Will Christopher Nolan fans enjoy it?

“It’s hard to know how the Nolan fanboys will respond to a movie as heady, historically curious, and grounded in gravitas as Oppenheimer which has little in common with the brooding majesty of his Batman movies or the tricky mindf–kery of films like Inception or Tenet . In terms of its stirring solemnity, it’s perhaps closest to Dunkirk , while its melding of science and emotion recalls Interstellar .” – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

“ Oppenheimer feels like the culmination of everything the director has done so far in his already remarkable career.” – Ross Bonaime, Collider

“ Oppenheimer is nothing if not a biopic as only Christopher Nolan could make one. Indeed, it would seem like the ideal vehicle for Nolan’s career-long exploration into the black holes of the human condition — the last riddles of a terrifyingly understandable world.” – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

Is it one of his most impressive films?

“ Oppenheimer —a film of endless contrasts and contradictions—is the fullest expression of the writer/director’s artistry to date… surely the finest and most inspired film of Nolan’s career.” – Nick Schager, The Daily Beast

“Nolan has created not just one of his best films, but easily the most mature film of his career.” – Ross Bonaime, Collider

“With Oppenheimer , Nolan might just be at his most experimental… [He] is now in the conversation for the greatest director of all time.” – Sheraz Farooqi, Cinema Debate

“It may just be Nolan’s magnum opus… [his] most profound and career-defining film to date.” – Maggie Lovitt, Millennial Falcon Reviews

How is the screenplay?

“In what could be Christopher Nolan’s best screenplay thus far, Oppenheimer weaves through a three-act structure that can be divided into these unique entities; a rich character-driven deconstruction, a tense-filled thriller, and a politically laced courtroom drama.” – David Gonzalez, The Cinematic Reel

“It is undoubtedly his strongest script and most cohesive plot.” – Maggie Lovitt, Millennial Falcon Reviews

“Nolan has crafted an incredibly dense script that never manages to feel too convoluted or overwhelming—a feat in itself, considering how many timelines and characters are thrown into the mix.” – Ross Bonaime, Collider

Is it difficult to understand?

“While the four-act structure asks a lot of the film’s audience, our patience and concentration are amply rewarded.” – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

“Considering the subject of Oppenheimer involves quantum mechanics, the film does a reasonable job explaining scientific concepts for laymen.” – Fred Topel, United Press International

How is Cillian Murphy in the title role?

“Cillian Murphy leads the ensemble for Oppenheimer with a career-defining performance… a tour de force, encapsulating the complexities of the man with a haunting intensity and continuous dead look in the eye.” – Sheraz Farooqi, Cinema Debate

“A tour de force… It’s a performance that demands his name to be called on Oscar nomination morning.” – David Gonzalez, The Cinematic Reel

“Murphy’s performance is every bit as inspired as his casting.” – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

“Murphy’s take on Oppenheimer will go down as one of the best performances ever captured by Nolan’s camera.” – Ross Bonaime, Collider

“Cillian Murphy, with a thousand-yard beam, the half-smile of an intellectual rake, and a way of keeping everything close to the vest, gives a phenomenal performance as Oppenheimer, making him fascinating and multi-layered.” – Owen Gleiberman, Variety

“It’s a magnificent marquee turn from the Peaky Blinders star (and frequent Nolan collaborator), providing a micro and macro concept of the physicist’s internal and external battles.” – Nick Schager, The Daily Beast

Do any of his co-stars particularly stand out?

“In a mighty ensemble of heavy-hitters, Downey gives the drama’s standout performance as Strauss, a founding member, and later chair, of the Atomic Energy Commission.” – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

“Downey should be a shoo-in for the awards circuit. A Best Supporting Actor nomination might just be a lock.” – Sheraz Farooqi, Cinema Debate

“Downey offers a thunderous, Oscar-worthy performance that is one of his career’s best.” – David Gonzalez, The Cinematic Reel

“Special mention goes to David Krumholtz as Isidor Isaac Rabi.” – Nick Schager, The Daily Beast

“David Krumholtz is extraordinary…[and] in one of his best roles in years, there’s Matt Damon as Leslie Groves.” – Jordan Hoffman, The Messenger

“It speaks to the caliber of this cast that there’s not enough room to praise the excellent Kenneth Branagh, Casey Affleck and Rami Malek, all of whom make a porterhouse out of a slice of roast beef.” – Johnny Oleksinski, New York Post

How is the movie’s representation of women characters?

“Though efforts were made, one can’t deny this movie ignores the women characters.” – Jordan Hoffman, The Messenger

“Despite attempts to include three significant female characters in a male-dominated story, all three women fare poorly enough to suggest it might have been less glaring to stick to the military story.” – Fred Topel, United Press International

“Nolan still has problems with substantial female roles, and that does continue in Oppenheimer .” – Ross Bonaime, Collider

“Emily Blunt’s role at first seems limited to the supportive wife, urging her husband to fight harder for his reputation. But she has a knockout scene in the hearing.” – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

How does it look and sound?

“The major draw for hardcore film geeks will be the visuals… DP Hoyte van Hoytema brings visceral intensity to the Trinity sequence and extraordinary texture and depth of field to the many dialogue-driven scenes.” – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

“Hoyte van Hoytema continues to impress as one of the best cinematographers. The film, shot with 70mm IMAX cameras, stands as one of the crowning achievements of IMAX with astonishing visuals that are set to leave with cinephiles upon the film’s conclusion.” – David Gonzalez, The Cinematic Reel

“Every frame is breathtaking, and just when you think you’ve seen all the tricks Nolan and van Hoytema have up their sleeves, they shock with another.” – Ross Bonaime, Collider

“Shot with grandeur by regular cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, the film is sensorially overwhelming, its titanic visuals matched by Ludwig Göransson’s bellowing score of anxious ticking, thunderous foot-stomping, discordant buzzing, and strident Psycho-esque strings.” – Nick Schager, The Daily Beast

“Ludwig Göransson wrote a good score, but the constant use of it is exhausting… Nolan may have taken criticisms about his films’ inaudible dialogue to heart and strove to keep dialogue at least as audible as the music.” – Fred Topel, United Press International

(Photo by ©Universal Pictures)

What about the pacing?

“Nolan begins with a flurry of borderline avant-garde cutting between spaces, places, and faces (courtesy of stellar editor Jennifer Lame), and he never lets his foot off the gas… I can recall no biopic ever hurtling forward at such a scorching clip” – Nick Schager, The Daily Beast

“At no point did this film ever feel slow because it had my attention for every single minute.” – Danielle Solzman, Solzy at the Movies

“It’s more slow-burn than explosive.” – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

Does it have any surprises?

“Perhaps the most surprising element of this audacious epic is that the scramble for atomic armament ends up secondary to the scathing depiction of political gamesmanship.” – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

“Many unbelievable scenes fill the entire screen.” – Johnny Oleksinski, New York Post

Do we need to see it in IMAX?

“If you’re lucky enough to be near one of the 30 screens worldwide showing the film in IMAX 70mm, you’ll experience a movie that, even at its talkiest, exerts an immersive hold, pulling you in to absorb the molecular detail of every shot.” – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

“See it in IMAX on 70-millimeter film — you’ll be very glad you did.” – Johnny Oleksinski, New York Post

“It’s a film that must be experienced on the biggest screen possible!” – Danielle Solzman, Solzy at the Movies

Oppenheimer opens in theaters everywhere on July 21, 2023.

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Oppenheimer review: Clever, imaginative and Christopher Nolan at his best

Cillian murphy allows the light to dim from his eyes in every subsequent scene, but it is robert downey jr who is titanic here, article bookmarked.

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Oppenheimer is Christopher Nolan ’s best and most revealing work. It’s a profoundly unnerving story told with a traditionalist’s eye towards craftsmanship and muscular, cinematic imagination. Here, Nolan treats one of the most contested legacies of the 20th century – that of J Robert Oppenheimer (played by Cillian Murphy ), the “father of the atomic bomb” – as a mathematical puzzle to be solved.

In 1943, at the behest of Major General Leslie Groves (Matt Damon), Oppenheimer became director of the Los Alamos Laboratory, the Manhattan Project’s New Mexico site for attempting to successfully build an atomic bomb. Oppenheimer, at first, was driven by moral imperative: he feared deeply, as a Jewish man, about what would happen if the Nazis were to develop a weapon of such deadly capability (that a non-Jewish actor has taken on a role in which identity plays such a central role is, in this light, somewhat strange).

Following Hitler’s defeat, Oppenheimer continued to support the bomb’s deployment in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, convinced that such hellish destruction would not only bring an end to the war in the Pacific, but to all wars. Historians have since disputed the idea that the bombs were in any way necessary for Japan’s surrender (the real turning point, it seems, was the threat of Soviet invasion). And Oppenheimer’s own utopian vision was swiftly dismantled by fellow scientist Edward Teller (Benny Safdie) and the chair of the US Atomic Energy Commission, Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr), who pushed forward with the creation of the H-bomb, a thousand times deadlier in its scope.

Oppenheimer attempted, in vain, to halt the subsequent nuclear arms race between the US and the Soviet Union. He was promptly silenced using one of America’s most cherished tools of political oppression – anti-Communist hysteria. He was attacked for his personal associations with the Communist Party, through his brother Frank (Dylan Arnold), wife Kitty (Emily Blunt), and ex-lover Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh). It was an act of pure, public humiliation.

Nolan observes each of these chapters with sickly wonder, as Jennifer Lame’s editing work and Ludwig Göransson’s clattering score lend Oppenheimer a frightening momentum. The film is constructed in a way that allows its audience to comprehend, on an intellectual level, the profound power and chaos that led its central character to see himself as the “Death, destroyer of worlds” of Hindu scripture. I’m not sure, however, that it burrows deeper than that – into that profound, emotional space that can be both overwhelming and difficult to verbalise. It’s a little too conscious of itself, and the ways cinema crafts its own reality. Throughout, the film teases an unheard conversation between Oppenheimer and Albert Einstein (Tom Conti), its inevitable reveal delivered in the same tone as the solution to the teleportation trick in Nolan’s own The Prestige .

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But the prioritisation of cleverness in Oppenheimer isn’t necessarily a criticism of Nolan – more a testament to who he is as an artist. The detonation of the A-bomb, during its first test in the New Mexico desert, is depicted as booming tufts of flame in extreme close-up, coupled with enraptured onlookers. You sense its primal force, the kind of untapped power that led Oppenheimer to view himself as a kind of American Prometheus (also the title of a 2005 biography Nolan drew heavily from). But contrast that, perhaps, with how David Lynch approached the same A-bomb test in his 2017 limited series Twin Peaks: The Return . Lynch drew the camera in, slowly, confronting us with the full-scale of the weapon’s destruction, while sucking us into its very centre, damning us through its inescapability. Nolan’s A-bomb is wondrous until we consider its context; Lynch’s A-bomb is pure nightmare.

The film’s non-linear structure (de rigueur for the Tenet and Inception filmmaker), with each timeline beautifully lensed by Hoyte van Hoytema in either colour or black and white, lends a little more focus to Oppenheimer’s post-war betrayal than it does to the blossoming of his guilt. Large swathes of the film play out as political thriller, the fuel in its engine being Downey Jr’s titanic colouring of Strauss, all boorishness and manipulative charm.

But Nolan is still committed to understanding the innerworkings of his subject. Here’s a man deep in denial. When confronted with photographs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he averts his gaze. Its horrors rumble (literally) in his peripheral vision, only clear to him when he imagines such brutality inflicted on the white Americans celebrating his “victory” in Los Alamos. Murphy creates his own devastating fission: brilliance torn apart by arrogance. Scene by scene, the light behind his eyes starts to dim. He even has sex the same way he builds bombs. After his extramarital affair turns sour, his wife Kitty chastises him: “You don’t get to commit a sin and then make us all feel sorry when there are consequences.” In Oppenheimer , a man’s private, internal, and political lives are strung together, each a component of the great equation that defines a man’s soul.

Dir: Christopher Nolan. Starring: Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Robert Downey Jr, Matt Damon, Florence Pugh, Tom Conti, Casey Affleck, Rami Malek, Josh Hartnett, Kenneth Branagh. 15, 180 minutes.

‘Oppenheimer’ is in cinemas from 21 July

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Review: Christopher Nolan’s gripping, despairing ‘Oppenheimer’ ponders history and the future

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You know a Christopher Nolan protagonist when you see him. Sleuth or showman , conquerer of space or invader of dreams , he is a man caught in a trap of his own intricate construction, lost in the maelstrom of a guilty obsession. He may not wear that obsession on his skin like Leonard Shelby, the amnesia-stricken avenger in “Memento,” or parade his demons in as symbolic a fashion as Bruce Wayne does in the “Dark Knight” trilogy . But whether he skulks about in film-noir shadows or blasts forth into dimensions unknown, every Nolan antihero risks becoming the architect of his own obliteration, a cruel fate that may well consume others in its wake.

None of which is to suggest that J. Robert Oppenheimer, the pioneering theoretical physicist who became known as “the father of the atomic bomb,” was ever an obvious choice of subject for this filmmaker. Much as Nolan may enjoy contemplating the end of the world, it’s telling that his past flirtations with the apocalypse — the uninhabitable Earth of “Interstellar,” the nuclear climax of “The Dark Knight Rises” — have been consigned to the relatively safe terrain (for now) of blockbuster fiction. With the exception of “Dunkirk,” his bravura thriller about a pivotal early chapter of World War II, Nolan has largely steered clear of historical events and famous figures. He practices a cinema of heady ideas, mind-churning metaphysics and rug-pulling narrative gamesmanship — not an intuitive fit with the more traditional conventions of the Hollywood biopic.

For the record:

8:30 a.m. July 21, 2023 An earlier version of this review stated that J. Robert Oppenheimer led the Manhattan Project. He was the director of the laboratory at Los Alamos, where the first atomic bombs were designed and built. Leslie R. Groves led the Manhattan Project.

One of the many satisfactions of “Oppenheimer,” Nolan’s intellectually thrilling and morally despairing new film, is that it succeeds in locating some of those conventions within another of his ingeniously constructed narrative labyrinths. At first glance, Oppenheimer’s story would appear to follow an obvious rise-and-fall trajectory — an arc embedded in the very title of its source material, “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer,” Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2005 biography. A straightforward adaptation might begin with the man’s meteoric ascent into the top ranks of American physicists, build to his involvement with the four-year, $2-billion Manhattan Project and climax with the horrific conflagrations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It would end, perhaps, with the bitter, disillusioning coda of Oppenheimer’s postwar career, during which he would speak out against nuclear proliferation but never express public regret for the bomb’s Japanese casualties.

But Nolan, once again bending narrative and chronology to his will, is after something more elusive than a simple three-act trajectory. He is also less interested in reenacting scenes of mass death and devastation, none of which are depicted here, than in sifting through the bomb’s lingering geopolitical and psychic residue. For much of its three-hour running time, this swift and supercharged movie keeps its designs largely hidden beneath a series of formal eruptions. It leaps between time frames and perspectives, color and black-and-white, crowded classrooms and wide-open desert vistas, and even between aspect ratios, if you’re fortunate enough to see it in Imax. (Hoyte van Hoytema, Nolan’s longtime cinematographer, shot “Oppenheimer” on large-format 65-millimeter film and Imax 65-millimeter film; it’s the first picture to make use of black-and-white Imax stock.)

