OPPENHEIMER, or how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb

“What’s this war in the heart of nature? Why does nature vie with itself? The land contend with the sea? Is there an avenging power in nature? Not one power, but two?”
~Pvt. Train, Terrence Malick’s THE THIN RED LINE

“My son, beware of anything beyond these. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.”
~Ecclesiastes 12:12

“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”
~Friedrich Nietzsche

I was able to see OPPENHEIMER on IMAX on the day it was released, the first showing available to me locally (many thanks to my understanding wife who knew it was my most anticipated movie of 2023 & was willing to sacrifice seeing it herself as my son will not tolerate a 3-hour departure from his mother.)

I’m glad I saw it when I did because it’s taken me almost an entire month to get my thoughts in order about the film.

I do think this film is borderline un-spoilable as Nolan’s labyrinthine design to his storytelling makes little allowance for audience malaise.

I won’t go out of my way to spoil the film, but in order for me to grapple with the films content, I’ll have to engage with some large plot details – It’s important to remember that this is based on a true story of a real man who actually lived, so I mean… Are spoilers really the main concern? You decide, and then read on.

I don’t know nearly enough about Oppenheimer to comment on the historical veracity of certain moments in the film, and I honestly don’t really care as this is first-and-foremost a piece of art. Probably Nolan’s highest watermark as of yet when it comes to making Capitol A “Art,” so I’m aiming to wrestle with his portrayal of the story more than I am with the historical person or the ethics of the bomb.

There’s a moment early-on in OPPENHEIMER when it appears that Oppenheimer, upon being humiliated by a teacher in school, devises a scheme to poison his teacher’s apple. The film makes strong and beautiful note of this apple, putting it center frame in a striking shot as Oppenheimer rushes to smack it out of the hands of its unsuspecting biter the next day as his conscience pricked him over night.

Looking at this picturesque green apple strikingly framed on an IMAX-screen in a darkened theater, I couldn’t help but think of it’s Edenic-implications.

This struck me as odd, since I hadn’t (and still haven’t) seen anyone in film criticism commenting on this moment, but I feel it’s key to the interpretation of the film in it’s entirety.

Some have said this movie is anti-American, while others have called it anti-Japanese and that it’s too pro-bomb, (let me just state that if you watch this movie and come out feeling MORE pro-bomb, you probably didn’t watch this movie) but I found this movie to be extremely human and universal in its themes.

There were moments where I was concerned Nolan was going to go full A BEAUTIFUL MIND-mode, but I really don’t think he did. While watching it, I found myself wondering, “How? How did Nolan make a movie about the inventor of the atomic bomb feel universal? Why does this seem vaguely familiar to me?”

The framing of the story takes place over two separate time periods; one of them is a more traditional biopic story and chronicles how Oppenheimer became the man who founded the atomic bomb, the other era, (rendered in stark black-and-white cinematography from Hoyt Van Hoytema) tells the story of Oppenheimer on-trial, having to defend his security license due to his supposed sympathies for the Communist Party in the age of McCarthyism.

This is where we enter mild spoiler territory, but it’s revealed somewhere around the midway point that Joseph Strauss (played by a perhaps never-better Robert Downey Jr.) is threatened by Oppenheimer’s remorse for his creation and transformation into an outspoken proponent of nuclear disarmament. This is something that Strauss has no interest in, as the seductive draw of being the kid with the biggest stick on the playground makes him willing to go to great lengths to disparage Oppenheimer publicly and personally in order to see that his voice is never allowed in the conversations of the Atomic Age again.

It was at this time that the movie started to feel similar to Aronofsky’s work. No filmmaker today is as obsessed with the Old Testament God, how we’re made in His image, how man has fallen so short, so deeply in sin that we need vessels for destruction just to get catharsis from it all.

It’s Darren Aronofksy’s one uniting theme between all of his movies; we all need a whipping boy, a sacrificial lamb, because WE are terrible, and if there’s a God, he’s NOT ambivalent about our shortcomings.

I began to think that perhaps Nolan was exploring similar cinematic territory in it’s portrayal of Strauss as a highly-encouraging enabler of Oppenheimer’s scientific expertise, before turning Strauss into an Accuser of the Brethren before the cock can crow even once.

I enjoyed this reading of the movie and thought it was the main point… But that damned apple kept haunting me… It just didn’t fit…

And so maybe the antagonist of the film wasn’t Strauss – maybe it was America? That’s a grim read… But maybe that’s what Nolan was getting at.

I will say America doesn’t come out looking particularly good in this movie, nor should we… But then, it came around full circle for me, and I went from liking this movie a lot to loving it.

In the Garden of Eden, God instructed Adam and Eve not to partake of the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil. Satan then tempted Eve with the promise of making her wise like God is wise… I’ve often read this chapter in Genesis as a cautionary tale about hubris, (and OPPENHEIMER is definitely about that as well) but not until digesting and analyzing this movie, did it occur to me that Eve’s sin wasn’t wanting to be wise.

Satan wasn’t exploiting her ignorance. He was exploiting her faith. He was challenging her notions of whether or not God was actually good – a truly horrifying and unsettling thought. Satan was using fear to achieve this end.

This is where OPPENHEIMER just got me right where I’m living. Whether it’s Conservative or Liberal-news, is there a more favored tool in the shed of 2023 American media than fear?

I realized – that’s why this movie is so universal, and why it struck such a chord with me. Oppenheimer is manipulated by the narcissism of his own brilliance, sure – but first and foremost he’s influenced by fear that the NAZI’s will develop the nuke first – and as a Jewish American scientist, one could say that he had skin in the game.

His fear is what leads him to create something horrific, and his remorse and trepidation afterwards isn’t just because of the significant risk to humankind that the atomic bomb presents. I left the darkened somber theater and found myself thinking about how Nuclear Disarmament should be moved up in the list of priorities of World Problems, but what haunts Oppenheimer, is the ramifications the nuke presents for those who survived.

What so horrifies Cillian Murphy’s character of Oppenheimer, is not just that he created the bomb, but that in being motivated by fear, he created exponentially more fear in the world. Put another way, he became Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.

I don’t know if I’m ready to say it’s the best movie Nolan has made, but it is without question, his most important film – and the best movie I’ve seen so far this year.

(***** out of *****)