Oppenheimer Review

Oppenheimer sets the tone for what is to follow right from the opening scene - take a deep breath, buckle in, and get ready for the ride of your lifetime. There will be no pauses from the multiple non-stop streams of information being thrown at you, across at least three different time periods - where the past (before the Manhattan Project) of Dr J Robert Oppenheimer collides with his present, and the potential horrors that lie in the future.

J Robert Oppenheimer was a brilliant man, pragmatic and ambitious enough to be tasked with the creation of the atomic bomb, but also principled enough to not be dragged into the zealotry of post-war nationalism amidst the tension of the looming Cold War. Was it truly remorse that he felt watching the fruits of his labour "bloom", or was it a more calculated scientific view on human self-preservation? Director Christopher Nolan attempts to shed a light on the complicated life of the so-called "father of the atomic bomb" in a manner that attempts to combine a dramatic thriller with a documentary - and he largely succeeds.

Nolan truly channels the Nietzsche quote "time is a flat circle", playing with chronology in a way that he really, really loves to. Only this time around, all the timelines depict real events and not fiction. This important distinction matters, as the director is given the precarious task of balancing these narratives and does not have the power of science fiction to give it a satisfactory ending. Perhaps, it is exactly that part which makes Oppenheimer such an earnest film - it is truly a film about the man and the man alone, and not even the explosion of an atomic bomb can take away from it.

We are introduced to Dr J Robert Oppenheimer in three parallel timelines - pre Manhattan Project, during the Manhattan Project, and in its aftermath. The first features a promising theoretical physicist, the quintessential American prodigal son returning to the homeland from Germany to establish the very first faculty researching quantum physics at Berkeley, California. The second is the highly charismatic director of the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico, in the middle of it all. The third is the highly public chair of the Atomic Energy Commission, under threat of losing his credibility and his job. The aftermath also includes the change in his outlook towards nuclear weapons, and his direct lobbying for international co-operation and control of nuclear proliferation.

J Robert Oppenheimer has a brief mention in Indian science textbooks, and most people across the world know little of this brilliant man. Nolan's Oppenheimer is a very old-school, epic biography of the person in a manner that we seldom see anymore. Shot on 65 mm IMAX film, the film's three-plus-hour running time is lavishly expressed through a budget of over $100 million. No stone was left unturned in the making of this ambitious film, and everything is of the highest calibre - casting, script, costumes, sets, editing, cinematography, score, sound design, you name it.

Another thing we'd like to mention is that the movie features only practical visual effects. We as cinemagoers are so used to CGI nowadays, and it reiterates that time truly is a flat circle. Films boasted that they featured "computer-generated effects" as a selling point once upon a time, and now we are marvelling (no pun intended) at the absence of any. An interesting thing we'd like to point out is that the big explosion itself did not feel as impressive as some of the smaller effects, especially those used to illustrate Oppenheimer's inner thoughts. On a technical level, our only gripe is that the audio is sometimes hard to hear, and that might possibly be worsened in an IMAX theatre or one with a Dolby Atmos sound system.

But as brilliant as Oppenheimer is, it is also flawed, often frustratingly so. The self-indulgence with which the film fixates on its central character ends up making a lot of the supporting characters feel one-dimensional. In a fantasy or a science fiction setting like much of Nolan's previous work it would be acceptable, but real life is rarely so forgiving. The women in the film, especially, are just tools for Oppie to use to express the emotional parts of his personality without their own lives mattering, despite being so intimately connected to his own journey.

Furthermore, there is a sense of sensationalism that is pervasive throughout the entire film that also threatens to rob it of the emotional impact it desires. The audience waits for the "aha" moment for the entire last hour, and is dutifully given that moment as the film loops into its scene between Oppenheimer and Einstein. How much, though, can we complain if even the predictable part of the film ends up being arguably its greatest scene?

Oppenheimer is genuinely perfectly casted, we believe. Not a single actor from its star-studded cast puts a foot wrong, despite not always having a strong character to portray. Cillian Murphy is, of course, the centre of it all - but we suspect you will be as surprised by Robert Downey Jr's portrayal of politician and Atomic Energy Commission chairman Lewis Strauss. Despite having limited screen time, Downey Jr is a force to be reckoned with.

Matt Damon is an able ally, while Josh Hartnett is the perfect experimental physicist foil to Oppenheimer's theoretical physicist. Emily Blunt is the perfect "understanding wife" while Florence Pugh is the perfect "ex-flame", but neither actress is given much to work with by the script. The rest of the supporting cast is fantastic, and there are names of people in the credits we didn't even think were in the film (shows how much actors want to work with Nolan, even if it is a tiny part).

Ludwig Göransson's score is heart-pounding, maintaining the right tone between exciting and anxiety-inducing for most parts of the movie. A stand-out moment we remember vividly was the decision to go almost completely silent in part of a certain scene - it created an audio-visual experience that most of the audience is not going to soon forget. Hoyte van Hoytema's lavish cinematography and editor Jennifer Lame's frenetic pacing all contribute to the visual phenomenon that is Oppenheimer.

Oppenheimer is a drama - it a sobering reminder of the horrors of war and nuclear weaponry; it is a thriller - a revenge saga and a courtroom drama (ironically never actually featuring a courtroom); and it also offers a few surprising chuckles; above all, it is the biography of the man behind the idea. And for once, nothing - not the idea, not even the atomic bomb - takes anything away from the man. The title, "Oppenheimer", is truly befitting.