July 16, 1945, 5:29 AM. A moment in time that forever altered the fate of the world as we know it, propelling humanity into a frightening era of nuclear arms race that still casts a massive shadow, even today. On that day, the Jornada del Muerto desert in New Mexico became the site for the world’s first atomic bomb test — codenamed The Trinity Test — supervised by an extremely anxious J. Robert Oppenheimer, who would later be known to the world as the Father of the Atomic Bomb. The intricate details of what occurred on that fateful day have been painstakingly and competently laid out in Kai Bird and Martin J Sherwin’s American Prometheus, which primarily attempts to paint a more coherent picture of a man who juggled grandiose ambition, conflicted genius, and haunting guilt all at once.
To tackle such a subject matter, let alone the sheer breadth and nuance of American Prometheus into a 3-hour, potential summer blockbuster that centers exclusively on Oppenheimer’s inner psyche, is inherently risk-laden. It is incredibly easy to be swept up in the complexity of the events — interlocked and self-propagating, much like a nuclear chain reaction — and lose sight of a compelling narrative core that is both meaningful and never overly didactic.
Throughout his career, Christopher Nolan has embraced ambitious concepts and translated them into accessible crowd-pleasers (barring a few early-career undertakings, such as the taut, brilliant Insomnia), and even his seemingly high-concept offerings, like Tenet, manage to intrigue from start to finish. With Oppenheimer, Nolan takes on a relentless, meticulous approach to dissecting the history encircling the tragic, devastating atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki while shifting the focus solely on the titular theoretical physicist, whose legacy is both troubling and complex.
Oppenheimer employs telltale Nolan-isms: there’s a constant, mad dance with the concept of time to weave together a story that shapeshifts into a nuanced biopic, an intimate look into nuclear terror, and a moody courtroom drama all at once, which he ties together with a dramatically tense, anxiety-inducing nuclear testing that occurs around the 2-hour mark. While one would assume that this particular climactic event would serve as the natural highlight of the film, its true merit lies in everything that encircles the event, like an inescapable avalanche of cause and effect with an increasingly gaunt Oppenheimer at the center.
The film’s stacked cast, which felt ridiculous at the time it was first announced, play their respective roles to near-perfection, performing key roles in Oppenheimer’s journey from a homesick, tormented young student to the man he eventually becomes, his piercing blue eyes haunted by something only he can perceive and a fractured psyche that oscillates between genius-fueled egotism and an overwhelmingly acute self-awareness of the horrors he helped birth into the world.
Although it is quite evident that Nolan’s magnum opus does not seek to redeem Oppenheimer by softening the edge of his legacy, it bears repeating that a nuanced glimpse into his mind is a deliberate exploration of someone who is considered synonymous with an ominous, oft-quoted, mostly-misconstrued passage from the Bhagavad Gita. Oppenheimer is neither a celebration nor an endorsement of war or the gross power-play that goes hand in hand with the boundary-pushing achievements of scientific research in this particular context — if anything, it is a mirror held up to world-altering cruelties that can, and should, never be forgotten.
Circling back to performances, Robert Downey Jr.’s Lewis Strauss holds the film’s temporal jumps together with a slow-burn yet perfectly timed narrative reveal that allows the actor to demonstrate astounding nuance and range in a manner never seen before. Strauss, who appears deceptively impenetrable at first, is revealed to harbor a particular brand of asinine self-importance common among politicians and men with too much power, dissected brilliantly in stark, black-and-white montages that effectively separates his perspective from Oppenheimer’s synesthetic point-of-view, which almost always verges on maddening sensory overload.
Nolan also portrays the pitfalls of apolitical stances that often hide behind the garb of balanced centrism, which, on closer scrutiny, is anything but. This is relayed exclusively via Oppenheimer’s relationship with Communist ideologies, which is flighty and inconsistent at best, but evolves into a heavy personal cross he must bear during the deliberately humiliating trials he is forced to undergo.
While Oppenheimer’s political beliefs become increasingly anti-war over time, especially pronounced in the aftermath of the bombings and the raging guilt that consumes him, there’s a reason why he subjects himself to these interrogations meant to break him further. He knows he deserves it, as it is a small price to pay for his actions, but his inner workings remain downright impenetrable until the last frame.
Oppenheimer is not all trauma and horror, as the film balances out its heavy subject matter with subtle touches of humor, which flow naturally as a means to provide momentary respite. But the horrors loom large, weighing on everyone and everything it touches, making it a terrifying yet essential film by a director who masterfully encapsulates this deeply thoughtful, chaos-imbued cinematic perfection.
Oppenheimer Links: IMDb, Wikipedia
