Genre: Biopic/Historical
Premise: The story of the development of the atomic bomb by its creator, J Robert Oppenheimer.
About: While it may not be getting Barbie-level love, Oppenheimer still somehow pulled in 80 million dollars this weekend, putting it on pace to become the biggest non-musical biopic ever. Believe it or not, writer Christopher Nolan wrote the Oppenheimer script in the first person! He also finished the script in a matter of months (not surprising after seeing the finished product).
Writers: Christopher Nolan (based on the book by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin)
Details: 3 hours long
The computer seat layout for my AMC showing of Oppenheimer showed a 98% full capacity. But when I got into the theater, it was only 40% full. Looks like this fake seat-buying scam is becoming an epidemic!
But the important thing is that I finally got into the theater and saw Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. Yahoo!
How was it?
Let’s find out.
I’m going to present the plot summary the way I saw it. I’m not going to look up anything online to help me because I want the movie to do the work on its own. If I got something wrong, it was the movie’s fault for not making it clear enough.
Oppenheimer starts in the late 30s when a clumsy young Robert Oppenheimer begins teaching a new form of physics – quantum physics. When World War 2 starts, a guy named Leslie Groves (Matt Damon) approaches Oppenheimer to start the Manhattan Project, which is the building of the first atomic bomb.
We then start jumping between three other storylines. One is set in the future (aka, present) where a man named Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.) is testifying in front of Congress about – I think – whether the building of the bomb was the right thing to do and, also, whether Oppenheimer had been too sympathetic with the Russians during that time.
A third timeline has Oppenheimer, himself, being interrogated by a separate group of people about a couple of his Russian friends.
A fourth timeline seems to be embedded between these sections – although it’s unclear where – where we see Oppenheimer fall for a co-worker who’s a bit of a crazy pants (Florence Pugh). Oppenheimer eventually leaves her for a woman named Kitty (Emily Blunt).
I was never entirely clear on when everything took place. I was most comfortable in the Manhattan Project section because it was the only section where I was clear on what was happening. And it definitely was the best section.
It wasn’t as much of a race against time as I was hoping for. But the narrative was, at least, pushing forward. And when they finally do build the bomb and send it off to the military who then blow up Hiroshima, we never see any of that. We, instead, stay with Oppenheimer, who has very complex feelings about this bomb he built.
We then spend the last 45 minutes of the film in some political bugaboo plot where Oppenheimer and Strauss battle it out over issues that nobody who didn’t read the Oppenheimer biography understood. The end.
I’ve never questioned Christopher Nolan’s ability as a filmmaker. He may be the best pure filmmaker on the planet, his only competition, David Fincher.
Nolan clearly went into this thing wanting to catch a feeling. The feeling of what it was like at that time working on the most important project humanity had ever worked on.
And the way he went about it was… okay, I guess.
As per usual, Nolan is determined to prove he’s no ordinary storyteller. He laughs in the face of structure, eschewing 3 acts for this topsy-turvy maze of cross-cutting between the past, the semi-past, and the present. Taking a chapter out of Sorkin’s handbook, we get this “courtroom” present plotline that helps us look back at the building of the bomb, similar to what Sorkin did with The Social Network.
Nolan’s approach doesn’t have a rhyme or reason to it other than to keep us on our toes in hopes that we don’t get bored by watching 10,000 characters have 5000 conversations in medium-sized government rooms.
Indeed, I spent much of the running time trying to keep up with all the dots I was tasked with connecting. That kept my mind active enough that I wasn’t bored. Yet I was constantly asking myself what this was all about.
The only driving force behind the narrative was the construction of the bomb itself. Much like how we knew the ship was going to sink in Titanic, we know the bomb will be completed and blown up in Oppenheimer. Except in Titanic, we were with the people who were going to die, making the proceedings a lot more personal. Here, we never meet any of the people who are going to die by the bomb’s hand, eating into the drama considerably.
