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This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the film being covered here wouldn’t exist.

It’s easy enough to read the name of J. Robert Oppenheimer and correlate the name with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. His name has become infamous in history for the destruction that has resulted out of the creation of the atomic bomb, but not many people knew the real person underneath the invention of something so heinous. In directing his first film outside of Warner Bros. since Memento, Christopher Nolan has brought the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer to the screen in a fashion calling back to the epics of filmmakers like David Lean or Francis Ford Coppola. In short, it’s his best film in quite some time: perhaps since The Dark Knight as I would see it.

Christopher Nolan has always been one to play around with the traditional narrative sense, if Memento, Dunkirk, and The Prestige among many were proof of such. With Oppenheimer, Nolan focuses on three crucial periods of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s life: his youth, the creation of the atomic bomb, and his security hearing afterwards. Starring Cillian Murphy in the title role, where Christopher Nolan’s fascination with Oppenheimer’s life come forth in his scientific achievements before and amidst the creation of the atomic bomb, but also his place in American history as everything unfolds around him. It helps us to identify with Oppenheimer as a person, first through the coloured cinematography which show us his direct point-of-view versus the black-and-white imagery to create an objective point of view outside of his own.

As Nolan would show us, J. Robert Oppenheimer was a far more complicated man than simply the “father of the atomic bomb” which America had declared him a hero for. Politically, he was sympathetic towards many left-wing causes (his first lover was Jean Tatlock, a member of the Communist Party USA) and of course, his reason for pursuing the creation of the bomb was fuelled by himself being Jewish and wanting to fight the Nazis during WWII. But even years after his death, the creation of the atomic bomb is the first thing that people think of. One could say that this film runs a risk of being a picture of a supposed “great man of history,” but Nolan’s tendencies with creating a supposed “hero” narrative like he’d shown us in his Batman films result in something far more sinister with the case of Oppenheimer.

Oppenheimer is Nolan at his most spectacular. It is also Nolan at his most introspective. There is not a moment in Oppenheimer that doesn’t at least look dazzling on the biggest screen you can possibly watch the film on, which might be a testament to the film’s greatness. But the sheer spectacle of Oppenheimer is also where Christopher Nolan invites the viewer to reckon with the truth about America’s history and where its place since the end of WWII could rest long after. And I find that for this reason, it has become his most tragic film – especially with how it encapsulates the cost of a significant achievement in the wake of his creation.

With the film’s all-star cast, Cillian Murphy carries the whole film on his shoulders. It’s a role that I find calls back even to the days of Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia, especially as he carries the character of a supposed hero trying to reckon with the tragedy at his expense. He’s not the only actor delivering career-best work, for Robert Downey Jr. and Matt Damon work wonders in creating a very immensely detailed portrait of a critical point in time in America’s history. It’s one thing that I find that letting this story unfold in a nonlinear manner does brilliantly, because when we’re seeing two crucial points in Oppenheimer’s life unfolding simultaneously, we’re made to understand and reckon with the inevitable horrors of what Oppenheimer had brought into the world with the creation of the bomb.

One of the film’s many highlights comes to us in the Trinity test sequence. When watching this in a theater, I was taken aback by how Christopher Nolan could make something so beautiful out of an invention that we know to be so horrible for the future of mankind. For one, it’s the embodiment of all Nolan’s best tendencies as a filmmaker, in part because of the suspense leading up to the moment we know will happen, but also the sheer spectacle. And it’s only a moment that feels like Nolan at his most apocalyptic, because of the inevitability that were to come forth in the wake of its creation. Yet through Oppenheimer’s eyes, it feels like a dream come true, and we’re taking it in just like he does.

Most importantly, just like the epics that Christopher Nolan is calling back to, whether they go from Lawrence of Arabia to Patton, it’s a film that earns its running time. In part because Christopher Nolan is so deeply embedded into where Oppenheimer fits within the place and time he came about, came to understand America’s history as it unfolded around him, and also because there’s never a dull moment. Even though the film is titled for Oppenheimer himself, Nolan succeeds where both David Lean and Franklin J. Schaffner have done so in creating a picture about the history surrounding themselves to create a picture of what both men’s achievements mean not just to the people they fought for, but to the men themselves.

To me at least, Christopher Nolan has not been a terribly consistent filmmaker. Many of his usual trademarks have devolved into annoying gimmicks that take me out of his work every now and then, but for Oppenheimer, they work wonders. Oppenheimer is more than just a tragic film about a genius reckoning with the destructive force of his own creation. Every moment of it feels massive, because it encapsulates America’s desire to remain at the top even if it means crushing their opponents during the war in the most horrific ways (a particular scene detailing which Japanese cities to bomb is especially effective at this). And in Nolan’s eyes, it has resulted in an apocalyptic vision of the future – and arguably the director’s best in quite some time.

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Watch the trailer right here.

All images via Universal.

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Directed by Christopher Nolan
Screenplay by Christopher Nolan, based on the biography American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Michael J. Sherwin
Produced by Emma Thomas, Charles Roven, Christopher Nolan
Starring Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, Josh Hartnett, Casey Affleck, Rami Malek, Kenneth Branagh, Benny Safdie, Dane DeHaan, Jason Clarke, David Krumholtz, Tom Conti, Alden Ehrenreich, Dylan Arnold, Gustaf Skarsgård, Michael Angarano, Jack Quaid, Josh Peck, Olivia Thirlby, Christopher Denham, Louise Lombard, David Rysdahlharr, Harrison Hilbertson, Trond Fausa Aurvåg, Olli Haaskivi, Devon Bostick, Matthew Modine, Tony Goldwyn, Macon Blair, Kurt Koehler, Jefferson Hall, Josh Zuckerman, Alex Wolff, Gary Oldman, James D’Arcy, Matthias Schweighöfer, James Urbaniak
Release Date: July 21, 2023
Running Time: 180 minutes