"Of Arms and the Man": Oppenheimer, Reviewed

"Armo virumque canto / I sing of arms and the man" - Virgil, The Aeneid

I will admit, I was a little apprehensive about sitting down to watch Oppenheimer tonight.

It was a foregone conclusion I was going to go - Christopher Nolan is probably my favourite filmmaker at this point in time. But I was a little afraid that the dialogue would be indecipherable at points, like it was in Tenet, or that his resistance to linear order might prompt him to tell the story of Robert Oppenheimer, the "father of the atomic bomb," from the point of view of a sub-atomic tachyon traveling backwards in time from the Trinity test explosion. Or that the three-hour runtime might prompt me to leave the theater briefly and miss some unexpected awesomeness. Or anything, really.

I needn't have worried.

Oppenheimer is an engaging, even captivating film despite its length. It deftly balances a grandiose science and engineering story about the day human history was divided into perhaps its most significant pre- and post- epochs, and the amazingly personal details and struggles of the flawed genius who brought that epoch into being. 

Based largely on Kai Bird and Michael Sherwin's Pulitzer-winning biograpohy of Oppenheimer, American Prometheus, Nolan tells one story on two parallel tracks: one, in colour, has Cillian Murphy defending his history and life decisions to a hostile board trying to strip him of power and credibility in 1954 ("1. Fission"). The other, in black and white (the first ever IMAX footage shot in b&w!) features Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss, founder of the Atomic Energy Commission, being grilled about Oppenheimer during his Senate confirmation hearings in 1959 ("2. Fusion").

Both these leads bring tremendous power and subtle nuance to their performances; Murphy in particular. His inevitable Oscar nomination highlight reel might not even feature him speaking, such is the power of his facial expression, and his frequently tortured, hollowed eyes. And RDJ disappears almost completely into his role, letting his trademark sass out only on brief occasions, and always on a leash.

Oppenheimer is very likely Nolan's strongest screenplay to-date and one of only a handful not co-written with his brother.  He has been fairly criticized for the limited amount of strong female roles in his films, and while this one would still not pass the Bechdel test, both Florence Pugh (as Oppenheimer's lover Jean Tatlock, whose strong communist affiliations trail him throughout the film) and Emily Blunt (as his wife Kitty) give wonderful, human performances that go far beyond basic girlfriend/spouse representation.

Frankly, I don't think there is a character in this film who does not need to be there, and there are a lot of them, recurring on both the Fusion and Fission tracks that Nolan lays out for us. It is a panoply of great performers, both character actors and leads.

The dialogue is fast and crisp, the interactions touch on family, labour, politics, sex, and of course, physics and the war. I knew very little of Oppenheimer's life after the war and his infamous Trinity quote: "I am created Shiva; Death, the Shatterer of Worlds." So learning of his transition from theorist to project manager to policy influencer was both fascinating and tragic to witness. 

And while it is boldly directed, with both impressionistic, surrealist, and waking dream sequences woven throughout, there is very little of the flash and glamour we associate with Nolan as a brilliant visualist, and his restraint makes for a very powerful introspective film. 

But the Trinity test?

How do you build so much anticipation and drama into an event that the audience already knows the outcome to? I can't say for certain, but look for Nolan's now-trademark manipulation of time in a slowing countdown prior to detonation, as well as Ludwig Goransson's score making good use of Hans Zimmer's sonic illusion from Dunkirk, where the pitch feels like it is steadily increasing, but never peaks. Masterful stuff all around, really.

I haven't seen a whole lot of this year's grown-up films and Oscar bait, but at this point, I am ready to throw 8-10 statuettes at Oppenheimer: Picture, Screenplay, Director, Actor, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress, Score, Sound, Visual Effects (with zero CGI!)...

It is also a profoundly affecting film, with a lot to say about how fear guides our best and worst decisions, humanity's questionable exercising of the power of life and death, and the potential impacts of atomic weapons on our survivability as a species. I would hesitate to characterize it as depressing, but it is certainly sobering.

My only regret at this point was not seeing it in IMAX, which I may yet end up going and doing at some point.