The point of these convulsions is hardly to confuse or overwhelm the viewer, as Nolan is often accused of doing, but rather to suggest something of its subject’s sweeping intellectual grandeur and complicated, often contradictory essence. Oppenheimer, played over four decades by a superbly restrained yet intensely expressive Cillian Murphy, is a polymath and a polyglot, a lover of art and literature as well as science. He is visionary and short-sighted, arrogant and convivial, an academic and an outdoorsman, a family man and a womanizer, a defender of the working class and a man of undisguised privilege. Trying to unpack a tricky quantum mechanics concept for a Berkeley student, he notes, “It’s a paradox, but it works,” an assessment that might just as well describe himself and this movie.

He is less a character to be dramatized, in short, than a series of equations to be continually rebalanced, if never fully solved. To that end, Nolan filters Oppenheimer’s mostly linear personal narrative through two framing devices, both set well after World War II. One is a private 1954 Atomic Energy Commission hearing where a somber Oppenheimer faces a tough interrogator (Jason Clarke) and the imminent revocation of his government security clearance. The other, shot in black-and-white and set in 1959, follows the former AEC Chairman Lewis Strauss (an outstanding Robert Downey Jr.), who’s waiting to be confirmed as President Eisenhower’s secretary of Commerce — a contentious process that becomes overshadowed by Strauss’ own past associations with Oppenheimer at Princeton.

All this narrative fragmentation, plus the jumble of names, titles and government acronyms, can be overwhelming at first, but Nolan and his editor, Jennifer Lame (“Hereditary”), intercut their threads with extraordinary propulsiveness and lucidity. Those who go in knowing the outcomes of the AEC proceedings and Strauss’ Cabinet bid will see past the red herrings that Nolan occasionally strews across the path of history. But even they may be held rapt by the coolly understated animus that binds Oppenheimer and Strauss — a tension to which Nolan keeps returning, and which Downey unpacks in a performance of beautifully coiled serpentine layers. Crucial to the characters’ adversarial dynamic is an enchantingly mysterious early interaction with Albert Einstein (Tom Conti), a moment that establishes Oppenheimer’s easy collegiality with his fellow great minds.

Soon we’re back in the exciting if tumultuous early days of his career, which take him across a great swath of 1920s Europe, where he hobnobs with field pioneers such as Niels Bohr (Kenneth Branagh) and befriends a fellow Jewish American physicist, Isidor Rabi (David Krumholtz), who foreshadows the rising tide of antisemitism worldwide. In one alarming episode from his time as a lost, wild-haired student at Cambridge, Oppenheimer reveals a capacity for irrational, intensely personal violence — a darkness that is being either tempered or triggered by his stunning visions of the subatomic world. In these wondrously transporting images of juddering waves and swirling particles, accompanied by the rumbling, surging, keening strains of Ludwig Göransson’s magnificent score, Nolan makes a rare leap into realms of pure cinematic abstraction.

In time, Oppenheimer has been ensconced as a professor at both Berkeley and Caltech, a corner of 1930s academia that turns out to be a hothouse of scientific discovery and political intrigue. Neat, fastidious and charming, he turns the heads of more than a few women, especially within the trendy Communist Party circles he frequents, and Murphy’s enigmatic reserve suggests a spirit of sexual and ideological promiscuity. Before Oppenheimer marries a thrice-divorced woman, Kitty (Emily Blunt, fierce), he is drawn to the self-destructive flame of a troubled paramour, Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh, also fierce), generating flashes of erotic heat never before approached by Nolan’s cinema. Oppenheimer’s romantic indecision echoes his own refusal to put out politically, as he declines to join the Party despite his own avowed left-wing sympathies — a pose of high-minded neutrality that will prove his success and his undoing.

He is, to paraphrase one of the script’s heavier-handed thematic contrasts, a theorist rather than a practitioner, hopeless in a lab but commanding in the classrooms where much of the movie’s paper-waving, blackboard-scrawling action unfolds. But it’s precisely Oppenheimer’s ability to envision the bigger picture that makes him singularly qualified for a significant role with the government’s top-secret Manhattan Project, aimed at building a weapon powerful enough to end the war and possibly all wars. And it’s Oppenheimer who will successfully propose moving his family and many others to Los Alamos, N.M., where a top-secret laboratory and soon an entire town is built to accommodate a closely-monitored staff of thousands.

Some sly military-industrial complex humor creeps in as Oppenheimer, clad in his signature gray waistcoat and rumpled porkpie hat, leads this massively complicated undertaking at the surly behest of Col. Leslie R. Groves (a gruffly amusing Matt Damon). These two characters’ odd-couple head-buttings (previously dramatized to lesser effect in the 1989 movie “Fat Man and Little Boy”) here set the tone and rhythm for a project that thrives on a spirit of scholarly disagreement and tetchy troubleshooting.

“Oppenheimer” is both an unerringly focused character study and, somehow, one of the year’s most sprawling ensemble pieces, with vivid turns from Josh Hartnett, Rami Malek, Olivia Thirlby, Casey Affleck and Dylan Arnold, among many others. Benny Safdie makes a memorably sweaty and argumentative Edward Teller, an early proponent of the hydrogen bomb who has his own shifty role to play in Oppenheimer’s postwar tribulations. And while this is a primarily male-driven story, which speaks as much to the inequities of history as it does to Nolan’s dramatic predilections, Blunt brings startling force to the role of a woman who shames her faithless husband with a loyalty that surpasses all reason.

Through it all, Nolan remains the consummate Hollywood theorist and practitioner, someone who realizes his grandiose conceptual ambitions with a stubbornly hands-on, ground-level command of cinematic craft. He and his production designer, Ruth De Jong (“Nope”), seem energized by their physical re-creation of the Los Alamos site, which we see being constructed from the ground up as barbed-wire fences roll out and military vehicles roll in. There’s palpable urgency and mounting dread to this world-building, and also a striking contrast with Van Hoytema’s interior-dominated visuals, which turn human faces and confined spaces into giant-screen landscapes. There’s also a splash of “There Will Be Blood” in Nolan’s vision of an indelible American darkness taking root in western soil, especially when a 100-foot tower springs from the earth, soon to be engulfed by the fiery cloud of the world’s first plutonium implosion device.

That fateful 1945 “Trinity” test, dramatized with a mix of queasy suspense, seat-rattling spectacle and fascinating logistical details, tears a hole in the fabric of the movie — a rupture that it’s both prepared and unprepared to fill. As Oppenheimer is confronted with the gravest consequences of theory becoming practice, a story of human intelligence and enterprise becomes one of monstrous, clockwork-like betrayals, some sweepingly systemic and some intimately personal. Part of the subtle greatness of Murphy’s performance is the way his character seems to empty out in the story’s later passages, as though succumbing to a kind of moral and psychological paralysis. “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” he murmurs after the Trinity explosion, quoting from the Bhagavad Gita. The real Oppenheimer may have never expressed remorse over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but the movie never lets its Oppenheimer forget them, especially in one shuddering, blood-chilling sequence that transforms a public moment of triumph into an indictment.

Nor can Oppenheimer forget the still greater destruction that may yet be unleashed, a prospect that his typically naive and high-minded insistence on “international cooperation” will do nothing to dispel. Nolan conveys that warning with somber gravity, if not, finally, the cathartic force that our current headlines, full of war and nuclear portent, would seem to demand. Not for the first time, the demonstrative cleverness of his storytelling can seem too precise, too hermetically sealed and engineered, for a sense of raw collective devastation to fully take hold.

That might be a rare failing of this extraordinarily gripping and resonant movie, or it could be a minor mercy. Whatever you feel for Oppenheimer at movie’s end — and I felt a great deal — his tragedy may still be easier to contemplate than our own.

'Oppenheimer'

Running time: 3 hours Rating: R, for some sexuality, nudity and language Playing: Starts July 21 in general release

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‘Oppenheimer’ a momentous achievement, at times pensive, at times explosive

Four stars from richard roeper for christopher nolan’s historical biopic of the complex scientist, which he says is magnificent and the best movie of the year..

Cillian Murphy stars as J. Robert Oppenheimer in “Oppenheimer.”

Universal Pictures

Magnificent.

Christopher Nolan’s three-hour historical biopic “Oppenheimer” is a gorgeously photographed, brilliantly acted, masterfully edited and thoroughly engrossing epic that instantly takes its place among the finest films of this decade — an old-fashioned yet cutting-edge work that should resonate with film scholars and popcorn-toting mainstream movie lovers for years and decades to come.

At the risk of sounding like Nicole Kidman: This is why we still go to the cinema, to settle into our seats and slip into the darkness when the lights go down, to immerse ourselves in visual and aural storytelling at its finest. From the moment the closing credits begin to roll, we’re already looking forward to the next time we see “Oppenheimer.”

And the next.

Adapted by Nolan from the book “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer” by Martin Sherwin and Kai Bird, “Oppenheimer” is a sprawling story that hops along the timeline and introduces so many characters I’ll admit I wouldn’t have minded some title cards introducing them as they come and go. Nolan, however, opts to plunge us into events in sometimes chaotic fashion and invites us to hold on for the ride, mirroring the thrilling and yet terrifying and politically charged atmosphere of the world of physics in the early and mid-20th century, when some of the brightest scientific minds in history were making discoveries and advancements that would change the world forever — and possibly end the world as we know it.

With frequent Nolan collaborator Cillian Murphy delivering subtly powerful work as Oppenheimer and an astonishingly deep supporting cast led by Robert Downey Jr., Emily Blunt, Matt Damon and Florence Pugh (with more than a dozen additional huge talents popping in for a scene or two), “Oppenheimer” is a massively ambitious undertaking, with Nolan (“Inception,” “Dunkirk”) further solidifying his standing as one of the dominant filmmakers of his generation.

Writer-director Nolan tells much of the story in the context of the complicated and eventually contentious relationship between Oppenheimer and Lewis Strauss (Downey), the naval officer and politician and self-styled amateur physicist who was in awe of Oppenheimer’s intellect but came to resent him for his hubris and his politics.

When Strauss welcomes Oppenheimer at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1947 to offer him the directorship of the Institute, Oppenheimer is a world-famous war hero known as the father of the atomic bomb, and Strauss is practically a fanboy. By the 1950s, everything had changed, as we see in two primary framing devices that Nolan returns to again and again: the 1954 Atomic Energy Personnel Security Board hearings to determine whether Oppenheimer would retain his security clearance, which were held in secret in a claustrophobic conference room; and the 1959 Senate floor hearings on President Eisenhower’s appointment of Strauss to Secretary of Commerce, which became something of a public spectacle, as Strauss found himself at peril of becoming the first Cabinet appointee rejected by the Senate in decades. (Nolan and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema deftly toggle back and forth between vibrant color and stunning black-and-white to depict the different eras.)

Politician Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.) hires Oppenheimer but later comes to resent him.

“Oppenheimer” marvels at the titular subject’s incredible mind, with Nolan depicting Oppy’s genius through subtle notes such as the plinking of raindrops in a pond, and ferocious tones, as when we see Oppenheimer pinned awake in his bed at night, terrified by his visions. As Oppenheimer becomes a superstar in the world of physics and rubs shoulders with the likes of Albert Einstein (Tom Conti), Ernest Lawrence (Josh Hartnett), Niels Bohr (Kenneth Branagh) and Edward Teller (Benny Safdie), he’s borderline reckless in his personal life, whether he’s attending Communist Party USA meetings (his brother was a party member, as were several close friends) or engaging in multiple affairs, most notably his longtime entanglement with the troubled and volatile Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh).

When Oppenheimer marries Katherine “Kitty” Puening (Emily Blunt), his life becomes even more complicated, with Kitty experiencing post-partum depression and becoming an alcoholic. Just because you’re a genius doesn’t mean you’re immune from coming home to a wailing child and a wife who is sitting in the dark with a bottle.

The borderline reckless scientist (Murphy) marries Katherine “Kitty” Puening (Emily Blunt), who becomes an alcoholic.

In 1942, Manhattan Project director Leslie Groves (Matt Damon) appoints Oppenheimer to head the secret weapons lab, and they literally build a town in Los Alamos, New Mexico, to house the collection of scientists and support staff and their families. In one of the most impressively staged sequences you’ll ever see, Nolan re-creates the world’s first nuclear explosion at the site known as Trinity in July of 1945. The teeth-rattling power of the explosion, the symphony of orange in the sky, the reactions of a number of key players as they look on in wonder, the expert use of sound (and in some frames, the lack thereof) — it all adds up to a stunning achievement in filmmaking. And in the midst of it all, we see how Oppenheimer is equal parts thrilled and horrified by what has been wrought.

“Oppenheimer” is a great war movie without a single scene of war. It is neither a hagiography nor an indictment of Oppenheimer, as it celebrates his genius and his achievements, while never shying away from his vulnerabilities and failings. This is a film deserving of double-digit Oscar nominations, from best picture to best director to a number of technical categories to the performances of Murphy, Blunt, Downey, Damon and Pugh. It is the best movie of the year so far and one of the best films of the 21st century.

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Oppenheimer.

• Parents say (64)
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Based on 84 kid reviews

Parents complaining about nudity is proof teenagers are smarter than some of their own parents

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Stellar film contemplating the ethicality of invention, it is history, stop hating on it, you can’t just make it inaccurate so it has less sex., 2 stars is wild, nolan's terrifying, unique biography of legendarily controversial scientist, good movie but what people are saying about the nudity is all wrong, interesting, yet complex, and sometimes boring movie has sex scenes and nudity., movie is a masterpiece, common sense media review is awful lol.

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‘Oppenheimer’ Review: Christopher Nolan’s Historical Epic Is as Brilliant and Short-Sighted as Its Subject

David ehrlich.

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Which isn’t to overstate the degree to which Nolan’s first biopic feels like some kind of grandiose self-portrait (even if the Manhattan Project sequences can seem broadly analogous to the filmmaking process, as large swaths of “Inception” and “The Prestige” did before them), nor to suggest that the director sees himself in the same regard as the man he describes in the “Oppenheimer” press notes as “the most important person who ever lived.” It’s also not to glibly conflate one of the most controversial figures of the 20th century with one of the most controversial figures on the r/Movies subreddit, even if the industry-changing success of “Batman Begins” surely inspired a “now I am become death” moment of Nolan’s very own. 

It’s just to say that Nolan has always been fascinated by characters who are torn between the subatomic particles of personal agency and the vast cosmic forces of our universe, and J. Robert Oppenheimer was perhaps the first person who actually lived a version of the only story that Nolan has ever wanted to tell. So while Nolan’s first biopic may not be a self-portrait, it is an origin story of sorts, and also a devastating statement of purpose. It’s his “Empire of Light.” It’s his “Roma.” Most uncomfortably — and most unfavorably — it’s his “The Wind Rises.” 

That turns out to be very, very close, indeed, and yet also never quite close enough. While “Oppenheimer” invites you to stare at Cillian Murphy’s face in shallow-focus IMAX-sized close-ups for much of its three-hour running time, it seldom offers serious insight as to what’s happening behind his marble-blue eyes, let alone the opportunity to see through them. The result is a movie that’s both singularly propulsive and frustratingly obtuse; an overwritten chamber piece that’s powered by the energy of a super-collider. 

Paced like it was designed for interstellar travel, scripted with a degree of density that scientists once thought purely theoretical in nature, and shot with such large-format bombast that repetitive scenes (or at least Nolan-esque slices ) of old politicians yelling at each other about expired security clearances hit with the same visceral impact as the 747 explosion in “Tenet,” “Oppenheimer” is nothing if not a biopic as only Christopher Nolan could make one. Indeed, it would seem like the ideal vehicle for Nolan’s career-long exploration into the black holes of the human condition — the last riddles of a terrifyingly understandable world.

But the film suffers from an irreconcilable disconnect between form and function because, without the benefit of dream limbos and astral libraries, Nolan doesn’t know how to dramatize what he doesn’t know. The paradox that compelled him toward Oppenheimer is the same force that keeps his film at a distance. 

