Oppenheimer

"A character study without a character."

The Pip’s camp group is away on a trip to Boston this week, meaning that we had a rare couple of weekday evenings when I didn’t have to be worried about feeding him and getting him to bed. So I took the opportunity to go see the new Christopher Nolan film Oppenheimer, a biopic about the physicist who led the Manhattan Project during WWII.

As I said last night on Twitter, I walked out not entirely sure what to make of the whole thing. I was still more or less in that head space this morning when I fired up the spoiler-free Barbenheimer episode of The Big Picture podcast, and Amanda Dobbins more or less nailed my feelings with two comments: first, the flippant “I, too, enjoy the works of Aaron Sorkin,” and later the more serious “A character study without a character.” It’s a film that manages to be visually spectacular despite being about 85% people talking in rooms (and an additional 7% people talking outside), but the man at the center remains a bit of an enigma.

I should note up front that I have not read American Prometheus, the celebrated biography that this is based on, and so did not come in with a very detailed knowledge of Oppenheimer’s story. I have read a number of other things about this period in physics— biographies and broader histories— where he figures as a character, so I knew the broad outlines. I was a little surprised at how remote he still seemed after watching this; a lot of the things he says and does that go toward his motivations seem more like people guessing after the fact (or, less charitably, imposing what they would like him to have been about). It’s a little surprising to me that he’s that opaque, because what I’ve read makes him seem like the type who would’ve kept extensive diaries, but I guess not?

In content, this is very much a focused biopic, centered on his association with the Manhattan Project. It dips back into the past a little bit— showing some of his time in Europe, including a very theatrical rendition of the (in)famous poison apple story— but is mostly about the period from his arrival at Berkeley to the revocation of his security clearance after the war. This would be kind of dry if done straight, but of course it’s a Nolan movie, so it plays with the sequencing, telling the story in three parallel timelines: black-and-white scenes around a 1958 confirmation hearing for Lewis Strauss (played by Robert Downey Jr.) in which he’s challenged about his role in Oppenheimer’s downfall, color scenes covering the actual hearing in which Oppenheimer lost his clearance, and color scenes with some difference I couldn’t quite pin down (film stock? aspect ratio?) flashing back to Berkeley and then Los Alamos.

The most interesting of these storylines is the history of the Manhattan Project, which was, of course, the defining event of Oppenheimer’s life. The stretch from when he learns about the possibility of fission through the immediate aftermath of the Trinity test is the most compelling part of the movie; after that, it loses a little bit of narrative momentum. Even at its worst, it’s not dull— these are some of the most compelling men-talking-in-rooms scenes you’ll see committed to film— but they’re not as gripping as the bits where they’re trying to build the bomb.

This covers a bunch of famous incidents, starting with Luis Alvarez learning about the discovery of fission while getting a haircut and running back to campus with the news. It was kind of cool to see that on screen, but also established one of the big problems I had while watching this, namely that a lot of small details are weirdly wrong. In the film, Alvarez is played by Alex Wolff who is medium height and dark haired, presumably because somebody read “Luis Alvarez” and thought “Latino.” The actual Luis Walter Alvarez who figures in the story was a tall blond guy, though (he opens his autobiography, which I very much enjoyed, with a comment about the incongruity of his complexion).

This crops up in a bunch of other places, too, in ways that were surprisingly distracting to me. Hans Bethe is played by Gustaf Skarsgård, who’s nearly bald, but in photos from the 40’s Bethe had a full head of hair. Enrico Fermi, who actually was balding, is played by Danny Deferrari, who has luxuriant flowing locks. And Kenneth Branagh turns up as Niels Bohr, but is entirely too decisive and articulate to be accurate.

These are sort of minor and silly errors, but stand out because they got a lot of other stuff right. Cillian Murphy nails Oppenheimer’s weird intensity, David Krumholtz does a great job as Rabi, and Matt Damon is a lot of fun as General Leslie Groves (though clearly a few pounds lighter than the actual Groves). Most of the production is meticulous enough that these errors really jump out, but they’re also minor enough that it seems hard to believe they would be in service of some sort of deliberate point about the malleability of history.

There’s also something a bit strange about which bits of Manhattan Project lore make it in and which don’t. The focus is very tightly on Oppenheimer, so it wouldn’t make sense to get everything in there, but they make room for some of the well-known stories but not others. There’s a brief scene of Feynman refusing welding glasses at the Trinity test that seems to be there mostly so he can be named and speak a line (otherwise he’s just in some party scenes playing the bongos, which I think is anachronistic). But Fermi estimating the blast strength by dropping slips of paper isn’t there (they do at least establish his presence with a shot of him running a betting pool). There’s an actor credited as playing Kenneth Bainbridge, but they don’t let him say “Now we are all sons of bitches,” which would’ve fit perfectly. It’s all a little strange.

That said, the major performances are all great. Murphy is absolutely magnetic, and Florence Pugh and Emily Blunt as the women in his life are terrific. In addition to the aforementioned Damon and Krumholtz (who does get to say “What more do you want, mermaids?”), Josh Hartnett takes a turn as the obligatory Guy Who Strongly Resembles Christopher Nolan (in this case, Ernest Lawrence), Benny Safdie does a good Edward Teller (obligatory ancient joke: sci.physics.edward.teller.boom.boom.boom), and Downey is terrific as Strauss.

Which brings us around to the final kind of weird thing about the film, namely that the final third takes an odd turn where the focus shifts to Strauss to a surprising degree. This is partly just a matter of Downey being such a presence on screen, but also seems a way to work in an assessment of Oppenheimer’s story and character that verges on ham-handed. It’s probably correct, or at least it’s the statement I came closest to agreeing with (that, or Gary Oldman’s brief appearance as Harry Truman), but it’s crashingly unsubtle.

At the end of the day, it’s a very impressive movie— the acting and cinematography are excellent, and the score and sound are very striking— but I remain a little unclear as to why it’s a movie at all. I didn’t find it all that illuminating about Oppenheimer as a person, and the Big Ideas it attempts to raise didn’t seem all that deep. At a couple of key points, it’s melodramatic to the point of making me roll my eyes— yes, I get it, being the Father of the Bomb was a burden, get on with it…

At the same time, though, I’m glad this got made, and glad I saw it on a big screen. And I hope it does well, because I like the idea of there being at least a few auteurs out there who can still get blank checks to take big swings. Even when I’m not entirely sure why they’re swinging at that particular pitch.

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So that’s a short review of a long movie, which I did my best to keep spoiler free. I’m not planning to see Barbie, the weekend’s other massive release, though I suppose you could try to bribe me into it by clicking this button and sending me cash:

Otherwise, if you want to discuss anything about the movie or the history, the comments will be open (though I’d recommend caution if you’re spoiler-averse):