While I was in Indianapolis for Gencon, I availed myself of the chance to see Oppenheimer on an IMAX screen and on film at the Indiana State Museum. To the best of my knowledge, director Christopher Nolan shot as much of the film using IMAX cameras as was practical. Plus, I know of him as a big fan of film as opposed to digital so it seemed that this was an opportunity to see the movie as the director intended, so to speak, and I couldn’t pass it up.
In the weeks leading up to the screening, I’d listened to Rush’s “Manhattan Project” countless times and one day coincidentally found myself a couple blocks from Stagg Field in Chicago, the site where Enrico Fermi and company became the first people to create a nuclear chain reaction – as part of the Manhattan Project.
The theater was near or at capacity and I remain amazed that a three-hour movie about J. Robert Oppenheimer is attracting large audiences. Are people really that interested in a story about this man? Or is Christopher Nolan’s name that big of a draw?
Let me get this out of the way: Oppenheimer is a three-hour movie and should have had an intermission. I wanted to pee and I bet a lot of other people in the audience wanted to as well without missing a frame like me. I guess the industry has to squeeze as many screenings in as they can, audience bladders be damned.
OK.
The movie has two storylines: “Fission” and “Fusion”. The former is where we follow Oppenheimer from student to “father of the atomic bomb”, more or less. The latter storyline is itself bifurcated into one in black & white with scenes depicting the Senate hearings for Eisenhower’s nominee for Secretary of Commerce, Lewis Strauss. This storyline shares time in the “Fusion” world with scenes from a hearing that was to determine if Oppenheimer would be able to keep his security clearance.
That Rush song is on an album called Power Windows and most of the songs on that album are about power and how it is wielded. The more I think about it, the more it seems that this is one of Oppenheimer’s themes. The power of atoms, the power that the bomb has to destroy, political power, the power we have in interpersonal relationships – all kinds of power are on display in this movie.
The power inherent in atoms and the ability to harness them in the form of a bomb are readily apparent. The “Fusion” line portrays political power as we get a glimpse of the inner workings of Washington and find out that Strauss, who says at one point, "Power stays in the shadows”, was responsible for initiating the investigations into Oppenheimer and his loyalties which resulted in the hearing we see which eventually resulted in the celebrated scientist losing his security clearance.
As far as power in interpersonal relationships go, the scenes with Edward Teller in the security clearance hearing come to mind first. Teller testifies against the father of the atomic bomb yet Oppenheimer shakes his colleague's hand after he finishes his damning testimony. This infuriates Kitty Oppenheimer, J. Robert's wife, who is deeply angered by her husband’s refusal to stand up for himself. Kitty goes on to defiantly stick up for her husband at the hearing and steadfastly refuses to shake Teller’s hand.
I really need to go see this movie again to get my thoughts truly in order but here are some other things that stood out for me.
Early on when Oppenheimer is lecturing, he asks his students how light can be a wave and a particle at the same time. This idea of duality/ambivalence continues throughout the movie and really embodies Oppenheimer. On the one hand, he sees the atomic bomb as something that will end the war and bring about peace. Yet on the other, he views it as an abomination, an existential threat to humanity that should be hidden away and never used.
I really liked how Nolan used the IMAX format for scenes depicting massive flames, ripples on the surface of water, and just any phenomenon that captures the scientist's vast imagination. The sheer size of the screen engulfs us and, just perhaps, instills a tidbit of awe in our minds as the man on the screen ponders the universe and its workings.
The Trinity scene was just great. The movie cuts to various people looking on as we hear only breathing despite an atomic bomb just having detonated. And then the sonic boom hits them. But it also hits us with that IMAX sounds system cranked up. I felt the boom. Just fantastic cinema. And great credit to Nolan for not making this the climax, the end of the movie. It’s another element of Oppenheimer’s story, albeit a very important one, but it’s not the end of his tale.
One thing that I am rather ambivalent about is how much shallow focus there is, how often the only thing on the screen for us to glean information from is a face. I wouldn’t doubt that part of this stylistic choice was made because of technical limitations of the IMAX format. I really don’t know what kinds of lenses those cameras can or cannot use. The characters seemed like isolated atoms all too often, where we see their faces but their surroundings seem almost irrelevant.
Having said this, Cillian Murphy’s eyes and his facial expressions are amazing here. They go from wide-eyed wonderment at the workings of Nature to the sadness of carrying the burden of having fathered the most destructive weapon ever devised by mankind.
The last thing I want to mention here is Nolan’s use of cutaways. I mentioned one kind above – those of natural phenomena, whether on the macro scale like an ocean of flames or on a micro scale where we see what I think are meant to be elementary particles in motion. (As I said, I need to see the movie again.) These get us inside Oppenheimer’s head and demonstrate his fascination with the universe and the rules that govern it.
But there are also cutaways that demonstrate Oppenheimer’s growing unease with the idea that there are now what we’d call weapons of mass destruction around and that he played a pivotal role in creating them. One of these cutaways is that big IMAX frame full of fire which sits in both realms. It’s a fascinating natural phenomenon yet it also symbolizes death and destruction.
Another takes place after Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been bombed. Oppenheimer is either walking to a stage to address the denizens of Los Alamos or away from it having already spoken to them and he zones out and imagines stepping on the charred corpse of an atom bomb victim. His foot goes right through it and his shoe emerges covered in ash.
In a scene that takes place in the cramped conference room where a panel of modern day Torquemadas question him, Oppenheimer appears nude before them. A cut shows him from another angle and his lover, Jean Tatlock, is on his lap, her hips thrusting in ecstasy.
As a stylistic device, I like these impressionistic cutaways. Done well, they get you into a character’s mind on a basic, emotional level. And I enjoy that feeling of being taken out of the story’s “real world” and placed somewhere different, perhaps somewhere “unrealistic”. These kinds of scenes just work on my brain in a different way that is fun and interesting.
I liked Nolan’s use of these cutaways here in Oppenheimer but I wish that there had been more of them, that they were used in something of a rhythmic pattern. There didn’t need to be a whole lot more of these cutaways but I think a few extra would have done the trick. But the ones we did get were great and paired well with a dynamic soundtrack. Again, just a few more to give that really visceral impression to punctuate the plot and illustrate our protagonist's state of mind.
At three hours, Nolan gives us a lot of food for thought. I really need to watch it again if I am to piece things together, to get a better view of the whole megillah. As it stands, I very much enjoyed this film, with an emphasis on film. It looked fantastic. I am, however, ambivalent on the whole Strauss storyline. It’s not that it’s bad and I think I understand its importance in helping give shape to Oppenheimer’s post-war life. It gives you an idea of what he did and of the powers aligned against him.
But I can’t help but think that more of Jean Tatlock would have been interesting. I don’t know anything of their real-life relationship but she is a clever and formidable woman. The scenes with her show us an Oppenheimer distanced from his work, the bomb, and all of the horrible implications.
Regardless, this was a very good film, flaws and all, and I am keen on seeing it again though, sadly, it likely won’t be in IMAX.
P.S. - at the screening I attended, a notice was shown before the film that there were no additional scenes to be found in the middle of or after the credits. Was this an Oppenheimer thing? A peculiarity of the venue? I'd never seen that before.
P.P.S. - Martin Scorsese's latest film, Killers of the Flower Moon, looks to clock in at just under three and a half hours. This is Ben Hur territory. Surely there will be an intermission.
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