Per the director’s signature approach, the film’s relentless narrative swerves between different timelines, aspect ratios, color schemes, and perspectives. In truth, however, the conceit essentially boils down to two clear aesthetics spread across three distinct moments in history. 

Finally, there’s “Fusion.” Shot on lustrously tactile IMAX black-and-white film stock, this sliver of the film chronicles Lewis Strauss’ (Robert Downey Jr.) 1958 confirmation hearing to become Eisenhower’s Secretary of Commerce, a bid that seems only semi-related to this story until some last-reel grandstanding straight out of an Aaron Sorkin show refracts Strauss’ thirst for power through the prism of what Oppenheimer paid for it.

Fission and Fusion. Nolan has never come up with a cleaner way of framing the chemical reaction that galvanizes so many of his films. From “Inception” to “Dunkirk,” Nolan’s symphonic movies don’t hinge on linear cause-and-effect so much as they split themselves into a series of discrete atomic parts that eventually slam into each other with enough excitement to create a hyper-combustible chain reaction, and that’s exactly what happens in “Oppenheimer.” Here, Nolan’s non-chronological approach allows us to experience the bomb and its fallout all at once, thus making discovery inextricable from devastation, creation inextricable from destruction, and the innocent joy of theory inextricable from the unfathomable horror of practice.

It’s 1936, and Oppenheimer is introduced to a socially progressive young psychiatrist named Jean Tatlock at a party in Berkeley; they have sex while he reads her the “Bhagavad Gita” in the original Sanskrit (we’ve all done it). Tatlock is played by a flushed-cheeked Florence Pugh, whose “be here now” earthiness adds a necessary edge to one of the Mal-est female characters Nolan’s written in a minute. Emily Blunt has no such luck in the role of Oppenheimer’s alcoholic wife, whose diminishment feels particularly egregious in a movie that hardly bothers to express what Oppenheimer thinks of her, or if he thinks of her at all.

It’s the following year, and buttoned-up physicist Ernest Lawrence is pleading with Oppenheimer to keep leftist politics out of the classroom. Lawrence is played by the great Josh Hartnett, whose warm and welcome performance sets the tone for a film in which virtually every bit part has been cast with someone’s favorite actor: Benny Safdie, Josh Peck, Alden Ehrenreich, Jason Clarke, David Krumholtz, Alex Wolff, Dane DeHaan, “Gargoyles” auteur Kenneth Branagh, Macon Blair, Matthew Modine, and Olivia Thirlby are just a small sample of the names printed on what must have been the wildest call sheets in recent memory. 

Did I mention Matt Damon as the brigadier general in charge of the Manhattan Project? Well, it’s 1942, and his Leslie Groves is striding into Oppenheimer’s office with a top-secret opportunity and enough unsmiling charisma to send a much-needed jolt of electricity through a movie that’s up to its neck in academics. The banter between the physicist and his advocate is some of the sharpest that Nolan has ever written, as the writer-director seems to be savoring every chance he gets to deviate from the historical transcripts that hold so much of this movie together.

Nolan took the unusual step of writing “Oppenheimer” in the first-person, presumably in an effort to better appreciate the relationship between Oppenheimer and the fruits of his labor; between the scientists isolated on the mesas of Los Alamos and the world their work would change forever (and possibly even destroy completely). The scenes leading up to the Trinity test are so queasy and gripping because we can’t stop thinking about the consequences, while the men and woman on Oppenheimer’s team can’t afford to start. “I don’t know if we can be trusted to have such a weapon,” Oppenheimer says, “but I know the Nazis can’t.” It’s the kind of logic that offers just enough cover to keep going. There’s no moral argument for building something that has the power to kill several hundred thousand people, but Oppenheimer appears to convince himself that it can still be done for the right reasons. 

Once the bomb goes off, however, Nolan struggles to convey the immensity of the cross that Oppenheimer was left to bear. “Oppenheimer” grows frustratingly vague at the precise moment it seems poised to reckon with the unique burden of its namesake’s brilliance. We don’t see Hiroshima and Nagasaki because Oppenheimer doesn’t see Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but by that logic we should at least be privy to Oppenheimer’s thoughts — self-conflicted as they must be — because Oppenheimer is plagued by them without stop. Instead, we’re offered crudely sketched remorse on an Ozymandian scale, as Oppenheimer looks back upon his works, ye mighty, and despairs. 

Murphy’s performance is every bit as inspired as his casting. He plays Oppenheimer as more of an artist than a physicist — as the rare man of science who God could mistake for a prophet — and the opening passages of Nolan’s film twitch and fulminate in response to that creative temperament. That effect is most palpable in the way that Murphy appears to dance on the bow tip of Ludwig Göransson’s Zimmer-worthy score, which is all mercurial violins and spooky action at a distance before that delicate touch is replaced by the cacophonous layers of sound that every Nolan film relies upon when its parallel storylines converge in the third act.

Nolan sympathetically addresses Oppenheimer’s discomfort with being hailed as a hero, and takes great pains to detail his subject’s even greater distress at realizing that he’ll never be able to put the atomic genie back in its bottle. “Who would want to justify their own life?,” someone asks, with the implicit understanding that none of us could. Nolan indicates time and again that Oppenheimer is powerless to understand the full meaning behind his actions (“Genius is no guarantee of wisdom,” one character offers), but the film is deeply afraid of sitting with the weight of that uncertainty. 

To a certain extent, that fear is one of its greatest virtues. “Oppenheimer” offers an indelible portrait of the age when people began wielding power they couldn’t necessarily control, and few movies have so disturbingly crystallized the horror of opening Pandora’s box. Even fewer have better detailed anxiety of living in a world where it can never be closed again. And while the Strauss subplot is a shallow distraction from the infinite darkness that Oppenheimer’s story invites Nolan to explore (no movie should end with Rami Malek giving a speech before congress unless he’s there to testify for his crimes against Freddie Mercury), “Oppenheimer” is that much scarier for peering into the power vacuum that the Manhattan Project left behind. 

But it’s no great feat to rekindle our fear over the most abominable weapon ever designed by mankind, nor does that seem to be Nolan’s ultimate intention. Like “The Prestige” or “Interstellar” before it, “Oppenheimer” is a movie about the curse of being an emotional creature in a mathematical world. The difference here isn’t just the unparalleled scale of this movie’s tragedy, but also the unfamiliar sensation that Nolan himself is no less human than his characters.

Universal Pictures will release “Oppenheimer” in theaters on Friday, July 21.

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Oppenheimer is an unrelenting stream of bombastic vignettes in need of a narrative chain reaction

Christopher nolan’s oppenheimer epic offers a series of visceral glimpses into the life of the father of the atomic bomb but gets too busy to reach its full potential..

By Charles Pulliam-Moore , a reporter focusing on film, TV, and pop culture. Before The Verge, he wrote about comic books, labor, race, and more at io9 and Gizmodo for almost five years.

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Out of all this summer’s blockbusters that have had film buffs chomping at the bit, few (really just one, actually ) have elicited hype as visceral and sustained as Universal’s Oppenheimer biopic from director Christopher Nolan . With its sizable fleet of A-listers doing mid-20th-century accent work, a complicated historical figure at its center, and a respected auteur steering the ship, Oppenheimer has all the making of a summer blockbuster destined to continue dominating this year’s film discourse for months to come.

But for all of its explosive moments of grandeur and unsurprisingly powerful individual performances, Oppenheimer, as a whole, plays like a chaotic assortment of frantic vignettes coming from a storyteller who’s far too focused on the performance of sage profundity rather than sussing out the real thing.

Inspired by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s seminal 2005 Oppenheimer biography, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer , Oppenheimer is an account of the events that led to its eponymous theoretical physicist becoming one of the most lauded, hated, and infamous men in human history for his role in developing the atomic bomb. Oppenheimer commits most of its energy to chronicling the US’s race to develop nuclear weapons during World War II and the subsequent political fallout Oppenheimer weathered afterward as he began to advocate for nuclear nonproliferation. 

Like American Prometheus , though, Nolan’s new film also understands the importance of illustrating what kind of idiosyncratic, sexually frustrated, and politically engaged person Oppenheimer was in his pre-fame days — a time when he was still learning just how much of an influence he and his intellect could have over others. Long before he was being grilled by the Gray Board, gracing the covers of Time magazine, or directing the Manhattan Project laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico, Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) was an exceedingly brilliant but profoundly awkward young man looking for meaning in the arts and sciences.

Equal parts ensemble drama and stealth thriller, Oppenheimer frames its famed subject as a kind of human catalyst who — both in spite and because of his eccentric mind — innately radiates a kind of animating energy that compels most everyone around him into various kinds of action. It’s that energy that first pulls people like acerbic botanist and high-functioning alcoholic Katherine “Kitty” Puening (Emily Blunt) — Oppenheimer’s eventual wife — and depressive psychiatrist Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh) — his eventual longtime mistress — into his orbit. That energy’s also what makes so many of his peers gravitate toward him during his years coming up through academia and an important part of what puts him on the radar of Major General Leslie Groves (Matt Damon) as he begins building the brain trust destined to power the Manhattan Project.

But there’s a chaos to its overall narrative structure that makes the film play like an assortment of overengineered individual scenes that only coalesce into something concrete occasionally before the movie shifts its focus and attempts to repeat the process to varying degrees of success.

At the same time the movie’s trying to illustrate how Oppenheimer’s left-wing political sensibilities and youthful experiences with labor organization informed his adult worldview, it’s also digging into his love life and the professional jealousies of Oppenheimer’s peers that made him both a threat and someone to look up to. All of that is deeply important context for the film’s quick-fire scenes set during the mid-’50s as United States Atomic Energy Commission commissioner Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.) heads up hearings designed to strip Oppenheimer of his security clearance and deeply discredit him in the public eye.

But Oppenheimer is so prone to bouncing around from one brief, intense, overly patter-filled scene to another that it often feels like Nolan might have simply shot far, far too much footage and then ultimately cherry-picked the moments that felt impactful to him rather than the ones necessary to set off a narrative chain reaction resulting in a cohesive movie.

This is especially unfortunate because, by and large, many of Oppenheimer ’s actors — Blunt, Damon, and Murphy, in particular — are delivering truly fantastic, studied performances that speak to the humanity and complexity of their characters. Both Rami Malek and Alden Ehrenreich are tremendous as Los Alamos physicist David Hill and an unnamed Senate aide, respectively, and Dane DeHaan is downright chilling as Army officer Kenneth Nichols. But because of Oppenheimer ’s structure, almost none of these performances really have enough time to take up the space they deserve, and just when you’ve gotten a chance to become comfortable and fully engaged with them, the movie’s already moved on.

Though composer Ludwig Göransson’s score is often beautiful, rather than flowing throughout the film consistently in time with its emotional beats, it fades in and out much like the movie’s vignettes frequently fade to black, and it tends to emphasize how disjointed they feel. But Oppenheimer ’s sound — that is to say, its sound design — is arguably the most interesting (though not always well-executed) aspect of the film and what most moviegoers are going to end up being blown away by, in multiple senses of the phrase.

For obvious reasons, there are more than a few explosions that punctuate Oppenheimer ’s three-hour runtime. But instead of fixating solely on the visual spectacle of towering infernos designed to mutilate and massacre, Nolan instead tries to use sound to make you feel a fraction of the devastation Oppenheimer became famous for. Though this approach works well when the movie’s depicting explosions, it truly begins to shine later on in the film after the atomic bombs have been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Oppenheimer — surrounded by fellow Americans drunk on the idea of American exceptionalism — can’t help but marvel in horror at the idea of what his life’s work has culminated in.

It’s in moments like those — when Oppenheimer ’s directly addressing the reality of the US’s decisions made as WWII was coming to an end rather than mythologizing the men behind those decisions — that the movie’s at its absolute best. But ultimately, those moments are so few and far between that Oppenheimer always feels like an assortment of great filmmaking ideas being hamstrung by their haphazard execution.

Oppenheimer also stars Josh Hartnett, Casey Affleck, Kenneth Branagh, Benny Safdie, Dylan Arnold, Gustaf Skarsgård, Matthew Modine, David Dastmalchian, Tom Conti, Michael Angarano, Jack Quaid, Olivia Thirlby, Tony Goldwyn, Emma Dumont, and Gary Oldman. The movie hits theaters on July 21st.

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He is become death, destroyer of worlds —

Review: oppenheimer is pure visual poetry, technically it's a biopic, but it doesn't play like one..

Jennifer Ouellette - Aug 5, 2023 8:42 pm UTC

I'll admit I had my doubts when I first heard that director Christopher Nolan was planning to make a film about J. Robert Oppenheimer , the physicist who led the research effort to develop the first atomic bomb as part of the Manhattan Project. This is one of the most well-documented periods of 20th-century American history, after all, and there have already been so many books, films, and TV series about the race for the bomb, of varying quality. (As always, let me give a shout-out to Manhattan , a stellar fictional series that was tragically canceled after just two seasons.) How would Nolan make this very well-trodden material his own?

I needn't have fretted. With Oppenheimer , Nolan has gifted us a truly unique, unflinching, nuanced portrait of the enigmatic, complicated man who spearheaded the Manhattan Project and subsequently ran afoul of the "red-baiting" politics of the McCarthy era. Technically it's a biopic, but it doesn't play like one. It's more like Nolan carefully selected various threads running through Oppenheimer's life and wove them into a richly textured tapestry that somehow transcends those raw materials. The result is pure visual poetry.

(Spoilers below, although this is very well-documented history.)

Nolan's film is largely based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning 2005 biography American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin (which I highly recommend). The trailers understandably focused on the drama surrounding the birth of the atomic bomb leading up to the Trinity Test, but I had hoped that the film as a whole would follow the book's arc and include Oppenheimer's subsequent fall from grace. And so it does. In fact, that later, darker part of Oppenheimer's life provides the lens through which his earlier successes play out in Nolan's film.  

Further Reading

There are two basic storylines, and the film shifts back and forth between them; Nolan has never been one to strictly adhere to a chronological timeline. "Fission" is shot in color and follows Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) through his early years as a graduate student and college professor; his leadership of the Manhattan Project culminating with the Trinity Test; his simultaneous triumph and torment in the wake of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; and the eventual loss of his security clearance thanks in large part to early Communist connections and his outspoken opposition to developing a hydrogen bomb.

"Fusion" is shot in IMAX black-and-white analog photography and follows the 1959 Senate confirmation hearing of Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.), former chair of the Atomic Energy Commission who—as the film gradually reveals—played a critical role in stripping away Oppenheimer's security clearance five years earlier, angering many in the physics community. The black mark against Oppenheimer's name wasn't fully cleared until December 2022—right around the time the first trailer for Oppenheimer appeared.

Nolan has assembled an amazing cast. David Krumholtz is almost unrecognizable as I.I. Rabi , and Benny Safdie is perfection as Edward Teller, who sharply disagrees with Oppenheimer about the hydrogen bomb and eventually betrays him during the security hearings. Emily Blunt shines in a relatively small role as Kitty Oppenheimer , who suffered from depression and had a volatile relationship with her philandering husband, but remained fiercely loyal to him. (She really did refuse to shake Teller's hand when Oppenheimer was awarded the Enrico Fermi Award in 1963.) But the film ultimately belongs to Murphy and Downey Jr., both of whom give Oscar-worthy performances. Their mutual antagonism is arguably the heart of the film.

