Oppenheimer (2023)

During Barbenheimer, we chose to see Barbie. Thought it would be a good date night (or in our case, date afternoon) movie. And we were right.

Which meant I only got round to Oppenheimer this past week.

Strangely, I also watched Mank (which should have an exclamation mark at the end) the same week. In many ways there are a piece together, two films trying to provide “the impression of a man.”

Mank spoke to me more. Gary Oldman gives a great performance. Fincher’s direction is at a level one could only expect from him. The script is tightly wound, gracious to its characters, and gets to the heart of its titular character.

In reflecting on the two films, my initial instinct was that of course Mank would hold more weight for me because Citizen Kane. Hell, I watched and enjoyed RKO 281 back in the day because Citizen Kane is such a core film for me.

Let’s back up.

I have a strange relationship with Nolan.

I understand why he holds a place as such a towering figure in the world of cinema. On a technical level, it’s difficult to fault him. But… I kind of like his earlier, funnier films.

For me, the last (and possibly only) truly great film he made was The Prestige. The Dark Night and Inception are certainly very good films, there is no doubt of that. However, they don’t capture the magic of The Prestige. And since Inception it has been one misfire after another (I am to an extent willing to be persuaded on the merits of Dunkirk).

I have hardly kept my thoughts in Tenet to myself (going so far to call it a dumpster fire in this newsletter). Indeed, there is a part of me that thinks it’s entirely his worst film (and then I remember that the aliens were the love in our heart all along in Interstellar and I start second guessing myself on that).

For all that, I still find myself excited at the prospect of a new Nolan film. Every time. In spite of Interstellar, when Tenet was announced I got a thrill. Which only increased when I saw the trailer.

So it was with Oppenheimer, particularly when combined with those hushed whispers the week of its release. It’s long but it doesn’t feel like it. It’s harrowing. It left my brother feeling depressed and hollow for days after. It sounded like Downfall. It sounded like Nolan wasn’t getting in his way. It sounded like it would be powerful.

Certainly the film is epic in its length. But for all that, it zips along, never feeling like there is wasted time or film. In fact, when compared to the other 3 hour monster of recent times (Avatar 2), it’s spritely in its run time and yet is a film that largely consists of people in rooms talking (sometimes about science, other times not so much) rather than a bunch of marines trying to shoot a bunch of smurfs.

Nolan is at the peak of his game in wrangling this gargantuan beast of a film. It looks spectacular. The soundtrack is phenomenal. It’s a weird enough film to be interesting but never loses sight of what it is trying to do. Everything on the picture is fantastic.

The performances, from top to bottom are fantastic. The minor roles delivered in the manner one would expect from actors that find themselves in a Nolan picture. And it is all capped by two absolutely towering performances by Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr. Without a doubt, they both deserves not just Oscar nominations but probably the statues (my guess is Downey Jr. gets the nom for supporting and Murphy for actor, I can’t imagine they would want to run them against one another).

Nolan returns to his obsession with time and memory that has served as a throughline for many of his film films (ie. not Batman where there are obvious constraints on how much he can explore his own interests). In fact, through that he is able to structure the film in a way that is just amazing to see unfurl. In particular, the way in which the third act unfolds is just such a demonstration of the mastery of Nolan as a filmmaker.

For all that, I kind of don’t think much of the film. I’m fairly certain I enjoyed the experience of watching it but don’t actually think its particularly good. It didn’t leave me hollow. It didn’t leave me thinking or feeling much of anything. And not in a dead-inside-the-humanity way of things that a film like Downfall did (and does).

There is often a charge against Nolan that he is a cold filmmaker. That he lack emotion. I think that’s wrong. If ever it was true (and I disagree that it was), surely Interstellar put such arguments to bed. That film is incredibly emotional. The problem, in my view, is instead that I don’t think Nolan is good at conveying emotion in his work.

Interstellar may be an emotional piece in terms of what it portrays but it falls down in what it affects in the audience. So it is here.

The core issue, so far as I can see, is that none of the characters in Oppenheimer have sufficient interiority to be be understandable by the audience and so the audience is unable to emotionally connect with the film.

Towards the end of the second act of the film, Edward Teller asks Oppenheimer what he believes in. The question goes unanswered in the moment (as it should) and the film never provides a compelling answer. Despite Cillian Murphy’s performance (and honestly, that is probably worth the price of admission), Oppenheimer remains mostly a cipher.

There are cues that he is of a humanist mindset, which leads to his anguish at what he has wrought through the bomb, however that never sufficiently comes into focus in a way that I think Nolan thinks it does. And it is to the detriment of the film.

Similarly, Jean’s death should be a moment of devastation. The way it is portrayed on the screen makes clear that Nolan considers it to be such. Yet, Jean is not much of a character (though Pugh’s performance is, like all others, completely in the pocket). So when she dies, we can understand Oppenheimer’s reaction but we don’t feel it.

Subtlety is fine, and is something that I often long for in an age of cinema that spends so much time hammering the point home. However, I remain unconvinced that subtlety is something that Nolan can do in a manner that is effective.

But more than all of that, the idea that Oppenheimer crystalises in my mind of Nolan’s work is that I’m not sure that Nolan has much to say. Or if he does, he doesn’t know how to do it through his chosen medium.

For all of his technical mastery, and the performances that he can pull from his casts, there isn’t much to grab on to. Not everything has to make some grand statement. In fact, some of my favourite films have virtually nothing to say about anything (see: Hot Tub Time Machine). But the great works, of which this certainly looks like it should be one, do say something beyond their story.

Here, the message seems to be ‘did you know that Oppenheimer had great anguish about making the bomb?’ Which is hardly much of a revelation. I guess there is also something something sex and death but it is never illuminated in a manner that provides coherency.

I know I am in the minority in my response to the film. As I so often do, I sat down and read Film Crit Hulk’s take on the film and while I can see what speaks to him in it, I also think it is awfully generous in a manner that I am simply unwilling to be. I also find myself thinking of the film in a way that leads me to believe that I may have mapped my own expectations on to it (which is what us critics call a party foul).

I keep going back to wanting it to be a weirder film (I almost want it to be about Alan Parsons rather than Oppenheimer so it can be all bombs and the occult). The much ballyhooed scene where Oppenheimer reads his famous quote “I am become Death, Destroyer of worlds” while having sex with Jean just comes across as cold and not the out there statement of the intersection of sex and death that I can’t help think Nolan believes it to be.

So perhaps it’s me. Perhaps as someone who grew up in a household that was fiercely anti-nuke. As someone that has spoken at Hiroshima Day services. As someone that never forgets Hiroshima Day. Perhaps all of that means that for me there is little revelation within the frame of Oppenheimer. I just can’t find myself overly interested in the fact that the military industrial complex will use scientific advances for the most destructive purposes. To me that is an awfully obvious statement and one that does not require 3 hours of screentime to say.

Or maybe, for me the definitive statement on the Trinity test was done by Lynch in Twin Peaks: The Return and anything else will simply pale in imitation.