Oppenheimer

UK Release Date. 21 July 2023
Certification. 15
Running Time. 3 hours
Director. Christopher Nolan
Cast. Casey Affleck, Emily Blunt, Kenneth Branagh, Jason Clarke, Tom Conti, Matt Damon, Dane DeHaan, Robert Downey Jr, Alden Ehrenreich, Josh Hartnett, Rami Malek, Cillian Murphy, Gary Oldman, Florence Pugh.
Rating. 89%

Review.

Christopher Nolan is one of the few mainstream directors working today who consistently produces original work. That is both deeply impressive and profoundly depressing in equal measure.

Christopher Nolan's twelfth film, Oppenheimer is the biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer - the scientist recruited by the US military to head up The Manhattan Project and the man credited with the invention of the atomic bomb. Based on Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin's Pulitzer Prize winning 2006 book, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the film spans forty years, from Oppenheimer's days as a student studying quantum physics in Europe to his belated recognition by the US government in the 1960s.

But this is Nolan, no simple linear narrative, instead the story unfurls along two contrasting storylines - one is titled, Fission, in vivid colour; the other is titled Fusion, in high contrast black-and-white. Oppenheimer repeatedly cuts between both storylines.

Principally, Fission is the actual story of Oppenheimer's life and the development of the atomic bomb. This chapter is portrayed as a race against time, or more accurately, as a race against the Nazis. Oppenheimer, and his team, succeeded in developing the bomb before the Germans, but Germany surrendered in May 1945, and against Oppenheimer's advice and to his everlasting regret, the US government dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August, 1945, instead. Riddled with guilt about the devastation to civilian life in Japan, Oppenheimer would have nothing to do with President Harry S. Truman's administration and his plans to develop an even greater weapon of mass destruction.

Fusion initially appears to follow a hearing into Oppenheimer's security clearance following the end of World War II. While being interrogated about her husband's supposed communist links, Kitty Oppenheimer (Emily Blunt), gives us one of the film's most electrifying scenes in an intense verbal exchange with repugnant lawyer Roger Robb (Jason Clarke). Interspersed, is the Senate confirmation of former associate Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr) of the Atomic Energy Commission to the post of Secretary of Commerce in President Dwight D. Eisenhower's cabinet. This initally unassuming procedure becomes intriguingly more relevant as the film progresses. The use of black and white for the Fusion section not only differentiates between the storylines, but adds a formal, sombre and stark tone to the proceedings.  

Mercifully, Christopher Nolan never depicts the visual horror of what the bombs unleashed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but the psychological after-effects are apparent. The film doesn't shy away from the stark reality of the subject, or how carelessly and callously power has been banded about ever since. Oppenheimer is cerebral cinema.

Outstanding casting and performances universally on point throughout the ensemble cast. Nonetheless, two stand out,

• At the centre of the film, the pulsating nucleus of the piece and through whose eyes the story unfolds, Cillian Murphy is staggeringly good. Murphy doesn't aim to make the character a hero, a villain, or even all that likeable. He manages to keep Oppenheimer enigmatic and it is often hard to know what the character is truly thinking or believes. Murphy will almost certainly receive an Academy Award nomination for this towering performance.
• Equally, Robert Downey Jr as the duplicitous Lewis Strauss is a revelation. Utterly believable as the sly and slighted administrator.

It is Christopher Nolan, needless to say, the film looks incredible. I saw Oppenheimer at an IMAX theatre with a soundtrack that bombards the senses with an incessant cacophony of explosions and crescendos. Oppenheimer is an immersive experience that demands to be seen on as big a screen as possible.

A vast film - in length, scope and depth - Oppenheimer is boldly imaginative. This is a film with intelligence, purpose and significant historical value. 

In a summer when mediocrity is fast becoming the acceptable norm, Oppenheimer towers above the competition. Christopher Nolan's most mature film yet.