Physics fans should have fun picking out the various physics luminaries who make brief cameos. Jack Quaid's Richard Feynman has few lines but is recognizable due to his bongos—an anachronism, since Feynman didn't take up the bongos until later in life, but an entertaining anachronism. Hey, there's Werner Heisenberg  (Matthias Schweighöfer), Niels Bohr (Kenneth Branagh), Leo Szilard (Máté Haumann), Enrico Fermi  (Danny Deferrari), Luis Alvarez (Alex Wolff), Hans Bethe  (Gustaf Skarsgård), Vannevar Bush (Matthew Moline), Kenneth Bainbridge  (Josh Peck), and the infamous Klaus Fuchs (Christopher Denham).

Nolan brings an impressive degree of historical accuracy to the film without resorting to a slavish recitation of facts, seeding it with oodles of throwaway details and characters as ornamental flourishes. For instance, the truth about whether a young Oppenheimer really injected cyanide into an apple intended for one of his professors (future Nobel Prize winning physicist Patrick Blackett ) is hotly debated by historians, but it was not invented for the film. I was pleased to see mention of the paper Oppenheimer co-authored with a student while at Berkeley in 1939 predicting black holes—a topic largely forgotten until John Wheeler's work in the 1960s. Even his signature cocktail gets a shout-out.

Oppenheimer's mistress, Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh), did commit suicide, and there is an assassination conspiracy theory that she was murdered and her suicide staged—something barely hinted at in the film, but present nonetheless. There was a certain amount of online shock at the nudity and sex scenes between Murphy and Pugh, but I thought they were carefully handled and weren't remotely gratuitous—especially the touching post-coital scene where the pair are simply sitting naked, having an intensely intimate conversation.

President Truman did call Oppenheimer a "crybaby" (albeit not to his face) when the latter met with him after the war and confessed he felt he had blood on his hands. It's also true that Oppenheimer never publicly expressed regret for his role in building a bomb that killed between 100,000 and 200,000 people. (The exact number is still a matter of debate.) As he says in the film, his thinking was that it would be better to make dropping the first nuclear weapon so horrifying that nobody would ever want to use them again.

The dialogue during the openly hostile interrogation of Oppenheimer at the security hearings was drawn almost verbatim from the official transcripts—delivered to dramatic perfection by Nolan's outstanding cast. One of the most powerful scenes is the (verbatim) testimony of physicist David Hill (Rami Malek) during Strauss' Senate confirmation hearing to be Eisenhower's Secretary of Commerce.

Strauss had hoped Hill, then chair of the Federation of American Scientists, would speak in his favor. Instead, Hill declared that "most of the scientists in this country would prefer to see Mr. Strauss completely out of the Government," and went on to provide a devastating critique of Strauss, citing his arrogance, lack of integrity, and personal vindictiveness toward Oppenheimer in particular. (Nolan dug up the transcript himself from Senate records.) Strauss was not confirmed—the first failure of a Cabinet nomination since 1925—and the rejection effectively ended his political career. He remained bitter about that for the rest of his life. Some might call it karma.

That said, this is not a documentary, and naturally a few liberties were taken. Most notably, the powerful final conversation between Oppenheimer and Albert Einstein (Tom Conti), referencing a conversation they'd had in the past, is entirely fictional. Nor is the actual physics front and center, since thematically, Nolan is far more interested in exploring questions of power, politics, patriotism, and personal internal paradoxes. Still, the film handily captures the world of physics and physicists. Case in point: in one scene, Leslie Groves (Matt Damon) questions Oppenheimer about the possible risk of igniting the atmosphere and destroying the world when they push the detonator button for the Trinity Test. "Chances are near zero," Oppie responds. "What do you want from theory alone?" Groves responds, "Zero would be nice."

Those less familiar with this period in history might not pick up on all the ornamental details, but that shouldn't hamper their enjoyment of the film. Ars Senior Technology Editor Lee Hutchinson had quibbles with the sound quality, however, citing "mumbling, background noise obscuring the dialog, and putting VFX behind dialog so the sound overpowered everything else." That wasn't the case at the screening I attended (or at least, I didn't notice). Still, forewarned is forearmed, and there was also criticism about the sound mixing for Nolan's 2020 film, Tenet . Audiophiles, take note.

Clocking in at three hours' running time, with many scenes featuring a bunch of white men sitting around talking about physics and defense strategy, Oppenheimer is the antithesis of what is usually deemed summer fare. Yet Nolan's skill in telling the story is such that it never seems to drag. Small wonder audiences have been flocking to theaters to see the film. (Many made it a double feature with Barbie , hence the " Barbenheimer " phenomenon.) Oppenheimer greatly exceeded its initial box office projections and has already grossed over $400 million worldwide. It's my pick for best film of 2023 thus far, and a worthy addition to my growing list of films about the atomic bomb.

Oppenheimer is now playing in theaters.

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Movie Review: A bomb and its fallout in Christopher Nolan’s ‘Oppenheimer’

This image released by Universal Pictures shows Cillian Murphy in a scene from “Oppenheimer.” (Universal Pictures via AP)

This image released by Universal Pictures shows Robert Downey Jr as Lewis Strauss in a scene from “Oppenheimer.” (Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures via AP)

This image released by Universal Pictures shows Matt Damon as Gen. Leslie Groves, left, and Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer in a scene from “Oppenheimer.” (Universal Pictures via AP)

This image released by Universal Pictures shows Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer, left, and Emily Blunt as Kitty Oppenheimer in a scene from “Oppenheimer.” (Universal Pictures via AP)

This image released by Universal Pictures shows Dane Dehaan as Kenneth Nichols in a scene from “Oppenheimer.” (Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures via AP)

This image released by Universal Pictures shows Florence Pugh as Jean Tatlock, left, and Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer in a scene from “Oppenheimer.” (Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures via AP)

This image released by Universal Pictures shows Jason Clarke is Roger Robb in a scene from “Oppenheimer.” (Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures via AP)

This image released by Universal Pictures shows Benny Safdie as Edward Teller in a scene from “Oppenheimer.” (Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures via AP)

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Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” is a kinetic thing of dark, imposing beauty that quakes with the disquieting tremors of a forever rupture in the course of human history.

“Oppenheimer,” a feverish three-hour immersion in the life of Manhattan Project mastermind J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy), is poised between the shock and aftershock of the terrible revelation, as one character calls it, of a divine power.

There are times in Nolan’s latest opus that flames fill the frame and visions of subatomic particles flitter across the screen — montages of Oppenheimer’s own churning visions. But for all the immensity of “Oppenheimer,” this is Nolan’s most human-scaled film — and one of his greatest achievements.

It’s told principally in close-ups, which, even in the towering detail of IMAX 70mm, can’t resolve the vast paradoxes of Oppenheimer. He was said to be a magnetic man with piercing blue eyes (Murphy has those in spades) who became the father of the atomic bomb but, in speaking against nuclear proliferation and the hydrogen bomb, emerged as America’s postwar conscience.

Nolan, writing his own adaptation of Martin J. Sherwin and Kai Bird’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2005 book “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer,” layers the build-up to the Manhattan Project with two moments from years later.

In 1954, a probing inquiry into Oppenheimer’s leftist politics by a McCarthy-era Atomic Energy Commission stripped him of his security clearance. This provides the frame of “Oppenheimer,” along with a Senate confirmation hearing for Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.), who chaired the Atomic Energy Commission and was a stealthy nemesis to Oppenheimer.

The grubby, political machinations of these hearings — the Strauss section is captured in black and white — act like a stark X-ray of Oppenheimer’s life. It’s an often brutal, unfair interrogation that weighs Oppenheimer’s decisions and accomplishment, inevitably, in moral terms. “Who’d want to justify their whole life?” someone wonders. For the maker of the world’s most lethal weapon, it’s an especially complicated question.

These separate timelines give “Oppenheimer” — dimly lit and shadowy even in the desert — a noirish quality (Nolan has said all his films are ultimately noirs) in reckoning with a physicist who spent the first half of his life in headlong pursuit of a new science and the second half wrestling with the consequences of his colossal, world-altering invention.

“Oppenheimer” moves too fast to come to any neat conclusions. Nolan, as if reaching to match the electron, dives into the story at a blistering pace. From start to finish, “Oppenheimer” buzzes with a heady frequency, tracking Oppenheimer as a promising student in the then-unfolding field of quantum mechanics. “Can you hear the music, Robert?” asks the elder Danish physicist Niels Bohr (Kenneth Branagh). He can, absolutely, but that doesn’t mean finding harmony.

Nolan, whose last film was the time-traveling, palindrome-rich “Tenet,” may be the only filmmaker for whom delving into quantum mechanics could be considered a step down in complexity. But “Oppenheimer” is less interested in equations than the chemistry of an expanding mind. Oppenheimer reads “The Waste Land” and looks at modernist painting. He dabbles in the communist thinking of the day. (His mistress, Jean Tatlock, played arrestingly, tragically by Florence Pugh, is a party member.) But he aligns with no single cause. “I like a little wiggle room,” says Oppenheimer.

For a filmmaker synonymous with grand architectures — psychologies mapped onto subconscious worlds (“Inception”) and cosmic reaches ( “Interstellar” ) — “Oppenheimer” resides more simply in its subject’s fertile imagination and anguished psyche. (The script was written in first person.) Nolan and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema render Oppenheimer’s interiority with flashes of images that stretch across the heavens. His brilliance comes from his limitlessness of thought.

Just how much “wiggle room” Oppenheimer is permitted, though, becomes a more acute point when war breaks out and he’s tasked by Lt. Gen. Leslie Groves Jr. (Matt Damon) to lead the race to beat the Nazis to an atomic bomb. The rapid building of Los Alamos on the white-sand mesas of New Mexico — a site chosen by and with personal meaning to Oppenheimer — might not be so different than the erecting of movie sets for Nolan’s massive films, which likewise tend to culminate with a spectacular explosion.

There is something inherently queasy about a big-screen spectacle dramatizing the creation — justified or not — of a weapon of mass destruction. Oppenheimer once called the atomic bomb “a weapon for aggressors” wherein “the elements of surprise and terror are as intrinsic to it as are the fissionable nuclei.” Surely a less imperial, leviathan filmmaker than Nolan — a British director making an American epic — might have approached the subject differently.

But the responsibility of power has long been one of Nolan’s chief subjects (think of the all-powerful surveillance machine of “The Dark Knight”). And “Oppenheimer” is consumed with not just the ethical quandary of the Manhattan Project but every ethical quandary that Oppenheimer encounters. Big or small, they could all lead to valor or damnation. What makes “Oppenheimer” so unnerving is how indistinguishable one is from the other.

“Oppenheimer” sticks almost entirely to its protagonist’s point of view yet also populates its three-hour film with an incredible array of faces, all in exquisite detail. Some of the best are Benny Safdie as the hydrogen bomb designer Edward Teller; Jason Clarke as gruff special counsel Roger Robb; Gary Oldman as President Harry Truman; Alden Ehrenreich as an aide to Strauss; Macon Blair as Oppenheimer’s attorney; and Emily Blunt as Kitty Oppenheimer, the physicist’s wife.

The greatest of all of them, though, is Murphy. The actor, a Nolan regular, has always been able to communicate something more disturbing underneath his angular, angelic features. But here, his Oppenheimer is a fascinating coil of contradictions: determined and aloof, present and far-away, brilliant but blind.

Dread hangs over him, and over the film, with the inevitable. The future, post-Hiroshima, is sounded most by the wail of children who will grow up in that world; the Oppenheimers’ babies do nothing but cry.

When the Trinity test comes at Los Alamos after the toil of some 4,000 people and the expense of $2 billion, there’s a palpable, shuddering sense of history changing inexorably. How Nolan captures these sequences — the quiet before the sound of the explosion; the disquieting, thunderous, flag-waving applause that greets Oppenheimer after — are masterful, unforgettable fusions of sound and image, horror and awe.

“Oppenheimer” has much more to go. Government encroaches on science, with plenty of lessons for today’s threats of annihilation. Downey, in his best performance in years, strides toward the center of the film. You could say the film gets bogged down here, relegating a global story to a drab backroom hearing, preferring to vindicate Oppenheimer’s legacy rather than wrestle with harder questions of fallout. But “Oppenheimer” is never not balanced, uncomfortably, with wonder at what humans are capable of, and fear that we don’t know what to do with it.

“Oppenheimer,” a Universal Pictures release is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for some sexuality, nudity and language. Running time: 180 minutes. Four stars out of four.

Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP

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Oppenheimer review – Cillian Murphy’s finest hour

Review by David Jenkins @daveyjenkins

Directed by

Christopher Nolan

Cillian Murphy Emily Blunt Matt Damon

Anticipation.

What will Nolan do next after the clever if underwhelming Tenet?

There's a whole lotta movie here, though it’s Murphy who deserves the sashes and garlands.

In Retrospect.

A juggernaut historical biopic that you'll want to see again asap, even if it doesn’t all work on the first sweep.

This combustible and relentlessly-paced biography of the “father of the the atomic bomb” is a contender for Christopher Nolan’s best film.

T here’s something very moving about watching a film and being able to see dust motes float in the air. Or the reddened, mottled skin on the back of an actor’s neck. Or the abrasive textures of wood and fabric. Or drops of water causing minute ripples once they descend into a pond – a visual motif that receives its fiery analog at the slow burn climax of this grandiose new film from Christopher Nolan.

All of this is the 70mm effect, the wide-gauge film format that, due to its dimensions and design, is able to drink up details that other, lesser film stocks do not have the alchemical make-up to capture. Maybe some could argue that it’s the job of cinema to airbrush out these elements and offer a primped and manicured fantasy of reality, lest we be reminded too much of the lives we’re attempting to escape by going to see such entertainment.

Oppenheimer, a luxuriant, tactile and often nerve-shredding screen adaptation of Kai Bird and Martin J Sherwin’s lauded non-fiction doorstop, ‘American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J Robert Oppenheimer’, sees the showman filmmaker creating a more intimate milieu for this urgently-paced and personnel-heavy historical biography.

It is a film about embracing imperfection, about being realistic with regards to who we are and what we do in this life, and the relative values of taking a chance on a maverick. Yet is also a film which accepts that the tectonic plates of history often make their earth-jogging shifts from within cramped offices or out on dusty, depopulated plains.

Indeed, at the time of an in-progress writers and actors strike in Hollywood, Oppenheimer operates as a critique by stealth as it lambasts the scowling middle-men, the steely bureaucratic enforcers, the politicians and the back-room operators whose job it is to coax in the talent they need to perform an immediate function, and then make sure they’re quickly dispensed of at the point of delivery.

Nolan attempts to be objective in his lush, realist portrait of “the father of the atomic bomb”, yet there’s a clear sense of awe at both his subject’s inquiring mind, his poise and his role as “director” on the Los Alamos “set” that was built to develop a nuclear arsenal before one of America’s many geopolitical rivals can blow them to smithereens.

In his development of the atomic bomb, Cillian Murphy’s Oppenheimer deadpans that the possibility of one such device destroying the world through an atmospheric chain reaction is “near zero”, which causes his more military-minded colleagues to perspire a little. But taking these chances – turning theory into practice – is the only way to find out for sure.

That said, despite the character and his world, Nolan doesn’t lean too heavily on the actual quantum physics behind this lofty endeavour. Films such as Interstellar and Tenet were hampered by the need to wrap your head around fanciful sci-fi conceits rooted in real physics, but this allows for a more immediate and dramatic experience by keeping the science simple and off-stage somewhat.

The film comprises a rushing, heady continuum of scenes which focus on the logistical ins and outs of the Manhattan Project and the eventual “Trinity” bomb tests, as well as drawing intrigue from the precarious (and, eventually, ferocious) anti-left political sentiments of the era. Nolan appears to frame Oppenheimer as someone who only sees politics in practical terms, not an ideologue or a firebrand who feels he needs to conceal his beliefs.