One of the most disappointing choices Nolan makes is not showing us the bomb exploding in Japan. And I know exactly why he didn’t show us. Because he rationalized: “Oppenheimer didn’t get to see it. So why should we?” It is one of the weaknesses that makes Nolan such a spotty writer. Everyone in the audience wanted to see that bomb go off. That’s what we’ve been waiting this whole movie for. And you’re not going to show us? It is the curse of the faux auteur. When you believe in yourself so highly as an artist, you deliberately make your audience suffer. It’s bad form.
Instead, Nolan seems way more interested in the less compelling storyline of “Is Oppenheimer sympathetic to communism or not?” The audience’s collective response to that question is, “Who the hell cares?” Nobody!
Oppenheimer ended the war. That’s what we care about. If he had a few Russian friends along the way, what does that matter? HE STILL ENDED THE WAR. He still won the war for the United States and the Allies. Why are we quibbling over his drinking buddies?
Nolan doubles-down, forcing the audience to stay in their seats a full 45 minutes after the movie has ended (the bomb has been dropped and Japan has surrendered) so that we can wonder if one of the Russians on the Manhattan Project spied and took all of Oppenheimer’s nuclear secrets, resulting in the Russians learning how to build nuclear bombs and starting an arms race.
Why do we not care about this? Because WE KNOW NOTHING COMES OF IT! We’re all still here. No nuclear wars have happened. So who cares? This is the most pointless plotline to focus on. Not to mention, Russia would’ve figured out how to build nuclear weapons regardless of whether there was a spy or not. The movie makes it clear early on that several countries were making rapid progress on building atomic bombs.
Because Nolan doesn’t know how to write, he missed the much better story option of leaning into the thriller aspects of this story. You had the most natural ticking time bomb ever (a LITERAL ticking time bomb). We have to build this bomb or hundreds of thousands more people will die in this drawn out war with the Japanese. Add the threat of someone else building a bomb before we did and you have yourself a much more effective narrative. Think The Imitation Game, which executed its war story much better.
But the biggest stumble by the brick and mortar director was his final act, if you can call it that. It went on and on and on and on. Rocky’s already won the goddamned fight! Find Adrian, kiss her, then GET THE F OUT! You’re done. The movie’s over.
Nope. Not Nolan. The man’s confused writer mind thought the better route would be to climax then keep you around for 45 minutes of pillow talk. Pillow talk is an apt metaphor, as half the things you say post-coital are mumbling incoherence. There was some beef between Oppenheimer and Robert Downey Jr.’s character that was the worst combination of super complex and completely irrelevant. WE DON’T CARE! WE CARED ABOUT THE FREAKING BOMB! Not whether two crybabies can say sorry to one another. Sheesh.
I’m sorry. I just can’t hold it in with this guy. He’s so talented in some respects but has this giant blind spot when it comes to his screenwriting. Oppenheimer reminds me a lot of Fincher’s “Mank.” Self-important. Pretentious. More about the director’s experience than the audience’s.
I’m not saying it doesn’t have anything to celebrate. Seeing all these great actors in one place was cool. Rami Malik, who lead his own billion dollar movie, is an extra in this film. That should give you an idea of the level of acting that was on display here.
Florence Pugh’s character was interesting. It provided the most human touch to the film.
And everything was beautiful to look at, of course.
But where’s the structure, man? Someone needs to sit Christopher Nolan down and explain to him that when you give the audience a climax, you’ve got about ten minutes max before they want to go home. Forcing them to stay at the party long after it was over was what turned this into a ‘not for me.’
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: You can’t have your cake and eat it too in screenwriting. According to Nolan, he was fascinated by delayed consequences for one’s actions. So he really wanted to know what effect this bomb had on Oppenheimer long after it’d been used. But he also wanted to show the building and use of the bomb. Those are two different stories. You can tell a story about one. You can tell a story about the other. But you can’t have your cake and eat it too. At least not in a movie. Maybe in a TV show. No one other than the most obsessed Nolan Stans are anything other than bored out of their minds during the final 45 minutes of this film because Nolan was trying to do two things that don’t complement each other.
