In August of 1945, the United States dropped two atomic bombs in Japan — the first, “Little Boy,” on Hiroshima and the second, “Fat Man,” three days later on Nagasaki. Both bombings occurred almost three months after Hitler and the German Third Reich surrendered, which all but guaranteed the end of World War II. Though the exact number of casualties is unclear, it’s estimated that the bombs killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians; this on top of air raids that killed anywhere between 241,000 to 1.3 million Japanese people. To date the bombings remain as the only use of nuclear weapons in human history. 78 years later, the debate rages on about whether the bombings were necessary and whether mankind should have access to nuclear weapons at all.
Most film and television depictions of this watershed moment in human history set their focus squarely on the governments and/or militaries involved. Christopher Nolan’s new film Oppenheimer takes us to new territory—documenting the development of the bomb, from the scientific community’s early ideation of using nuclear material in weapons to the U.S.’s first successful test.
Oppenheimer follows the life of the movie’s namesake, J. Robert Oppenheimer, known infamously as the “father of the atomic bomb.” The three-hour biographical film, based on his 2005 biography American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, finds Oppenheimer (played at different stages in his life by Cillian Murphy, Peaky Blinders) as a doctoral student, tortured by his chaotic mind and struggling socially to fit in with his classmates at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. When a visiting scientist gives a lecture about his foundational research in the new field of quantum physics, it becomes clear to Oppeinheimer that he must leave for Germany to learn firsthand from the best and brightest minds. We go on to see other aspects of his life: becoming part of the social scene of the Communist Party of the United States of America, his many romantic flings, the atomic bomb development in New Mexico, and the political trouble he faced towards the end of his life.
The film’s much anticipated payoff comes in the form of the first successful bomb test. Instead of using computer generated images (CGI) in place of the bomb’s explosion, Nolan opted to attempt a real-life recreation. Several smaller bombs detonate over the course of the testing process, but backed up against a time crunch, Oppenheimer and his team succeeded. It’s a scene that will certainly be etched in my memory for a long time to come.
Like in Barbie, the ensemble cast led by Murphy, Robert Downey Jr., Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, and Florence Pugh, and supported by a litany of others was fantastic. Between the two films, all of (white) Hollywood was employed. Murphy’s performance relies almost entirely on his face. The gravity of his creation weighed on him heavily.
Nolan, throughout his career, has been attracted to the complex. He received wide acclaim for his second film, Memento, a neo-noir psychological thriller about a man suffering from short term memory loss. The movie’s nonlinear structure and its attention to detail have become two tenets of his filmmaking style. Later in the Dark Knight Trilogy, he explores the juxtaposition between good and evil through characters like Batman, Joker, Catwoman, and Ra's al Ghul. He’s also shown a curiosity about human nature, especially in Dunkirk, about the evacuation of more than 338,000 Allied soldiers during WWII.
But Nolan has also suffered from his own stubbornness. In the eyes of some critics, myself included, he has often relied too much on the mechanics of his movie’s subjects that take away from the emotional core of the story. Interstellar, his 2014 sci-fi film about black holes and the space time continuum, damn near required a PhD in theoretical physics to be able to understand. And Tenet, his most recent film, was panned because of his refusal to re-mix the movie’s dialogue; too often the score drowned out the actors’ conversations, making it virtually impossible to get the plot’s point. Nonetheless, Nolan has demonstrated a cinematic acuity over his career that is undeniable; Oppenheimer does nothing to diminish those claims to genius.
From the opening credits, it’s apparent that Oppenheimer is the culmination of every film Nolan has made to this point. He utilizes black-and-white cinematography to differentiate time, which is important for the viewer because Nolan bounces in and out at different points in Oppenheimer’s life. He’s also shown a knack for the “big” moments. The combination of wide terrain shots and Ludwig Göransson’s score makes the hair on your skin stand at attention. I don’t know if there’s anyone better in Hollywood or in the world of international film better at “big.”
What places this latest effort higher than his previous films is the deep subtext at the heart of it. Oppenheimer never considered himself to be a communist, but he certainly showed empathy towards the socialist movements within and outside the U.S. This included a strong belief in workers’ rights to unionization. In one scene, a colleague against a faculty union asked what the well off scientists had in common with farmers and other blue collar workers. One of the members answered, “A lot.” I couldn’t help but to think about the current fight in Hollywood for fair wages and treatment, a battle in which Nolan stands firmly alongside the writers and actors.
The movie also made it clear that officials at the highest levels of the U.S. government were just as much concerned with the Soviet Union and communism as they were with Germany and fascism, if not more. The level of surveillance and paranoia leveled on Americans by the FBI belongs on the long list of the worst acts committed by our government. Just as much as World War II was a fight against global fascism, it was also the start of the modern race towards global hegemony.
There was also a lot of discussion in the lead-up to the film and following its release about what it’s missing. The movie does not show the actual bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and not once do we see the effect of the atomic bombs on Japan. While I understand the deep pain Japanese and Japanese-American people feel around this subject, I was surprised to see just how much thought was given to both the morality of the bombing and of Oppenheimer himself.
The film does an excellent job of showing that Oppenheimer and many of his fellow Jewish and/or communist colleagues working on the bomb felt compelled to build the bomb as a way to defeat Hitler; the Japanese weren’t in their crosshairs until much later. The movie's characters spend the entire film contemplating whether building the bombs was the right thing to do, even against the evil that was Adolf Hitler. It shows these debates weren’t just happening in retrospect; in the moment people of conscious spoke out against the development and use of nuclear weapons. The scene where many key stakeholders talk about which Japanese cities would be the ideal location for the bombing—one official arguing against bombing Kyoto because he and his wife honeymooned there—was particularly dark.
Others lamented the fact that the movie shows nothing of the American families affected by the radiation from developing the bombs nor the Native Americans whose land was stolen to build the Los Alamos and Hanford “towns.” For that story I recommend Richland, which I saw last month. It’s the perfect companion piece showing the devastation those families experienced. Because Oppenheimer is a biopic, I believe Nolan is justified in narrowing his focus to Oppenheimer’s life.
If there’s one thing I can criticize about Oppenheimer, it’s the movie’s length. The middle section that mostly covers the trial and error of making the bomb slogs on for just a bit too long; any longer and my balloon would have been completely deflated. Many of those scenes seemed to be superfluous to the overall product.
However, I think Nolan for the most part put together a complete movie—one that neither lionizes Oppenheimer as a hero nor diminishes his role in human history. His lack of conviction to me is an indictment on his character, one Nolan did not shy away from. Oppenheimer debunks the myth of the “tortured genius.” The contrast between Oppenheimer and Albert Einstein (played by Tom Conti) could not have been starker.
The nuclear bomb, without a doubt, is perhaps the most important invention ever made. And the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was one of the most inhumane acts ever carried out. The world we live in today is in a much worse place because of it. Sometimes movies speak loudly, others with a whisper; if you listen closely, Oppenheimer fits the latter description. It’s a devastating portrait of just how callous humanity can be.
Have you seen Oppenheimer? If so, what did you think of it?