Many of the strongest, most tense scenes chart Oppie’s attempt to score security clearance for a range of potentially disreputable but brilliant science colleagues while fighting a war of words against the men whose job it was to filter out and eliminate possible spies (a small role by Casey Affleck offers a delicious early highlight). As a viewing experience, it’s a film which travels at the speed of Oliver Stone’s JFK, one which is also successful at keeping many plates spinning at one time. It’s rare that a film which comprises so many scenes of men talking in rooms should whip by at such a clip, especially as Nolan’s framing, blocking and movement of the camera is rarely what you’d call artistic (though it more than does the job).

Of the famously gigantic ensemble cast roped in to tell this story, there’s not a single player who feels like they’ve been given short shrift. I can see some arguing that Florence Pugh as Oppenheimer’s communist lover, and Emily Blunt’s tipsy wife Kitty are sidelined in favour of the many male protagonists, yet they both contribute small but important scenes. I would argue that Blunt is responsible for the film’s strongest moment, as she stoically takes the stand for her husband at a sham security hearing and brings home the backbone that he’s currently lacking.

But the lion share of plaudits need to go to Murphy who is extraordinary in the title role, transmitting both a boyish passion for learning and discovery and a deep if shrouded sense of paranoia and guilt that would come from revealing the contents of a Pandora’s Box for which he has the only key. His gaunt, greying, unglamorous features are emphasised by the cigarettes he smokes which look like giant white batons dangling from his lips.

On that front, he has noted that he was physically modelled on David Bowie’s character from Nicholas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell To Earth, which feels apposite as this too is a film about a genius outsider coming to terms with how he has been exploited from the off. Murphy is a reliably great actor, but this is on a different plateau, a muscular and effortlessly charismatic turn in which he commands every frame he appears in.

The film falters in its final act, as the focus shifts to the backroom machinations of Robert Downey Jr’s one-time chair of the US Atomic Energy Commission, Lewis Strauss. It’s nice to see Downey outside of a metal onesie, yet his arc feels manipulated as a way to give the film some conventional closure. This is when the witch trials are at full pelt, and Nolan can’t help but present Oppenheimer as the newly-moralistic martyr, even if he himself didn’t appear to want that end. And yet there’s a paradox: if Nolan was more objectively ambivalent about his subject, does that remove some of the impetus to make the film in the first place? Does he see himself as the lone genius who just about slips out the back door with a moral victory?

Oppenheimer shares facets with Nolan’s greatest film, 2006’s The Prestige , in that it is about a man who builds a machine that, if placed into the wrong hands, has the ability to destroy lives. It also has a certain messiness to it, avoiding the hokily rigid plot schematics of Dunkirk , Interstellar and Inception . Robert Oppenheimer, too, operates in the same shady moral domain as Bruce Wayne’s Batman , a self-starting mercenary who’s bottomless financial coffers allow him to mete out punishment on those he believes to be wrongdoers.

This film is less about offering some neat, cyclical narrative, and more about navigating the twisty moral maze that comes from harnessing the power of the atom to do great damage on the world and its people. And it’s perhaps kudos to Nolan’s writing (and Murphy’s intuitive interpretation of the text) that all this comes out so cleanly. It’s not a faultless film, but it’s one that sits within the higher echelons of the oft-tawdry biopic form, and also reveals hidden depths to the Nolan project and, excitingly, suggests that we should brace ourselves for anything the next time around.

Published 19 Jul 2023

Tags: Christopher Nolan Cillian Murphy Dunkirk Emily Blunt Florence Pugh Matt Damon Tenet

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‘Oppenheimer’ review: A grandiloquent saga about a grand folly

Christopher nolan’s biopic traces the rise and fall of american theoretical physicist j robert oppenheimer..

Towards the end of Christopher Nolan’s biopic of J Robert Oppenheimer, the American physicist is asked about why his views on the atomic bomb that he helped create changed in a span of a few years. Oppenheimer’s reply is vague, unsatisfactory even. In the same way, the film about him dances around the question that has fascinated as well as plagued Oppenheimer’s admirers.

Nolan’s most political film plays out like a 1970s-style conspiracy thriller, in which unfounded suspicions about Communism combine with a narrow definition of nationalism to make a villain out of a hero. A sprawling cast, led by Cillian Murphy as Oppenheimer, lines up for a movie that is grand in vision and grandiloquent in its staging.

Oppenheimer takes off from America’s nuclear bomb programme, codenamed the Manhattan Project, in the early 1940s. The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, meant to bring a brutal end to Japan’s continued opposition to the Allied forces during World War II, had tremendous moral consequences, most of all for the man who came to be known as the “father of the bomb”.

The 190-minute film has been adapted by Nolan from the 2005 biography American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J Sherwin. Rather than following a linear narrative that might have more effectively explained Oppenheimer’s fall from grace, Nolan opts for the mangled timelines, breakneck editing pattern and operatic sweep that mark his cinema.

The fragmented approach results in brilliant individual scenes that don’t add up to a composite picture. The extremely busy plot includes Oppenheimer’s formative years, his flirtation with Communism, his leadership of the Manhattan Project, the debates about the proper use of a destructive technology and Oppenheimer’s fraught ties with his wife Kitty (Emily Blunt) and lover Jean (Florence Pugh).

Uniting these discrete elements is Oppenheimer’s persecution by the American government. Significant portions play out in a small room where a kangaroo court, instigated by the vengeful nuclear policy administrator Leslie Strauss (Robert Downey Jr) and led by an aggressive lawyer (Jason Clarke), decides whether Oppenheimer is a Russian spy and therefore needs to be stripped of his security clearance.

Nolan works overtime to make a talk-heavy narrative engaging at the intellectual and visual level. Characters are constantly on the move, striding through corridors and in and out of rooms where plans to make life-destroying weapons are pored over with Boy Scout-level glee.

Hoyte van Hoytema’s unnerving close-ups depict the paranoia building up around Oppenheimer. Surreal dream sequences reveal Oppenheimer’s growing disquiet over his choices. In the most effective of them, the laudatory stamping of feet after the Hiroshima-Nagasaki bombings have the sonic effect of a firing squad. The faces of Oppenheimer’s fans are twisted in a terrible display of misguided patriotism.

(Indian censors have ensured that an explicit scene is trimmed to the point of being unintelligible. In a hilarious instance of bowdlerising, Pugh’s Jean gets a family-friendly makeover in a decidedly family-unfriendly moment.)

Among the more pointed scenes is a conversation between Albert Einstein (Tom Conti) and Oppenheimer. Like all the other actors, Conti makes his mark very fast in a film that has Cillian Murphy in nearly every other frame.

The star-studded cast includes Josh Hartnett, Casey Affleck, Rami Malek, Gary Oldman, Benny Safdie, and Kenneth Branagh. Matt Damon winningly plays Leslie Groves, the Army officer who recruits Oppenheimer for the Manhattan Project. Emily Blunt, as Oppenheimer’s long-suffering wife Kitty, delivers a grammar lesson with brittle-edged precision. Also Kitty: “You are being too goddamn gentlemanly!”

The increasingly enervating focus on Oppenheimer’s vilification sidesteps bigger questions about the inner life of a brilliant man who was both opportunist and dissenter, warmonger and conscientious objector. By approaching Oppenheimer from the outside, through his actions or the reactions of people to him, the film takes the easy way out from confronting the paradoxes that defined one of the greatest scientific minds of our times. While it is impossible to fully know a person over the course of a movie, a better understanding of Oppenheimer’s contradictions remains out of reach.

Cillian Murphy’s performance is accordingly incomplete. Murphy is excellent in portraying Oppenheimer’s nervous energy, ambivalence, and self-doubt. But the charisma that drew scores of scientists towards Oppenheimer or contributed to his personal relationships is missing.

The horrific destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is conveyed in words. The visual centrepiece is the first bomb test. Stripped of Ludwig Goransson’s onerous score, this sequence conveys the film’s major ideas so effectively that whatever follows seems like needless padding.

“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” Oppenheimer’s quotation from the Bhagwad Gita , says more than the rest of the verbiage. As clouds of fire reach the corners of the screen – the impact is especially terrifying on IMAX – we hear only Oppenheimer’s laboured breathing at the beauty and the bloodshed he has wrought.

• Oppenheimer review
• Christopher Nolan
• Cillian Murphy

Oppenheimer (Christian Movie Review)

Verdict: A masterfully constructed story that is both harrowing and entertaining, but unfortunately also comes with one substantial caveat.

About The Movie

If the pink aesthetic of Barbie is not your cup of tea, Hollywood has you covered with a movie of a much different flavor. As with his excellent 2017 war film, Dunkirk , director Christopher Nolan has stepped outside his science-fiction wheelhouse to deliver another story based on historical events. Oppenheimer tells the tale of J. Robert Oppenheimer and the creation of the Atomic Bomb (based on the book American Prometheus ). Once again, Nolan lives up to his reputation. Oppenheimer is a masterfully constructed story that is both harrowing and entertaining, and yet unfortunately also comes with one substantial caveat.        

The movie’s cast is tremendous, an orchestra of personalities that are all hitting the perfect notes. The always-great Cillian Murphy is captivating in the lead role, able to communicate his character’s inner-turmoil with just his eyes and gestures. Others, such as Robert Downey Jr. and Matt Damon, are also excellent. Even minor characters with little screen time are portrayed by some recognizable and highly gifted actors.

The real star of Oppenheimer is—perhaps unsurprisingly—Christopher Nolan himself. He once again breaks the mold of conventional storytelling. Near the beginning of the film, there’s an unusual sequence where several images are shown in quick succession (a Picasso painting, a spinning record, etc.). These act as a sort of metaphor for the movie, introducing a story that will not unfold as a chronological narrative, but instead as a circular and thematic interpretation of the historical events.

Like Dunkirk , the film is divided into multiple timelines (because it wouldn’t be a Nolan film without him messing around with time). Each period is distinguished by a different aesthetic (vivid color, black-and-white, etc.), and by title cards that name the two main periods as Fission and Fusion. The first focuses on Oppenheimer’s creation of the bomb, while the second takes place during the aftermath of its destructive use. The movie jumps around between these timelines, sometimes in jarring and abrupt ways, breaking off a scene or moment that won’t be put into full context until much later in the film.

It may take viewers time to get into the rhythm of the nonlinear storytelling, but once you do settle in, the technique becomes an effective and fitting way to explore the movie’s big themes. Like the chain reaction of atoms that fuel the bomb, there is a connectivity between the “theory” of its creation and the manifested consequences of that theory put into action. An incredible musical score that plays throughout much of the film also adds an almost dreamlike and surreal quality to the film.

The majority of the lengthy 3-hour runtime is allotted to rooms full of men talking. Yet, despite the dialogue-heavy script, the sense of escalating and impending horror keeps the story moving at a brisk and thrilling pace that doesn’t lose steam until near the end when it does finally being to drag. But Oppenheimer is not all talking.The film’s standout moment is the detonation of the Trinity test bomb. The sequence is Nolan at his best, building breathless tension by masterfully wielding the visuals, sound design, and music to spectacular ends.

Unfortunately, Oppenheimer does not always show Christopher Nolan at his best. He excels at attempting things that no other filmmakers do (ie. nonlinear storytelling, practical effects, etc.). So, it is notable that the one giant-sized caveat in this film is the result of its least Nolan-esque aspect—sex and nudity. Nolan, who has often been accused of being cold and detached in his portrayals of human relationships, wades into that uncharted territory for the first time. The result is a series of gratuitous and unnecessary scenes of sex and nudity that feel wholly reactionary to these criticisms. Beyond the regular moral complications of nudity in film, there is something even more distasteful about a film that only features two prominent female characters, and then reduces one (the brilliantly talented Florence Pugh) to a mere sexual object who spends virtually all of her screen time nude.

If the lack of restraint with the sexual elements is an issue, then perhaps so too is Nolan having too much restraint in other areas. The utter horror of the bomb and its aftermath is merely hinted at rather than shown. Due to the story unfolding from the perspective of Oppenheimer himself, the audience is not shown the actual dropping of the bombs. A room full of people are later shown pictures of the aftermath, but the camera focuses exclusively on Oppenheimer’s troubled face without revealing the content of those pictures.

There is a valid argument to be made that such restraint is a way to avoid sensationalizing the horrific moment or cheapening it for the sake of entertainment. Oppenheimer does experience several grim and violent visions that symbolize the horror, but this may be an instance where a more visceral depiction of violence might have been appropriate. For a film that attempts to explore the horror that Oppenheimer unleashed upon the world, it seems reluctant to honestly confront audiences with that horror.  

In the end, Oppenheimer is an excellently crafted, executed, and directed movie, that would be an easy recommendation were it not for the sexual elements. It’s a movie designed to be seen in a theater on the biggest screen possible, but some viewers may be better off waiting to watch at home where they have more control. It’s a brilliant film that is worth experiencing, but audiences may need to proceed with caution in how they choose to do so.    

For Consideration

Language: There are 5-6 F-bombs, and a handful of other profanities.  

Violence: Despite being a movie about one of the most horrific and violent events in human history, the movie itself largely steers clear of depicting that violence in overly graphic ways. The dropping of the bombs themselves are not visualized, although the sobering results are discussed. Oppenheimer does experience visions of the consequences of his creation, including a brief shot where the skin of a woman’s face is peeling off, and also a moment where he steps into the chest cavity of a charred corpse.

Sexuality: There are several scenes of graphic nudity. Oppenheimer is shown having sex with Florence Pugh’s character, with her bare breasts exposed. Later, in a conference room full of men, they are again depicted having sex (in a symbolic rather than literal sense). They are both nude as she straddles him and thrusts. After a sexual encounter in a hotel room, the two characters have an extended conversation while still fully naked, with her breasts once again visible. Oppenheimer is also described as a “womanizer,” and his other promiscuous acts with married women is referenced.    

Engage The Film

Theory can only take you so far.

Much of the movie deals with the moral quandaries and dilemmas that are reflective of the historical event (ie. Was dropping the bombs a just action? Who carries the responsibility? What will be the lasting consequences?). At the same time, the film is also an opportunity for Nolan to explore some other interesting themes. There is repeated question throughout about the “limits of theory.”

Oppenheimer frequently makes statements about the limitations of theory (“Theory can only take you so far,” “What do you want from theory alone?”). When Matt Damon’s military character desires more certainty about the theoretical “near-zero” chances of the the bomb destroying the world, Oppenheimer remarks that once they actually test the bomb they will know for certain, but until then they must rely on theory. In an earlier scene, Oppenheimer conducts complex calculations to argue why a certain outcome is theoretically impossible, only to learn that the experimental team in the room next door have just accomplished it.

The movie does not present this theme in a religious sense, but it is an interesting idea for Christians to explore. How much “certainty” is possible, and at what point does belief require an act of faith? What is the difference between theoretical “head knowledge” and an experiential understanding?

Not a New Weapon, but a New Wor ld

The movie raises the age-old question of whether “the ends justify the means.” For the most part, however, the creation of the bomb is framed in a more determinist way. The movie is told from the perspective of Oppenheimer and reflects his own motivation for creating the bomb. He expresses that man cannot be entrusted with such destructive power, but since that power is inevitable, it is better for them to create it first rather than allow the Nazi’s to obtain it. Another character soberly articulates the creation of the bomb is not just a new weapon but represents the dawn of a new world—a world where mankind has the power to destroy themselves. The movie ends with the implication that we are still currently living in the new world that Oppenheimer created.

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Barbie, oppenheimer, and life’s big existential questions, themes covered, what's inside this article.

• Barbie: Identity and purpose in an imperfect world
• Oppenheimer: A prophetic vision of hubris and destruction

Conclusion: The summer of Barbenheimer

Sources and further reading.

