Oppenheimer: the pillars of a moving film

Christopher Nolan war and sci-fi tapes passed through his filter , psychological thrillers and superhero movies. Either way, the filmmaker memento (2000) showed an ease in constructing captivating stories, films where he materializes his conviction that the cinema is a space designed to live a thrilling experience, hopefully on the biggest screen and with the most thunderous sound.

The case reaches new heights in openheimer, his portrayal of the American theoretical physicist who developed the atomic bomb that the United States dropped on Japan in 1945, triggering the end of World War II. Nolan seeks to unravel the contradictions and ingenuity of a spirit that has defined the planet as we know it.

It is true that his scenario is based on a terrific and exhaustive book on the character (American Prometheus: Triumph and Tragedy by J. Robert Oppenheimerby Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin), but does not follow the guidelines of conventional biopics.

The feature film operates on several fronts, often in parallel : there is the portrait of the intellect of “Oppie” in front of students and colleagues; exploring his intense love life; the epic surrounding the origin and development of the Manhattan Project and its clandestine work in Los Alamos, New Mexico, and the loss of prestige it suffered during the postwar period, when its positions against the nuclear arms race angered the US government. In intimate or grand scenes, the tape doesn’t breathe and sometimes it can be exhausting.

In the opening pages of their book, Bird and Martin J. Sherwin describe Oppenheimer as “an immensely human figure, both talented and complex, brilliant and naive at the same time”. The director understands him under these same keys, and through his narrative impetus draws him like the protagonist of a great tragedy.

Nolan is about the son of German immigrants who became the “father of the atomic bomb”, but he also tells a story with terrifying contours about politicians, soldiers and scientists who, driven into a warlike conflict – and with the necessary knowledge and resources – decide that The time has come for man to seize divine power : create and destroy in seconds.

The film deals with depicting a scenario in which the United States was racing against time because the Germans were supposed to be developing weapons of mass destruction as well, but it is equally powerful in expressing Oppenheimer’s shock and subsequent regret for being the author of an invention that changed mankind forever.

The film incorporates that famous phrase he said after seeing the aftermath of the bomb (“now I have become death, the destroyer of worlds”), making it the thesis of the story.

Frequent collaborator of the director of the big thing (2006), the interpreter of Peaky Blinders assumes for the first time the main role in one of his feature films. Although the film has a long list of secondary characters (Robert Downey Jr., the best), the three hours of film rest on the shoulders of the Irish actor, who he confidently dons the costume of the theoretical physicist at the origin of the atomic age .

Or rather about his blue eyes, a penetrating and expressive gaze that sets the pace of the film and lurks even after the credits. Nolan’s proposal required a powerful talent, capable of embodying the different states undergone by the main character: enlightenment, falling in love, doubt, terror and discouragement. They are all wonderfully channeled by Murphy.

In the weeks leading up to the premiere, Nolan was careful to make a possibly apt clarification about the massiveness his new film intends to achieve. openheimer I would have images in color and also in black and white : the first would reflect the subjective experience of the protagonist and the second would express a more objective or neutral point of view, associated with the intervention of other characters.

This information helps you orient yourself in the first minutes of the film. In 1959, politician Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.), a figure who once clashed with Oppenheimer when he was chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, is forced to speak to him again when he seeks Senate ratification in a coveted role.

A few years earlier, in 1954, the theoretical physicist was at the center of an investigation – quietly triggered by Strauss himself – which seeks to expose his former political sympathies, when he participated in the activities of the American Communist Party, in order to erode his prestige.

Both of these milestones are set in black and white, while in color – and almost always chronologically – the academic development of the main character and his arrival in Los Alamos, New Mexico . Everything unfolds in parallel towards an overwhelming conclusion.