Oppenheimer

Oppenheimer was released in July, 2023. Amalia and I saw the movie opening weekend. Our original intent was to see Barbie the next day but conflicts arose and Barbie remains on the bucket list altho anecdotal reviews have been very mixed. Historically, we love movies. We always viewed all the Best Picture Oscar nominees before the TV broadcast and made our own selections of preferred winners. Recently, our visits to the cinema have dwindled-for multiple reasons. First Covid! Second, streaming movies and TV programs in the comfort of your own home is simply TOO easy. Third, the vast majority of new movies don’t interest us. Natural disaster flicks, superhero action films, Captain Marvel comics remakes and teenage angst films don’t move the meter for us. We prefer the high quality writing and professional production values associated with Breaking Bad, Succession, The Bear, etc to the fantasies, car wrecks and loud and repeated explosions dominating the large screen offerings. We saw Parasite in 2019- just prior to Covid and then saw Spielberg’s West Side Story last year. So so! However, we approached Oppenheimer with enthusiasm. I read American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of Robert Oppenheimer, by Kai Bird and Martin Nolan in 2006. A GREAT read. Plus Christopher Nolan was directing and he is the flavour of the moment in Hollywood circles. The subject matter is enticing. A complicated man, fighting personal demons, leading the Manhattan Project, a respected public voice post WWII- but ultimately a victim of the “red scarce” and anti communist crusades of the 1950’s. A classic American tale.

Oppenheimer has been an enormous success- revered by the critics and generating excellent box office numbers. It has been nominated for 13 Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Director, Best Original Score, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Film Editing, Best Production Design and Best Make Up and Hairstyling. The movie has a legitimate opportunity to run the table at the Oscars. It already received Best Picture at the Golden Globes. Please accept my apology for this delayed review; a rough draft has been sitting in my blog outbox for approximately six months. I decided to ultimately enforce my own deadline, beat the Oscar broadcast or forever hold my peace.

Oppenheimer is a BIG movie; ambitious, dramatic and serious in scope. It is bold, creative, vivid, distinctive and LOUD in style. However, to default to a trusty cliché, the book is better than the movie. The book was outstanding and the movie is solid. This is not a negative review. I award it three stars. Christopher Nolan is a provocative director, much loved and admired, but often accused of overwhelming the audience with confusing storylines, unique narrative structures, intense cinematography and aggressive pacing. Examples of prior efforts include Dunkirk, Insomnia, Memento, Interstellar, Tenet and The Dark Knight trilogy. Nolan aims high here- for the moon really- and deserves an “A” for effort. He tackles complex issues of morality and physics, recruited an outstanding cast, chose a strong musical score, created an incredible Los Alamos in the New Mexico desert and skillfully deployed IMAX 70 mm tech. Despite these objective strengths, I left the theater in a rather detached state. Intellectually, I appreciated the movie- he never insults the audience with cheap stunts or graphics. The actual atomic bombings of Japan are never shown. BUT the final product never captured me emotionally. It is a very cerebral effort. At various times, it is “flat,” “hollow,” "disjointed," or “unwieldy.” I actually felt pressure to like the movie more than I did, particularly when confronted with regular statements from good friends and colleagues describing the film as great, fantastic, awesome, and off the charts. By all means, see the movie, it is a cinematic achievement. I then recommend you visit a bookstore or jump on Amazon and purchase the book. It is 900 pages and I guarantee that you will be seduced by the complicated an amazing personal and professional journey of Robert Oppenheimer. To me, the movie didn’t quite do it.

The film strives to be comprehensive. We see glimpses of Oppenheimer’s education, personal background and professional life. There are periodic snapshots of his relationships with women, fellow scientists, lefty academics, the military bureaucracy and the government in Washington DC. Obviously, the core of the movie addresses his role as Director of the Manhattan Project which led to the design and production of the two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This was a breathtaking scientific achievement accomplished in the austere desert environment of Los Alamos, New Mexico. Oppenheimer organised and managed the effort, surrounded by eccentric scientists, overbearing intelligence officers and a rigid military hierarchy. We then see him treated as a hero in the immediate post war years. He had an audience with Truman and was Time Man of the Year. He was named Director of the Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton and Chairman of the Atomic Energy Advisory Committee. Finally, we witness the nasty hearings and investigations regarding his political opinions and ideological leanings- which ultimately resulted in his loss of a security clearance and a departure from public life.