Are you seeing Barbie , Oppenheimer , or both? If both, then in which order? Should you watch them in one day or on successive days? These are the questions that have occupied moviegoers this summer.

It’s hard to imagine two movies more different from one another in style, content and target audience. Barbie is a bright fantasy about a childhood toy come to life. Oppenheimer is a dark biopic about the father of the atomic bomb. Perhaps it was due to these factors that studio executives scheduled both movies to open on the same weekend. After all, how likely was it that the two films would attract the same audience?

Very likely, as it turned out. The stark contrast between the two movies created a cascade of interest among moviegoers who wanted to experience both. Memes spread like nuclear wildfire across the internet and brought the portmanteau Barbenheimer into our popular lexicon. There were fan-made movie posters of Barbie standing in front of a mushroom cloud on the horizon. Rather than damaging each other’s box office potential, both films raked in revenue far exceeding what was projected.

Beyond the bottom line, Barbie and Oppenheimer also subverted the expectations of their respective (and overlapping) audiences. In wildly different ways, both movies explored questions about the brokenness of the world, what it means to live a virtuous life, and the nature and purpose of existence. No, really.

[ Spoiler alert: This article discusses themes, plot and characters from  Barbie and  Oppenheimer . If you’re planning to watch either movie and haven’t yet, you may wish to do so before reading further. ]

Barbie : Identity and purpose in an imperfect world

When the first promotions for Barbie appeared, it was assumed the movie would be a bit of summer fluff, a product tie-in aimed at young girls and their moms who had fond memories of playing with the dolls during their own childhoods.

While Barbie is indeed lighthearted over-the-top fun, it also explores some complex topics with surprising nuance. Under the guidance of writer-director Greta Gerwig, Barbie asks questions about gender roles, identity and purpose, and doesn’t always come up with the answers the audience might expect. The film accomplishes all this without ever losing its sense of humour, theatricality, or self-awareness that it’s a movie about a doll coming to life.

The first act takes place in the idyllic fantasy world of Barbieland, where all the Barbies live perfect, happy lives, unencumbered by troubling thoughts, unpleasant emotions or real-life problems. Every today is perfect, and every tomorrow will be as well. But it’s a hollow perfection, devoid of purpose or meaning. The Barbies rule Barbieland and go through the motion of its various jobs. The Kens do even less. They hang out at the beach, have no identities of their own and are mere adjuncts to the Barbies. They’re just Ken.

One day, the idyll is shattered when Stereotypical Barbie, played by Margot Robbie, begins to have thoughts about death. This existential epiphany snowballs into other problems, and pretty soon she’s off to the real world with Ken in tow, hoping to fix everything and put Barbieland back the way it was.

In the real world, Barbie discovers that men treat her with disrespect and make unwelcome sexual advances toward her, causing her to feel a pervasive sense of anxiety and fear. Meanwhile, Ken discovers patriarchy. He exports it to Barbieland where toxic masculinity takes over as the Kens party with their bros and the Barbies serve them drinks and stand around looking pretty.

With the help of a real-world mom and her daughter, Barbie manages to set things right in Barbieland, but not the way it was before. The Barbies and the Kens both come to realize that neither matriarchy nor patriarchy is a viable framework for society. Neither group should be defined as adjuncts to the other. To live authentic, purposeful lives, each one must be free to be their own person and to follow the path to which they feel called.

These are hard lessons for Stereotypical Barbie. She had always thought of herself as a perfect role model who showed girls that they could be anything they chose. But her contact with the real world has revealed that she also caused much harm by giving girls unrealistic standards of perfection. This cognitive dissonance makes her feel she no longer has purpose, although she is reassured by her fellow Barbies and newfound human friends that purpose is not tied to physical beauty or perfection. (The narrator, Helen Mirren, drily interjects that casting Margot Robbie may not have been the strongest way to make this point.) In the end, Barbie meets her creator, Ruth Handler, and becomes a real woman with a real life, embracing its uncertainties and imperfections.

Greta Gerwig has joked that Barbie is a gender-flipped retelling of the creation account in Genesis. While the parallels are neither precise nor biblically attuned, there is truth behind the joke. The movie explores the contrasts between an ideal paradise and a broken real world and leans into the contradictions between what is and what should be. Through exaggerated stereotypes, it traces the effects of the fall on the relationships between men and women. Without tying a neat bow on its story, Barbie points the way to authentic, meaningful lives for women and men who cooperate as equals, recognizing the inherent value of one another, each pursuing the purpose for which they were created.

Oppenheimer : A prophetic vision of hubris and destruction

Unlike Barbie , there were no illusions about what kind of movie Oppenheimer would be from the start. Like most of Christopher Nolan’s films, it’s deep and dark, full of symbolism and thematic ambiguity, featuring stunning visuals and sound, following a non-linear narrative style with intertwining threads that only resolve near the end of the film.

Nolan adapted his biopic from American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, a biography of theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who led the Manhattan Project which developed the first atomic bombs during the Second World War. In Greek mythology, Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to humanity, an act for which Zeus condemned him to eternal torment. Nolan leans into these mythical and spiritual associations, noting Oppenheimer’s quote from the Bhagavad Gita upon the first successful atomic detonation at Los Alamos: “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” Oppenheimer had earlier named the test bomb Trinity, based on John Donne’s poem, “Batter my heart, Three Person’d God,” a line he also whispers during the test.

There’s an unmistakeable aura of prophetic allusion in Oppenheimer . The brilliant but unstable physicist sees visions and dreams dreams of fire and water, peeling flesh and charred bodies, the darkness of space and the invisible world of subatomic particles. He intuits a reality beyond our own, a realm of mystery and paradox we cannot see but which forms the building blocks of everything we know. He evangelizes with fervour, explaining to a student how electrons are both waves and particles, which is impossible but true. While flirting with a young woman, he tells her that our bodies are made of mostly space, held together by forces that make our hands feel solid – even as his hand touches hers.

Oppenheimer is a deeply flawed man, full of apparent contractions and paradoxes much like the subatomic realm he studies. He’s self-absorbed and disconnected, with little interest in raising his own children. By turns, he can be arrogant or self-effacing. His genius is coupled with naivete, and he often displays a shocking lack of common sense. Although he grasps theoretical ideas that very few can begin to fathom, he has little time or talent for practical work. Even so, he recognizes his limitations; he and the film often repeat the mantra, “Theory will only take you so far.”

This truth becomes a bitter pill once the practical realities of Oppenheimer’s work begin to settle in. It’s one thing to be driven by ambition and achievement and a desire to peer into the mysteries of the universe. It’s quite another to witness the spectacle of a thousand-foot pillar of roaring atomic fire reach to the sky. The awful power he has unleashed on the world, which he thinks of as fire from God, fills Oppenheimer with guilt and remorse. He finds himself arguing that the weapon be held in reserve as a deterrent, but also that it be used to demonstrate its power and force an end to the war.

Once the bombs are dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Oppenheimer is ensnared ever deeper in a web of conflicting moral convictions. Were the bombings justified? At what point does the cost in lives and human suffering become too high? Oppenheimer can’t answer those questions in a way that will assuage his conscience. After the war, he tries to limit nuclear proliferation and prevent an arms race, which costs him his job and reputation and makes him the target of a political witch hunt as an alleged communist sympathizer.

Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer can be viewed as a story of hubris along the lines of Greek tragedy, a cautionary tale of a promethean scientist stealing from the gods and paying a terrible price. From a biblical perspective, Oppenheimer may be seen as a man gifted by God to unlock the secrets of his creation for potential benefit to humanity. However, the motives of powerful people, together with his own ambitions, turned his discoveries to dark ends whose shockwaves continue to reverberate into the present. “It’s not a new weapon,” Danish physicist Niels Bohr tells Oppenheimer. “It’s a new world.”

During the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, some of the physicists feared that the detonation of a nuclear device could cause a chain reaction that would set fire to earth’s atmosphere and destroy the world. Near the end of the movie, Oppenheimer claims with apocalyptic gloom that this has in fact happened, only in a manner no one had anticipated.

Like the wave-particle duality of quantum mechanics, the Barbenheimer phenomenon is hard to explain. Had the two movies, Barbie and Oppenheimer , opened on different weekends, both might have passed unremarked, viewed only by the target audiences at which they were aimed. But as they came into proximity with each other, like oppositely charged particles they fused into a pop cultural experience unlikely to be replicated.

The two films fed off each other’s success to create a moviegoing whole greater than the sum of its two halves. Beside treating their audiences to a pair of highly distinctive cinematic styles, Barbie and Oppenheimer tackled some complicated, paradoxical questions about identity, purpose, the nature of the world and the mystery of existence. Although they approached these questions from polar opposite directions, both movies treated them with surprising nuance, while never failing to entertain.

For Christian moviegoers, the Barbenheimer phenomenon offers us the opportunity for fruitful discussion with those who share our faith and with those who don’t. It’s a rare pop cultural moment in which we can give anyone who asks us a defense of the reason for the hope we have in us, and show them that the answers to their deepest existential longings are satisfied only in Christ.

[ Note: This article does not constitute an endorsement of the movies  Barbie and  Oppenheimer by Focus on the Family Canada. Consult the full reviews at  Plugged In  to help you determine whether  Barbie and  Oppenheimer   are appropriate for you or your family. ]

Hannah Anderson, “ Barbie and Ken go east of Eden ,” Christianity Today , July 27, 2023.

Beth Card, “ Barbie: A film that asks the questions only Christ can truly answer ,” Premier Christianity , July 24, 2023.

LuElla D’Amico, “ The Barbie movie and contemporary feminism’s likability factor ,” Christ and Pop Culture , August 7, 2023.

JR. Forasteros, “ The question of sin at the heart of ‘Barbie’ and ‘Oppenheimer’ ,” Sojourners , July 26, 2023.

Giles Gough, “ Oppenheimer: A complicated moral conundrum with no easy answers ,” Premier Christianity , July 28, 2023.

Roslyn Hernández, “ Barbie and our reason for being ,” Think Christian , July 31, 2023.

D. Marquel, “ Oppenheimer and our appetite for destruction ,” Think Christian , July 24, 2023.

Jen Oshman, “ Christians should welcome the conversations ‘Barbie’ sparks ,” The Gospel Coalition , August 7, 2023.

Todd C. Ream and Willem P. Van De Merwe, “ J. Robert Oppenheimer: An autopsy of the American academic vocation ,” Christian Scholar’s Review , July 17, 2023.

Austin Smith, Chelsea Sentell and Jessica Martin, “ Barbie and Oppenheimer walk into a theater: Barbenheimer and the culture of comedic nihilism ,” Christian Scholar’s Review , July 28, 2023.

Alissa Wilkinson, “ In the beginning, there was Barbie ,” Vox , July 20, 2023.

Alissa Wilkinson, “ Oppenheimer is an audacious inquiry into power, in all its forms ,” Vox , July 20, 2023.

Subby Szterszky is the managing editor of Focus on Faith and Culture, an e-newsletter produced by Focus on the Family Canada.

© 2023 Focus on the Family (Canada) Association. All rights reserved.

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‘Oppenheimer’: Christopher Nolan’s Starry Biopic Is Big, Loud, and a Must-See

By David Fear

This is what Christopher Nolan does in Oppenheimer , a biopic on the “father of the atomic bomb,” and in terms of getting you into the mindset of its subject, these bursts of abstract imagery are a brilliant move on his part. It’s not the only ace the writer-director has up his well-tailored sleeve, mind you — there are somewhere between four to five timelines bumping against each other at any given moment, it’s shot in both saturated color and stark black & white, its sound design equally prizes dead silence and deafening booms, and the cast is comprised of seemingly every third actor with a SAG card. Not to mention a depth-charge performance by Cillian Murphy as the Man Who Would Be Destroyer of Worlds, one that allows the tiniest surface ripples to communicate the agony and the ecstasy of changing the world.

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Taking its cues from the exhaustive, Pulitzer-winning book American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, Oppenheimer seeks to cram as much of the man’s life, his work, his elevation to national hero, his eventual persecution, and his personal demons into three hours. Just for good measure, Nolan throws in not one but two competing courtroom dramas as well. There’s a roll-the-dice sensation throughout: Scenes of people sitting in rooms talking can seem thrilling or plodding, clarify historical conflicts and complicated concepts or confuse the hell out of you. Set pieces feel sweeping one second, and like they’re sucking the oxygen out of the room the next. Then, suddenly, the movie cuts to a huge close-up of Murphy, his eyes suggesting a man wrestling for his soul, and you’re transfixed. As with so much of Nolan’s work, you can feel a truly great film peeking out in fits and spurts within a longer, slightly uneven one.

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So let us now praise movies about famous men, and the famous men who make them. Oppenheimer is most assuredly a Christopher Nolan film, complete with the blessings and the curses of what that phrase entails. The good stuff first: There are a handful of sequences that remind you why this 52-year-old director is considered a godhead by film geeks, genre freaks, and armchair arthouse-cinema scholars alike. When Nolan is on, he is on , as evidenced by the early scenes of Oppenheimer and his military liaison, General Leslie Groves ( Matt Damon , all mustache and bluster), assembling the eggheads. Their plan is to turn the small New Mexico burg of Los Alamos into a self-sufficient, family-friendly town for a group of scientists and a top-secret think tank for a weapon of mass destruction. The military need the end result of the Manhattan Project to win WWII, preferably before the Germans develop their own version of “the gadget.” Oppenheimer, both compelled by and wary of the opportunity, wants them to maintain the “moral advantage” after the world sees what this thing can do.

Concentrating on the mounting pressure to deliver, the miniature steps forward with each behind-the-scenes breakthrough, and the accountability factor causing friction between the project leader and his patrons, Oppenheimer becomes its own ticking time bomb. All the while, fractures are happening within the team, and the precariousness of the situation, along with Oppenheimer’s willingness to go through with opening this Pandora’s Box, brings things to a tipping point. These scenes remind you of how Nolan understands the use of sound and vision as a means of emotional engagement (helped in no small part by his regular cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema and composer Ludwig Göransson ‘s score); how his ability to fold complex ideas into presentations of human behavior, and vice versa, comes through in his writing; how the timing of a cut and the framing of an image can transform a moment from grandiose or mundane to sublime. The gent is a genuine filmmaker. He’s a big-screen artist, the bigger the screens the better.

There’s Florence Pugh , and Emily Blunt , and Benny Safdie , Josh Hartnett, Rami Malek , Kenneth Branagh , Casey Affleck , Jason Clarke, Matthew Modine, Olivia Thirlby, Dane DeHaan, Alden Ehrenreich … it’s actually quicker to list who’s not in Oppenheimer. Nolan has said he wanted to cast recognizable faces so that audiences could keep track of who’s who easier, but he also gives them opportunities to flex, whether it’s for a minute or the majority of the running time. And given that there are so many scenes of people conversing, reading, lecturing, interrogating, handwringing and musing over the morality of mass destruction, they have to keep things afloat as much as their ringmaster.

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As those two trials intertwine and paint a picture of Oppenheimer as both McCarthy-era martyr and, ultimately, the victor over Strauss’s smear campaign during the movie’s last act, there’s a slight sensation of listening to wind blowing through torn sails. In attempting to get a 360-degree picture of his subject’s life and times on as big a scale as possible, it feels as if Nolan occasionally loses sight of the big picture as a whole. Oppenheimer is one of those shoot-for-the-moon projects that feels thrilling and wonky, brilliant and overstuffed, too much and yet not enough. It’s also a movie that brings to mind the difficult era-spanning epics of yesteryear, from Reds to The Right Stuff, and is a movie made by adults for adults yet done with the sweep and majesty we now associate with movies made for kids and teens. Nolan has made what can sometimes feel like a maddeningly elusive attempt to make a grand statement about then and now, only to continually drown himself out in the technical equivalent of the Zimmer Honk . He’s also given us one of the only movies of the summer that you really have to see.

