When Cillian Murphy witnesses the first atomic bomb explosion as Robert Oppenheimer in New Mexico, one senses in the cinema seat that Christopher Nolan’s three-hour film is more than entertainment.
The blockbuster summer season is in full swing: Not only does the “Barbie” live-action film start this Thursday – the current coup by cinema grandmaster Christopher Nolan is also being launched. An unequal, almost bizarre duel that nevertheless caused a stir in the world of cinema fans.
Bright pink versus dark? Yes, even in “Oppenheimer”, Nolan’s twelfth feature film, after early works like “Insomnia”, after more recent pieces like “Tenet”, there are few bright moments, hardly any pausing, leaning back, hardly a laugh. Cillian Murphy as “Father of the Atomic Bomb” Robert Oppenheimer is flanked by mimes like Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Josh Hartnett, Casey Affleck, Rami Malek.
The turning point in human history of the bomb
Nolan’s directorial work (he is also responsible for the script) is based on the biography “American Prometheus” by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin: It is about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the world-renowned theoretical physicist who played a key role in the so-called Manhattan Project was involved in the development of the first nuclear weapon. The US physicist with German-Jewish roots studied at Harvard and did his doctorate in Göttingen. Oppenheimer gets to know other scientists such as Werner Heisenberg (a surprising appearance by Matthias Schweighöfer that is too brief) and Niels Bohr. Back in the US, Oppenheimer takes the lead on the Manhattan project. Under his leadership, the United States develops nuclear bombs.
Although Nolan is by no means a director with a raised moral index finger, he makes it clear what a turning point in human history accompanied the detonation of the first atomic bomb. The long minutes in which we sit in the cinema seat and watch the first atomic bomb explode are almost unbearably tense: it took place on a test site in the New Mexico desert.
Nolan finds haunting images of the fact that our world was different after July 16, 1945. Tableaus, the intensity of which is increased even more when the first use of nuclear weapons is approached: On August 6th and 9th, 1945, the USA were supposed to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The shots devised by Nolan and cameraman Hoyte van Hoytema for Oppenheimer’s inner turmoil, who is becoming more and more aware of the suffering he is partly responsible for, hurt. Hurts bad.
The project is getting out of control
Even those who are fit in physics and politics will not be able to understand all the connections, not all the hints of this film, which is so dense in terms of people and dialogue (nice: short appearances by Albert Einstein). But you don’t have to do that to understand that this is above all the portrait of a person, a man who is driven by his visions and ideas. Who already suffered from his outstanding genius during his studies. The physicist is increasingly becoming a politician and manager: the manager of a project that is gradually getting out of control, the Manhattan project.
Again and again the focus of the wonderful camera work: the sometimes more, sometimes less furrowed face of Cillian Murphy, who acts so great and believable here that anything other than an Oscar nomination would be cheeky. Murphy’s wide open eyes, his sometimes cold, sometimes deeply touching look, his short-cropped hair, which makes his Oppenheimer appear even more anemic: all of this makes an impression; more than many, in the hurry of the narrow sequence of scenes difficult to understand geopolitical context.
Many branches in 180 minutes
But the Irishman’s wonderful play, which is flanked by countless side performances (Matt Damon at the height of his art, a frightening Casey Affleck, the famous Emily Blunt, a Robert Downey Jr., who here does not remember his, albeit superbe Time when superhero Iron Man makes you think…), can’t prevent something like the Christopher Nolan effect from setting in after maybe 120 minutes (which is followed by another 60 minutes).
There is no doubt that he has given the cinema great gifts with his “Batman” trilogy, with films like “Interstellar” – but Nolan also has a penchant for almost incomprehensible ramifications that evoke danger, all the wonderful images that the films also distinguish to forget the grandiose spectacle. It is the frightening topicality of Nolan’s twelfth book that could make its subject less likely to be forgotten: since February 24, 2022, when Russia attacked Ukraine, nuclear weapons and the threat they pose are part of ours again world of sensations.
Oppenheimer, USA 2023, 181 min., FSK 12+, by Christopher Nolan, with Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Florence Pugh, Robert Downey Jr.