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Film Review – OPPENHEIMER: Yes, but …
By: Marion DS Dreyfus
Right off the bat, I hold no fondness for director Christopher Nolan, though much of his oeuvre has been honored with public acclaim and [particularly technical] awards. Nor do I particularly care for the talented protagonist in this film, Irish actor Cillian (hard “C,” as in Kill) Murphy. He has always given me the willies, stemming from his performance in “RED EYE” [2005], where his villain, Jackson Rippner, played against the lovely and relatable Rachel McAdams. He was the quintessence of creepiness cum rancid, albeit an initial charmer.
Okay. On the other hand, I’m consistently daft over splendid British actor Emily Blunt, ever-impressive in her varied roles. And Robert Downey, Jr., Iron Man himself, has always been a movie-going standard. Even if his ‘dark period’ impinged on his public image a bit, he did eventually clean up his act. Left drugs and jail behind.
And while I’m a rabid sci-fi zealot, I’m forever glued to developments in real-life science, space, engineering and weapons of mass destruction, if you will.
“Oppenheimer” explores the life, legacy, vulnerabilities and triumphs (and ultimate betrayal at the hands of Lewis Strauss. of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the Jewish scientist appointed by military administrator Gen. Leslie Groves, one of the five modules associated with the Manhattan Project. This comprised Administrators [notably, too, FDR and Harry Truman]; scientists [15, including Oppie]; Civilian organizations [including a Committee on Uranium, among others]; military organizations [including the Army Corps of Engineers, military police and a special engineering detachment, SED]; as well as Non-Technical personnel [the tower that supported the second of the nuclear ‘gadgets’–as they were nicknamed at the time—the plutonium bomb, was 100 feet tall in the New Mexican barren lands off Alamagordo; construction men; and the important production people.
The fact of the originals having been Jewish is germane: all refugees, and likely all Jews in the rarified atmosphere of Los Alamos, were innately undergirded by awareness of the massacres of Jews over in Europe, though the NY Times sloughed it on to page 38, and the President at the time carefully let the camps continue mercilessly. Jews knew. That consciousness informed the psyches of the Jewish people; scientists were not immune.
Getting to the nub of my unquiet after viewing the 3-hour marathon lenser in digital format, we are told that director Chris Nolan created it in iMAX, which somewhat demands one see the film in that specially created version of 3-D projection. There are only 31 of these ready-for-Nolan theaters in Europe and the United States. We have 25 of them in the U.S., for trivia fans.
The casting put a tranche of excellent actors in the film, without question. But of the actual event, many of those in the Project were of course German-Jewish refugees as well as phenomenal scientists. Of the major characters in the 15-person Scientist group, somehow not one cast is a Jewish person: Robert Downey, Jr.. describes himself as a [nonexistent category] “Jewish-Buddhist.” Now, atheist. All the others, including wonderful Emily Blunt and Florence Pugh, are live or lapsed Catholics. Rami Malek is a Coptic Christian.
I’m not sure it’s kosher to complain of the religious gap here, particularly notable with reference to Cillian Murphy, who, though a powerhouse actor, strikes one as not a credible Jewish scientist in this context.
Thin as a sheet of newsprint, admirably concave and gaunt of cheek and limb, he lacks the mindful gravitas, in my view, of the original. He smiles too readily. He is admirably pursued by moral dilemma and ethical conundra. But, no. He did not totally convince. We do, however, glimpse the profound impact of this devastating weapon on the globe ever since. But that is a given, even outside of a three-hour spectacular.
It’s not a given that younger audiences, unschooled or insufficiently learned in the cataclysms of WWII, will fully get the film’s portrayals and signal cameos of major personnel, such as Danish physicist Niels Bohr, an excellent Kenneth Branagh, or the welter of clever back-and-forth among Lewis Strauss, another Jew– for 10 years actually the president of Reform ‘Temple’ Emanuel in NYC, yet a snake in the unspooling and unwarranted betrayal, eventually, of the Oppenheimer saga.
Einstein, too, that elfin sprite, a stellar refugee from the war theater, though charming for his appearances in the film, is another Roman Catholic, played by Tom Conti. I admit to being delighted to see a non-comic Einstein, so notable a presence in the century, and so critical in the atomic debate [relatively speaking].
Nolan’s oeuvre over 25 years includes cinematic supernovae, of course: “Tenet.” “Interstellar.” Batman episode “The Dark Knight.” Dreamy “Inception.” Magic-immersed “Prestige.” Of his popular filmography [excluding me], I liked only his “Memento” and the WWII epic “Dunkirk.” So perhaps I’m not the best judge of this also-immersive pic.
The sound, by the way, is beyond loud and occasionally interruptive of the dialogue onscreen. The special effects are state of the minute and muy impressive.
Caveat: There’s a nude scene or two showing Oppenheimer’s dalliances with various intense, intellectually engaging women, but frankly, they could be referred to and obviated in the actual film. These serve, one supposes, to flesh out the astral plane of Op’s brilliance—he learned Dutch to present a lecture on astrophysics, and knew Sanskrit, among his many talents. [Which scene runs afoul of a moiety of the present-day Hindu audience, we’ve read.]
The undisputed master storyteller that is Christopher Nolan has his fervid supporters, of course, as this film presents a cholent of mind-bending scenes and intimate character studies. But not all of his viewers are beguiled by his intricacies, added thematic depths and insights. Not to mention his–to me–tendentious casting choices. Matt Damon as General Leslie Groves is…Matt Damon.