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What Japanese moviegoers have to say about Oppenheimer as it debuts on Hiroshima, Nagasaki screens

Movie opens 8 months after north american debut, previous controversy over 'barbenheimer' imagery.

Hiroshima residents react to Oppenheimer's debut in Japan

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Oppenheimer finally premiered Friday in the nation where two cities were obliterated 79 years ago by the nuclear weapons invented by the American scientist who was the subject of the Oscar-winning film. The reviews of Japanese filmgoers who spoke to reporters were understandably mixed and highly emotional.

The film's release in Japan, more than eight months after it opened in the U.S., had been watched with trepidation because of the sensitivity of the subject matter. 

Oppenheimer — which won seven Academy Awards earlier this month , including best picture — does not directly depict what happened on the ground when the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, instead focusing on J. Robert Oppenheimer as a person and his internal conflicts. Some 100,000 people were instantly killed in the bombings, mostly civilians, and thousands more perished in the days that followed.

Toshiyuki Mimaki, who survived the bombing of Hiroshima when he was three, said he has been fascinated by the story of Oppenheimer, often called "the father of the atomic bomb" for leading the Manhattan Project.

Huge night for Oppenheimer at the 96th Oscars

"What were the Japanese thinking, carrying out the attack on Pearl Harbor, starting a war they could never hope to win," he said, sadness in his voice, in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.

He is now chairperson of a group of bomb victims called the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organization, and he saw Oppenheimer at a preview event. "During the whole movie, I was waiting and waiting for the Hiroshima bombing scene to come on, but it never did," Mimaki said.

• What on Earth? What you won't learn about in Oppenheimer: the potential effects of a nuclear winter
• Analysis Hiroshima's tragic legacy a reminder of potential dangers of today's no-limits technologies

Hiroshima mayor critical of film

Former Hiroshima mayor Takashi Hiraoka, who spoke at a preview event for the film in the southwestern city, was more critical of what was omitted.

"From Hiroshima's standpoint, the horror of nuclear weapons was not sufficiently depicted," he was quoted as saying by Japanese media. "The film was made in a way to validate the conclusion that the atomic bomb was used to save the lives of Americans."

Keeping the stories of Hiroshima alive 75 years after bombing

Some moviegoers offered praise. One man emerging from a Tokyo theatre Friday said the movie was great, stressing that the topic was of great interest to Japanese people, although emotionally volatile as well. Another said he got choked up over the film's scenes depicting Oppenheimer's inner turmoil. Neither man would give his name to an Associated Press journalist.

In a sign of the historical controversy, a backlash flared last year over the "Barbenheimer" marketing phenomenon that merged pink-and-fun Barbie with seriously intense Oppenheimer . Warner Bros. Japan, which distributed Barbie in the country, apologized after some memes depicted the Mattel doll with atomic blast imagery.

Kazuhiro Maeshima, professor at Sophia University, who specializes in U.S. politics, called the film an expression of "an American conscience."

• Here's the story not told in Nolan's Oppenheimer about those forced off their land in New Mexico
• Japanese PM visits Pearl Harbor memorial for 1st time, says 'we must never repeat the horrors of war'

Those who expect an anti-war movie may be disappointed. But the telling of Oppenheimer's story in a Hollywood blockbuster would have been unthinkable several decades ago, when justification of nuclear weapons dominated American sentiments, Maeshima said.

"The work shows an America that has changed dramatically," he said in a telephone interview.

'Starting point' for important topic: Japanese historian

Others suggested the world might be ready for a Japanese response to that story.

Takashi Yamazaki, director of Godzilla Minus One , which won the Oscar for visual effects and is a powerful statement on nuclear catastrophe in its own way, suggested he might be the man for that job.

"I feel there needs to [be] an answer from Japan to Oppenheimer . Someday, I would like to make that movie," he said in an online dialogue with Oppenheimer director Christopher Nolan.

Nolan heartily agreed.

• How the Halifax Explosion relates to Oppenheimer and other Canadian connections to the atomic bomb

Hiroyuki Shinju, a lawyer, noted Japan and Germany also carried out wartime atrocities, even as the nuclear threat grew around the world. Historians say Japan was also working on nuclear weapons during the Second World War and would have almost certainly used them against other nations, Shinju said.

"This movie can serve as the starting point for addressing the legitimacy of the use of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as humanity's, and Japan's, reflections on nuclear weapons and war," he wrote in his commentary on Oppenheimer published by the Tokyo Bar Association.

Still feeling the fallout in Hiroshima

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He survived Hiroshima. What did he think of ‘Oppenheimer’?

“Oppenheimer,” the film about the American scientist who invented the nuclear weapons that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki 79 years ago, opened in Japanese theaters March 29, to mixed reactions and strong emotions.

• By Yuri Kageyama Associated Press

March 29, 2024 | Tokyo

“Oppenheimer” finally premiered March 29 in the nation where two cities were obliterated 79 years ago by the nuclear weapons invented by the American scientist who was the subject of the Oscar-winning film. Japanese filmgoers’ reactions understandably were mixed and highly emotional.

Toshiyuki Mimaki, who survived the bombing of Hiroshima when he was 3, said he has been fascinated by the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer, often called “the father of the atomic bomb” for leading the Manhattan Project.

“What were the Japanese thinking, carrying out the attack on Pearl Harbor, starting a war they could never hope to win,” he said, sadness in his voice, in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.

He is now chairperson of a group of bomb victims called the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organization and he saw “Oppenheimer” at a preview event. “During the whole movie, I was waiting and waiting for the Hiroshima bombing scene to come on, but it never did,” Mr. Mimaki said.

“Oppenheimer” does not directly depict what happened on the ground when the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, turning some 100,000 people instantly into ashes, and killed thousands more in the days that followed, mostly civilians.

The film instead focuses on Oppenheimer as a person and his internal conflicts.

The film’s release in Japan, more than eight months after it opened in the United States, had been watched with trepidation because of the sensitivity of the subject matter.

Former Hiroshima Mayor Takashi Hiraoka, who spoke at a preview event for the film in the southwestern city, was more critical of what was omitted.

“From Hiroshima’s standpoint, the horror of nuclear weapons was not sufficiently depicted,” he was quoted as saying by Japanese media. “The film was made in a way to validate the conclusion that the atomic bomb was used to save the lives of Americans.”

Some moviegoers offered praise. One man emerging from a Tokyo theater March 29 said the movie was great, stressing that the topic was of great interest to Japanese, although emotionally volatile as well. Another said he got choked up over the film’s scenes depicting Oppenheimer’s inner turmoil. Neither man would give his name to an Associated Press journalist.

In a sign of the historical controversy, a backlash flared last year over the “Barbenheimer” marketing phenomenon that merged pink-and-fun “Barbie” with seriously intense “Oppenheimer.” Warner Bros. Japan, which distributed “Barbie” in the country, apologized after some memes depicted the Mattel doll with atomic blast imagery.

Kazuhiro Maeshima, a professor at Sophia University who specializes in U.S. politics, called the film an expression of “an American conscience.”

Those who expect an anti-war movie may be disappointed. But the telling of Oppenheimer’s story in a Hollywood blockbuster would have been unthinkable several decades ago, when justification of nuclear weapons dominated American sentiments, Mr. Maeshima said.

“The work shows an America that has changed dramatically,” he said in a telephone interview.

Others suggested the world might be ready for a Japanese response to that story.

Takashi Yamazaki, director of “Godzilla Minus One,” which won the Oscar for visual effects and is a powerful statement on nuclear catastrophe in its own way, suggested he might be the man for that job.

“I feel there needs to an answer from Japan to ‘Oppenheimer.’ Someday, I would like to make that movie,” he said in an online dialogue with “Oppenheimer” director Christopher Nolan.

Mr. Nolan heartily agreed.

Hiroyuki Shinju, a lawyer, noted Japan and Germany also carried out wartime atrocities, even as the nuclear threat grows around the world. Historians say Japan was also working on nuclear weapons during World War II and would have almost certainly used them against other nations, Mr. Shinju said.

“This movie can serve as the starting point for addressing the legitimacy of the use of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as humanity’s, and Japan’s, reflections on nuclear weapons and war,” he wrote in his commentary on “Oppenheimer” published by the Tokyo Bar Association.

This story was reported by The Associated Press.

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Oppenheimer won Best Picture. Its new reception in Japan was very different.

The film’s Japan premiere renews critiques about what the movie omitted.

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Oppenheimer ’s premiere in Japan this past weekend has renewed scrutiny of how the film depicted the devastating bombings that killed more than 200,000 people during World War II .

The Oscar-winning film centers heavily on J. Robert Oppenheimer and follows the physicist’s journey in developing the atomic bomb for the United States. It does not directly show the fallout of the bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and it also does not feature any Japanese perspectives in the form of major characters or testimonials.

While some Japanese viewers noted that the film is from Oppenheimer’s point of view and that the lack of these voices is in line with that, others argued that its focus on his perspective helped glorify his actions and downplay their consequences.

“From Hiroshima’s standpoint, the horror of nuclear weapons was not sufficiently depicted,” former Hiroshima Mayor Takashi Hiraoka said during a premiere event for the film .

These reactions echoed similar pushback the film received in the US — reinvigorating questions about whose stories get told, and whether the ones that Hollywood chooses to focus on offer a limited understanding of the world and gloss over major harms.

Japanese viewers questioned Oppenheimer’s framing

Last year, Oppenheimer’s release coincided with that of the summer’s other big blockbuster — Barbie — timing that prompted a wave of memes and articles about a “Barbenheimer’’ double feature. “Barbenheimer,” however, inspired posts — like that of a mushroom cloud replacing Barbie’s hair — which were heavily criticized in Japan for failing to recognize the impact of the atomic bombs. Warner Brothers, the company distributing the film, eventually apologized for official tweets that had responded to these memes.

In the wake of this controversy — as well as concerns about the sensitivity of the film — the Japanese release of Oppenheimer was delayed. Such timing isn’t uncommon for foreign films , though the movie screened earlier for audiences in other Asian countries in the region including China and Korea.

On Friday, the film premiered with content warnings for viewers , which noted that it could spur recollections about the damage and trauma the bombs caused in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Those bombs killed an estimated 140,000 people in Hiroshima and 74,000 in Nagasaki, maimed and wounded tens of thousands of others, and caused higher rates of cancer survivors.

According to several news reports , the Barbenheimer controversy and the nature of the film’s subject matter have added attention to its release in Japan. Hiraoka, the former mayor of Hiroshima, is among those who have commented on the film, along with multiple surviving victims of the atomic bombs, known as “hibakusha.” “Is this really a movie that people in Hiroshima can bear to watch?” Kyoko Heya, the head of Hiroshima’s international film festival, previously asked . According to Variety , the film placed third at the box office in its opening weekend.

Some Japanese people who saw the film questioned both the lack of Japanese perspectives as well as the tone of the movie, which they saw as lauding both Oppenheimer and his work on the Manhattan Project.

“The sense of excitement among people celebrating the experiment and the dropping of the atomic bomb. I felt incredibly disgusted,” Erika Abiko, an anti-nuclear activist, told the BBC .

“Of course this is an amazing film which deserves to win the Academy Awards,” Kawai, another viewer in Hiroshima, told Reuters . “But the film also depicts the atomic bomb in a way that seems to praise it, and, as a person with roots in Hiroshima, I found it difficult to watch.”

@bbcnews In August 1945, Oppenheimer's nuclear bomb killed an estimated 140,000 people in Hiroshima and at least 74,000 people in Nagasaki. Today, the biopic about Oppenheimer's life was released in Japan. #Hiroshima #Nagasaki #Oppenheimer #Japan #NuclearBomb #History #HistoryTok #Cinema #CinemaTok #Films #Movies #BBCNews ♬ original sound - BBC News - BBC News

Director Christopher Nolan has responded to such critiques in the past, noting that the film is intended to capture Oppenheimer’s perspective, so it doesn’t go beyond that. “To depart from [his experience] would betray the terms of the storytelling,” Nolan has said. “He learned about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the radio — the same as the rest of the world.”

Certain Japanese moviegoers agreed with this sentiment, stating that the film’s emphasis on Oppenheimer and exclusion of other experiences made sense. Others noted that it still served as an important cautionary tale despite failing to fully capture what took place in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“This was really a film about Oppenheimer the man, and the way he wrestled with his conscience, so in that sense, I think it was right not to broaden it out too much to show the aftermath,” Mei Kawashima, a Hiroshima resident, told the Guardian.

Broadly, though, many Japanese viewers expressed discomfort with Oppenheimer’s storytelling and felt the portrayal was incomplete. “The film was only about the side that dropped the A-bomb,” Tsuyuko Iwanai, a Nagasaki resident, told NPR . “I wish they had included the side it was dropped on.”

These reactions build on a conversation about missing voices

At its core, the Oppenheimer discourse is about which characters get humanized in major films — and who gets to narrate these stories.

“I was uncomfy watching yet another movie about tortured white male genius when the victims of the atrocities glossed over by the script — Japanese people, interned Japanese Americans, and Native Americans — had no voice,” Li Lai, a Taiwanese American media critic, wrote last July .

The exclusion of Japanese people in the film has been a major point of contention, as has the erasure of stories of Native Americans and Hispanic Americans who lived near New Mexico sites where significant bomb testing took place.

Both Native and Hispanic communities in the region were displaced by the construction of Los Alamos, and residents who lived close to test sites have experienced disproportionately high rates of cancer and infant deaths in the decades since .

By leaving these voices out of the movie, critics say Oppenheimer fails to fully grapple with the impact of the titular character’s actions — and the violence that followed.

The film’s premiere in Japan has forced a confrontation of some of these concerns. There’s been debate , too, about whether Oppenheimer could have shown more of the trauma from the bombings, or if that approach would have been harmful and effectively gawking at the suffering .

Naoko Wake , a Michigan State University historian who has interviewed survivors of the bombings, notes that thoughtfully including such images could be vital for awareness when there has been so little understanding of Japanese civilians’ perspective.

“I ask my students every time I teach this subject, ‘Have you ever been exposed to any of the images outside of the mushroom clouds?’ They say that they have never seen images from ground zero or any effects of radiation exposure,” Wake told Vox. She points to a scene of Oppenheimer turning away from photos he’s being shown from the bombings as a potential moment in which the film could have allowed viewers to bear witness as well.

Beyond videos or photos of the violence, no Japanese characters were included to express or convey the effects of these weapons, either. It’s possible to envision a scene of a radio broadcast featuring interviews with Japanese people describing their experience with the horrors of the bombs, for example.

Notably, this pushback matters because it raises questions about whose perspective gets to be the definitive one in storytelling — including on such high-profile platforms.

“Hollywood is a powerful tool for white perspectives,” Ponipate Rokolekutu, a professor of race and resistance studies at San Francisco State University, told KQED . “They don’t want other histories to be known.”

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'Oppenheimer' finally premieres in Japan to mixed reactions and high emotions

“Oppenheimer” has finally opened in the nation where two cities were obliterated by the nuclear weapons invented by the American scientist at the center of the film

TOKYO -- TOKYO (AP) — “Oppenheimer” finally premiered Friday in the nation where two cities were obliterated 79 years ago by the nuclear weapons invented by the American scientist who was the subject of the Oscar-winning film. Japan ese filmgoers' reactions understandably were mixed and highly emotional.