Oppenheimer was freakishly brilliant. A Summa Cum Laude Chemistry degree from Harvard. Phi Beta Kappa! Post graduate studies at Cambridge and Gottingen University in Germany. He was a quantum theoretical physicist who created PhD programs at Caltech and the University of California in Berkeley. He lectured widely, speaking in Switzerland, Cape Town, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, Kenya and Russia. He was ensconced at the elite level of the scientific fraternity. He was ambitious and disciplined - a mystic, who combined a life of action with an eerie spiritual detachment. He loved martinis, spoke multiple languages and read the primary Hindu and Buddhist religious texts. He was Jewish, but never practiced his faith in any serious way and never joined a synagogue. He was clever, had a quick wit and a sharp tongue. He did not suffer fools gladly and was described by a close friend as “sharply intimidating” and “charmingly disarming.” He loved parties and was a magnet for women. He was 6 feet tall and 125 pounds. He was a chain smoker, was emaciated and generally embarrassed by his spindly legs. His dad was a successful businessman and Oppenheimer was always financially secure. Bottom line, a challenging role. Cillian Murphy is excellent. He is gaunt in appearance and captures the intellectual intensity and confidence of Oppenheimer. A signature performance which holds the movie together. An interesting note is the lack of objection to Murphy, an Irishman from Cork, playing a New York Jewish person of Eastern European ancestry. This is a marked contract to the complaints about Bradley Cooper (wasp) wearing a nose prosthetic to play the role of the Jewish Leonard Bernstein in Maestro. Ironic!

The movie is less compelling on the complexities of Oppenheimer’s relationships with other human beings. The key women in his life are Jean Tatlock, a beauty with communist leanings and Kitty, his wife (and mother of his two children.) Both were accomplished, challenging and complicated people. Florence Pugh and Emily Blunt are good in their roles, but there is a shallowness and lack of depth in how Nolan frames them. They are one dimensional. Tatlock gets naked a couple of times and commits suicide and Kitty is an alcoholic and a lousy mother who delegates the raising of her young children to their communist friends next door. Here, the book is far superior. Tatlock is an incredible life force, brilliant and determined and Kitty is much more politically adept and emotionally resilient than Oppenheimer. The other relationship shortfall is Oppenheimer’s interaction with his fellow scientists. Nolan does create some tense moments with Ernest Lawrence, Edward Teller, Niels Bohr and Vannover Bush, but he only scratches the surface. There were intense rivalries, bloody disputes, moral disagreements and acts of disloyalty and betrayal. I would have preferred more emphasis on the Teller-Oppenheimer feud and rivalry than the Louis Strauss story. Teller is far more important than Strauss in the campaign to destroy Oppenheimer. Teller eventually replaced Oppenheimer as America's scientific guru when it came to nuclear weapons. Strauss was just a bureaucrat. The movie also minimizes the significance of General Lester Groves and his relationship with Oppenheimer at Los Alamos. Matt Damon is simply excellent as Groves and the audience should have seen more of him. The relationship was fascinating, a study of opposites. Groves was a huge man, burly, overweight, a right winger, hated the New Deal, authoritarian and generally a SOB. However, he was a straight shooter and a great judge of character. He chose Oppenheimer despite severe opposition and concluded Oppenheimer was the only “true genius” he ever met. He supported him consistently when major decisions were made at Los Alamos. Again, more Groves, less Strauss would have been my editorial choice Don't get me wrong, Robert Downey was excellent but Damon is this year's Best Supporting Actor in my book.

Finally, the treatment of the communist menace and how it impacted American society is hedged in the movie. Nolan does not ignore it, but it never comes into full focus. The reality is that Oppenheimer did have a host of friends and associates who were sympathetic to the communist cause. It was part and parcel of the academic set in the depression era. His first girlfriend was an aggressive communist and his brother Frank was a party member. Kitty defended Stalin at cocktail parties. Close friends were later determined to be active Soviet agents. Los Alamos did have security breaches and one of the scientists working there was a spy who greatly expedited the Soviet’s development of their own atomic bomb. In that context, the security concerns of the government throughout the movie do gain some legitimacy. However, the overkill of the government’s response is undeniable. Innocent lives destroyed, reputations besmirched, illegal surveillance as policy, pathological and systematic breaches of the Constitution by Hoover’s FBI- not a pretty picture! Oppenheimer and his unfair treatment is the tip of the iceberg.

My last critique is the failure to address the underlining morality of the decision to use the atomic weapons against Japan. Was it necessary to win the war at that time? Was it designed to frighten the Russians? Were Hiroshima and Nagasaki legitimate military targets? I accept it was impossible for Nolan to solve these conundrums in a three hour movie, but it highlights limitations of the medium. It is NICE to know that Kyoto was spared as the original target for the bomb because Secretary of War Stimson had honeymooned there and had fond memories of the city.

I leave you with Oppenheimer’s quotation of Hindu scripture after witnessing the first successful atomic test at Los Alamos- “Now I become death, the destroyer of worlds.” The atomic era introduced a new component to modern warfare. We actually possessed the ability to blow the planet up and destroy mankind. The good news is that despite the odds- and numerous political disputes between nuclear powers-no nuclear weapon has been use since 1945. 79 years and counting. Pray the Doomsday clock remains frozen and our good fortune continues. We need thoughtful leadership in a dangerous world- people like Robert Oppenheimer.

Recommended additional readings are Richard Rhodes two masterpieces: The Making of the Atomic Bomb and Dark Sun- which details the development of the hydrogen bomb.