Oppenheimer

The threat of nuclear war is something people lived with if they grew up in the 1980s and earlier. As a child of the era there was of course no memory of the Cuban Missile Crisis but 1983 was one of the most dangerous years in terms of the prospect of the bomb being used. Greenham Common protests mixed with skirmishes in the Middle East and cultural icons like Threads [didn’t watch!] and When The Wind Blows [Plenty harrowing enough, please and thank you!]. And obviously “Two Tribes” by Frankie Goes To Hollywood.

The reality of the nuclear bomb from its discovery to the beginning of its impact, especially on America in the 1940s onwards, is told in Christopher Nolan’s new biopic of “The father of the bomb” Oppenheimer. Cillian Murphy takes the role of a young man steeped in physics and in love with the world which it underpins. Also he was in love with another scientist, with Communist links, as well as with his wife, played by a steely, wary looking Emily Blunt—a necessarily forgiving woman seeming to represent the normality that’s pulled out from under him when he starts to devise a terrible weapon, intended to be used to end World War 2 in Europe—but destined to end it in the Pacific a few years later with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The film fizzes with majestic photography, music, performance, art direction and effects. It’s a three hour and one minute masterclass in making a film that inspires and bewitches the cinema-goer: Oppenheimer the young man struggles with his Cambridge tutor. In American academic circles he gets to mix with Werner Heisenberg Matthias Schweighöfer), Niels Bohr (Kenneth Branagh) and Albert Einstein (Tom Conti)—and he boldly announces that he wants to invent great schools of physics. 

The morality of experiments, the potential danger of messing nuclear reactions and ultimately the squeamishness about wide-scale slaughter all vie for attention. Oppenheimer is at the centre of it, focused on his project to build this thing at Los Alamos, and half-oblivious to his military minders (represented by Matt Damon terrific as Major General Leslie Groves). He is feted by everyone, it seems, after the Japanese surrender but the horrors faced by the bombed populace are visited on his mind wherever he turns. Back in Washington, where nobody seems squeamish, the fear of Communism has caught the place on fire, and although Oppenheimer insists there’s no spy in New Mexico, off-screen Russian progress in their own atomic weapon causes increased fear whilst some of Oppenheimer’s scientists become openly opposed to trying the weapon on civilians. The build-up to the test is as spectacular twenty minutes of film that you’re likely to see in a drama, and after that the film does a stretch and lets you know that you’re in for a bit more.

Fortunately the film of men in suits talking is not a terrible prospect in this case, although . There are various timelines played together—looking markedly different, and the Un-American Activities investigation committee investigating Oppenheimer looks to be the final nail in his coffin. But, aside from a committee where
Rami Malek, who was Freddie Mercury, is tearing into Robert Downey Jr., playing another Oppenheimer nemesis, it’s almost bewildering because there are so many characters because it is such an immense story. But the nail in Oppenheimer’s coffin was that he did take fire “from the Gods” and give it to man—and then tried to make sure that nuclear weapons would not threaten our existence. Whether he is in eternal punishment is not for me to say but his contribution is exceptionally well marked by this intriguing and brilliant, epic and bewildering film.