Toshiyuki Mimaki, who survived the bombing of Hiroshima when he was 3, said he has been fascinated by the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer, often called “the father of the atomic bomb” for leading the Manhattan Project.

“What were the Japanese thinking, carrying out the attack on Pearl Harbor, starting a war they could never hope to win,” he said, sadness in his voice, in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.

He is now chairperson of a group of bomb victims called the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organization and he saw “Oppenheimer” at a preview event. “During the whole movie, I was waiting and waiting for the Hiroshima bombing scene to come on, but it never did,” Mimaki said.

“Oppenheimer” does not directly depict what happened on the ground when the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, turning some 100,000 people instantly into ashes, and killed thousands more in the days that followed, mostly civilians.

The film instead focuses on Oppenheimer as a person and his internal conflicts.

The film's release in Japan, more than eight months after it opened in the U.S., had been watched with trepidation because of the sensitivity of the subject matter.

Former Hiroshima Mayor Takashi Hiraoka, who spoke at a preview event for the film in the southwestern city, was more critical of what was omitted.

“From Hiroshima’s standpoint, the horror of nuclear weapons was not sufficiently depicted,” he was quoted as saying by Japanese media. “The film was made in a way to validate the conclusion that the atomic bomb was used to save the lives of Americans.”

Some moviegoers offered praise. One man emerging from a Tokyo theater Friday said the movie was great, stressing that the topic was of great interest to Japanese, although emotionally volatile as well. Another said he got choked up over the film's scenes depicting Oppenheimer’s inner turmoil. Neither man would give his name to an Associated Press journalist.

In a sign of the historical controversy, a backlash flared last year over the “Barbenheimer” marketing phenomenon that merged pink-and-fun “Barbie” with seriously intense “Oppenheimer." Warner Bros. Japan, which distributed “Barbie” in the country, apologized after some memes depicted the Mattel doll with atomic blast imagery.

Kazuhiro Maeshima, professor at Sophia University, who specializes in U.S. politics, called the film an expression of “an American conscience.”

Those who expect an anti-war movie may be disappointed. But the telling of Oppenheimer’s story in a Hollywood blockbuster would have been unthinkable several decades ago, when justification of nuclear weapons dominated American sentiments, Maeshima said.

“The work shows an America that has changed dramatically,” he said in a telephone interview.

Others suggested the world might be ready for a Japanese response to that story.

Takashi Yamazaki, director of “Godzilla Minus One,” which won the Oscar for visual effects and is a powerful statement on nuclear catastrophe in its own way, suggested he might be the man for that job.

“I feel there needs to be an answer from Japan to ‘Oppenheimer.’ Someday, I would like to make that movie,” he said in an online dialogue with “Oppenheimer” director Christopher Nolan.

Nolan heartily agreed.

Hiroyuki Shinju, a lawyer, noted Japan and Germany also carried out wartime atrocities, even as the nuclear threat grows around the world. Historians say Japan was also working on nuclear weapons during World War II and would have almost certainly used them against other nations, Shinju said.

“This movie can serve as the starting point for addressing the legitimacy of the use of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as humanity’s, and Japan’s, reflections on nuclear weapons and war,” he wrote in his commentary on “Oppenheimer” published by the Tokyo Bar Association.

Yuri Kageyama is on X: https://twitter.com/yurikageyama

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'Oppenheimer' premieres in Japan: Here's how Hiroshima survivors, Japanese residents reacted

The Oscars'  best picture winner "Oppenheimer"  premiered in Japan on Friday, nearly nine months after its global release, amid concerns about how the country would receive the movie as a victim of atomic bombing.

Christopher Nolan 's film focuses on physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer ( Cillian Murphy ), who led the race to develop the atomic bomb, although the effects on the people of Japan are not depicted. American atomic bombs  devastated the western city of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the south at the close of World War II, killing more than 200,000 people.

Images on social media showed signs posted at the entrances to some Tokyo theaters, warning that the movie featured images of nuclear tests that could evoke the damage caused by the bombs.

The film was received with mixed reviews from Japanese residents, as well as those in the U.S. who are still suffering from the effects of nuclear bomb testing in Nevada. While some believe the film is a needed cautionary tale about mass destruction, others have felt the film focuses overly on Oppenheimer rather than the victims.

Former Hiroshima mayor criticizes 'Oppenheimer,' some Japanese viewers leave theater in distress

Former Hiroshima Mayor Takashi Hiraoka, who attended an earlier media screening of "Oppenheimer," criticized the absence of humanity for Hiroshima residents. "From Hiroshima’s standpoint, the horror of nuclear weapons was not sufficiently depicted," he told Japanese reporters, according to The Associated Press .

He added: "The film was made in a way to validate the conclusion that the atomic bomb was used to save the lives of Americans."

Hiroshima resident Kawai, who would only give his family name to Reuters, made similar criticism, telling the news agency, "The film also depicts the atomic bomb in a way that seems to praise it, and, as a person with roots in Hiroshima, I found it difficult to watch."

"I'm not sure this is a movie that Japanese people should make a special effort to watch," Kawai concluded.

Yujin Yaguchi, a professor of American studies at the University of Tokyo, told The New York Times the film "celebrates a tiny group of white male scientists who really enjoyed their privilege and their love of political power" rather than giving a voice to victims in Japan and America.

"We should focus more on why such a rather one-sided story of white men continues to attract such attention and adulation in the U.S. and what it says about the current politics and the larger politics of memory in the U.S. (and elsewhere)," Yaguchi added.

Toshiyuki Mimaki, a co-chair of Hidankyo, an atomic bomb survivors group, was left disappointed after leaving the theater, he told The Guardian .

"I was waiting for the Hiroshima bombing scene to appear, but it never did. It’s important to show the full story, including the victims, if we are going to have a future without nuclear weapons," Mimaki said.

Japanese viewers leave 'Oppenheimer' feeling sympathy for the physicist

Speaking to Reuters before the movie opened, atomic bomb survivor Teruko Yahata said she was eager to see it, in hopes that it would re-invigorate the debate over nuclear weapons.

Yahata, now 86, said she felt some empathy for the physicist behind the bomb. That sentiment was echoed by Rishu Kanemoto, a 19-year-old student, who saw the film on Friday.

"Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where the atomic bombs were dropped, are certainly the victims," Kanemoto said. "But I think even though the inventor (Oppenheimer) is one of the perpetrators, he's also the victim caught up in the war."

Masao Tomonaga, an atomic bomb survivor and honorary director of the Japanese Red Cross Nagasaki Atomic Bomb hospital, called the lack of survivors a "weakness" in The Guardian. However, "Oppenheimer’s lines in dozens of scenes showed his shock at the reality of the atomic bombing. That was enough for me."

Moviegoer and Nagasaki resident Koichi Takeshita similarly told NPR , "The last look of Oppenheimer in the film was that of pain. It was a look of either regret, because he was the person who made the A-bomb, or he didn't know what to do and was sad, as tens of thousands of people died."

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Shogo Tachiyama, a university student, told The Guardian the movie was good for educational purposes as the full story wasn't taught to him in Japan. "We learned about the bombing and its aftermath at primary school, but I knew nothing about Oppenheimer," he said.

Tachiyama added: "I learned a lot from the film, and it’s made me think again about what I and other young people can do … starting from the insistence that nuclear weapons should never be used again."

New Mexicans, downwind survivors still seeking reparations speak out amid 'Oppenheimer'

During the Cold War,  the United States detonated 928 nuclear bombs in the Nevada desert , many of which were  more powerful than those that decimated Hiroshima and Nagasaki .

Oppenheimer’s Trinity test  sent a cloud of fallout over communities downwind of Los Alamos and  into 46 states , according to a new study, catapulting the world into the nuclear age. The Atomic Energy Commission's decision to  ignore , and then  cover up , the danger has left a trail of suffering and death that continues.

Mary Dickson, an author and activist against nuclear weapons, wrote about the effects of Oppenheimer's testing in an op-ed for USA TODAY in August.

"As a child in Salt Lake City, my thyroid absorbed this radiation. Years later,  I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer  and suffered other health complications that left me unable to have children. For others, the poison went into the teeth, bones, liver, lungs, pancreas, breasts, soft tissue and reproductive organs. The damage caused can take decades to manifest as life-threatening illnesses," Dickson wrote.

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Mark Shapiro, producer and co-director of the 2023 documentary " Downwind ," also called for more attention to New Mexico residents and others affected by the bombings.,

The film "exposes a tragic, largely forgotten and unforgivable chapter of U.S. history and the ongoing health consequences for Americans and global citizens, addressing the current state of the downwinders, the hopeful expansion of RECA (Radiation Exposure Compensation Act) and the continued tenacity of heroic activists who won't be stopped in their pursuit of government accountability and humanitarian justice," Shapiro wrote in a USA TODAY op-ed in March ahead of big wins for "Oppenheimer" at the Oscars.

Contributing: Mary Dickson and Mark Shapiro, USA TODAY; Irene Wang , Reuters

Nuanced Responses in Japan to Christopher Nolan's 'Oppenheimer' Reflect on Nuclear Legacy

T he release of Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” in Japan was met with a mosaic of responses that reflect the country’s unique position as the only nation to have suffered atomic bombings. Nearly nine months after its global debut, the film, which centers on J. Robert Oppenheimer—the physicist who led the development of the atomic bomb—premiered in Japan amid mixed reviews and a deep-seated sensitivity to the subject matter.

“Oppenheimer” tells the story of the physicist’s contributions to the Manhattan Project, which ultimately led to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Critics and moviegoers in Japan have confronted the film with both empathy for Oppenheimer and discomfort over its focus.

Former Hiroshima Mayor Takashi Hiraoka, who attended an early media screening, criticized the film for not sufficiently depicting the horror of nuclear weapons. He commented, “From Hiroshima’s standpoint, the horror of nuclear weapons was not sufficiently depicted,” indicating a perspective that yearns for greater representation of the bombings’ impact on Japanese civilians.

A Hiroshima resident, who identified himself only by his family name Kawai, echoed this sentiment, suggesting the movie “depicts the atomic bomb in a way that seems to praise it,” and shared the unease it stirred in him due to his roots in Hiroshima.

Yujin Yaguchi, a professor of American studies at the University of Tokyo, offered a more nuanced critique, arguing that the film “celebrates a tiny group of white male scientists who really enjoyed their privilege and their love of political power” rather than giving a voice to victims.

The film spurred a diverse range of reactions, with some viewers expressing empathy for Oppenheimer’s personal turmoil and recognizing the educational value of the movie. Rishu Kanemoto, a young student, noted, “But I think even though the inventor (Oppenheimer) is one of the perpetrators, he’s also the victim caught up in the war.”

Atomic bomb survivor Teruko Yahata shared her anticipation for the film, hoping it would rekindle discussions on nuclear weaponry. However, the depiction—or lack thereof—of the bombings and their aftermath left Toshiyuki Mimaki, co-chair of an atomic bomb survivors’ group, feeling let down, as he expressed, “It’s important to show the full story, including the victims, if we are going to have a future without nuclear weapons.”

Relevant articles:

– Here’s how Hiroshima survivors, Japanese residents reacted , Yahoo Movies UK, 11 hours ago

– Japanese reactions to Oppenheimer renew critiques about what the film left out , Vox

– The Atomic Bombs That Ended the Second World War , iwm.org.uk

– ‘Oppenheimer’ finally opens in Japan, the only nation to experience horror of nuclear war , cnn.com

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'Oppenheimer' finally premieres in Japan to mixed reactions and high emotions

Anthony Kuhn

People walk by a poster to promote the movie Oppenheimer on Friday in Tokyo. Eugene Hoshiko/AP hide caption

People walk by a poster to promote the movie Oppenheimer on Friday in Tokyo.

NAGASAKI, Japan — Eight months after premiering in the United States, the Academy Award-winning movie Oppenheimer opened Friday in Japan.

The film's Japanese distributors never explained why they decided to wait to release the film in Japan. It appears to be due to the sensitive nature of the film's topic in the country where the atomic bombs J. Robert Oppenheimer helped build killed some 200,000 people in August 1945 and led to Japan's surrender in World War II.

In the city of Nagasaki , the second city to be devastated by a nuclear weapon, just three days after Hiroshima, housewife Tsuyuko Iwanai shared her thoughts as she exited the theater.

"The film was only about the side that dropped the A-bomb," she noted. "I wish they had included the side it was dropped on."

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'oppenheimer' wins oscar for best picture.

"But then I thought you might think about it differently, if you're in a different position," she added.

Indeed, one of the most controversial points about Oppenheimer is director Christopher Nolan's choice not to directly depict the carnage and agony that the atomic bombs unleashed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but instead to focus on Oppenheimer.

Moviegoer and Nagasaki resident Koichi Takeshita explained how he understood the story by reading Oppenheimer's face.

"The last look of Oppenheimer in the film was that of pain," he observed. "It was a look of either regret, because he was the person who made the A-bomb, or he didn't know what to do and was sad, as tens of thousands of people died."

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Nagasaki residents saw little about their city in the film.

According to American Prometheus , the book on which the movie was based, Oppenheimer said that he generally supported the U.S. government's decision to use nuclear weapons. But he never understood the need to bomb Nagasaki after destroying Hiroshima.

Oppenheimer visited Japan in 1960, but never went to either city.

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Some survivors of the U.S. attacks on Japan have seen the film. Among them is 80-year-old doctor Masao Tomonaga.

Dr. Masao Tomonaga takes the pulse of an atomic bomb survivor at a care home in Nagasaki, Japan. Anthony Kuhn/NPR hide caption

Dr. Masao Tomonaga takes the pulse of an atomic bomb survivor at a care home in Nagasaki, Japan.

He says that at an advance screening of it, he looked at the atomic bomb blast, and saw himself.

"Under that explosion, I was there. I was there, in Nagasaki," he says.

He doesn't remember the blast because he was only 2 years old at the time. His family later explained to him that he survived because his home was about a mile and a half from ground zero. He was asleep in bed when the bomb was dropped.

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'like it or not, we live in oppenheimer's world,' says director christopher nolan.

The blast flattened his house, but he survived unscathed. Seeing the film helped him visualize it.

"I was able for the first time to imagine my situation sleeping on a bed under the 600 meter-high explosion," he says. "So that was my first impression about the movie."

Reuters reported that some cinemas in Japan displayed signs warning moviegoers that the film contains images like nuclear tests that might trigger memories of the bombs.

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Three days a week, Tomonaga cares for atomic bomb survivors at this a home run by the Roman Catholic Church on the outskirts of Nagasaki. He's treated thousands of them, including 700 leukemia patients, which is his specialty.

The average age of the home's 450 residents is in the mid-80s. Being a bomb survivor himself, Tomonaga says he'll eventually move in and spend the rest of his life here.

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Tomonaga says that as a student at University of California, Los Angeles, in the 1980s, he learned the difficulty of trying to change Americans' minds about the use of nuclear weapons in World War II.

"At that time, it was difficult to argue with those who believed that America was right in dropping the atomic bomb," he says. "If I had said this to my fellow doctors, it would destroy the peaceful atmosphere in the lab, so I didn't say it."

Similarly, U.S. citizens would have a hard time convincing Japanese people that bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki was necessary and justified, as many in Japan believe that their country was already defeated and on the verge of surrender when the U.S. dropped the bombs.

Back at the theater, the last of the audience trickles out at the end of the film's morning showing on the first day.

Housewife Tsuyuko Iwanai says she doesn't usually go to the movies, but she felt that Oppenheimer was worth seeing.

"I came because things are going on in many places such as Ukraine," she says, "and I feel nuclear weapons are more likely to be used these days."

Chie Kobayashi contributed to this report in Tokyo and Nagasaki.

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