Oppenheimer
2023
Biography • Drama • History
Rated R • 3h
★★★★★
Oppenheimer is an epic film telling the complicated tale of a complicated man dealing with complicated things. It is a different way to develop a movie, sending the viewer through folds in space and time. In the end, though it is immensely enriching and a cinematic achievement.
Everyone has a pretty good idea who J. Robert Oppenheimer was and his pivotal role in history. But there is a second character, Lewis Strauss, who appears throughout the film and plays a significant and, at times, confusing part of the story. (Robert Downey Jr. won the supporting actor Oscar for his work portraying this man). If you are at all like me, you may not know who this man was and why he was important enough to have such a big part of Oppenheimer. Of course, by the end of the film, we understand more of why and I am not going to spoil that part of the film. But it helps to have a bit more basic background of the history of this man going into the film.
Strauss was born in West Virginia to Jewish emigrants who were successfully involved in a wholesale shoe business. He developed much of his knowledge by studying physics by reading textbooks and, being very smart, he was expected to be the valedictorian in his high school class. His plans got derailed when he developed typhoid fever and he was unable to graduate. After recovering, his family’s business ran into trouble during the 1913 Recession and he dropped out of school to work there. He was obviously disappointed that his plans did not materialize and likely harbored ongoing disappointment. And, in fact, he never did attend college.
He turned to government service, joining the Hoover administration in 1917. Using his political contacts he rose through several administrative agencies, then spent time in New York City in investment banking, and developing considerable wealth, becoming an example of the “self-made man,” and a pillar of conservative Republicanism. It was in New York that he served in multiple Jewish organizations, including the American Jewish Committee. He was active in raising political awareness of Hitler’s anti-Jewish campaigns and worked to support Jews emigrating from Germany.
Reviving his childhood interests, and reacting to his parent’s deaths from cancer, he also became involved in supporting and meeting physicists involved in radiation and research into sub-atomic structure. That involvement, coupled with his contributions to the Hoover administration, got him appointed by Truman in 1947 to a seat on the e Atomic Energy Commission, newly formed to transfer the administration of atomic research from the U.S. Army to civilian control. As a member, he was constantly arguing that other countries, especially the Soviet Union, would be doing their own research into becoming a nuclear power. He also supported the ongoing and rapid development of nuclear weapons, including the hydrogen bomb, and was a leading proponent of Cold War ideology.
Oppenheimer, after the war, chaired the General Advisory Committee, a group of scientists assembled to specifically advise the AEC on the science behind atomic energy and weapons. Since Oppenheimer had developed intensely negative feelings about nuclear weapons, he and Strauss butted heads often. There is a scene in the movie where Oppenheimer mocks Strauss at a public hearing in 1949 – that exchange sets the tone for what follows in their relationship.
As can be expected, all these psychological and political issues and events combine to influence how science proceeds. And that may be one of the strongest points of Nolan’s Oppenheimer. Regardless of how objective scientists think they are, they do not operate in a political or social vacuum.
At exactly 3 hours long, Oppenheimer is an epic film. The question for many may be whether it is worth the investment in time and mental energy. Part of the problem, or part of the enjoyment, of this film, is the sheer amount of complexity. It has a huge cast and covers a time span from the 1920s to 1959. Based on a 700-page book, Oppenheimer probably captures the essence of the biography of the man and the significance of what he did. It is a hugely complicated story of personal, political, and cultural changes that fold into each other so that boundaries are confused and emotions are in flux. Just look at the cast list to see the number of characters in this film – and all of them are important parts of the story.
Adding to that complexity is the fact that it focuses on physics and not just the normal, everyday physics of levers and pulleys, but the unseen dimension inside the atom itself – the particles, waves, and energies that operate there under seemingly unknown principles. But when physicists themselves have a hard time explaining the interior of quantum physics, do we really expect Christopher Nolan’s film to successfully do that? Nolan uses intriguing visuals to simulate Oppenheimer’s visions of how atomic forces work, but they are only metaphorically accurate because, honestly, we just don’t know. Quantum physics has, 100 years later, gone in even stranger directions with entanglement and the fusing of space and time. None of this is surprising, of course, since Nolan has been playing with notions of time and space and their impact on the human mind in most of his films – Memento, Inception, Interstellar, Dunkirk, and Tenet.
But Nolan doesn’t want to give us a straightforward essay on physics and chronological development of a story. Instead he wants to combine them into a new way of understanding. You have to pay explicit attention to the settings and costumes of each scene to understand when and where it is occurring. He moves around in time, jumping backwards and then forwards, as easily as he moves from Princeton to Berkeley to Chicago and, of course, Los Alamos. Several events are replayed multiple times, each one being a different perspective or a view with additional information. You think you are seeing something you’ve seen before, but you aren’t.
Nolan has a unique way of communicating the point of view. The story is told, almost in its entirety, from the viewpoint of its central character. We see events unfold the way he sees them. Those scenes are in color. But there are also multiple scenes filmed in high-contrast black and white. Those scenes are the “objective” scenes, told from the perspective of someone else – Lewis Strauss. Nolan gives us clues to help us keep things straight, but you still have to work at it.
Usually, when the viewer has to work so hard to appreciate a film, I don’t like it – movies are supposed to be fun, not work. And, often, I argue that if you have to watch a movie, especially a three-hour movie like Oppenheimer twice, then the filmmaker has failed. But I’m not so sure this time. This is an epic film and one that will go down in history, just like the man and the event it memorializes. If you haven’t seen it, consider doing it twice. If you have, see it again. (5*)
