Universal Pictures
In a way, Christopher Nolan’s entire career has been leading to Oppenheimer.
Ever since he burst onto the scene with Memento a quarter century ago and changed the arc of Hollywood forever with The Dark Knight a few years after that, Nolan has carved out a reputation as being the thinking man’s blockbuster filmmaker, a populous auteur, a director who seeks to challenge as much as he does to awe.
Now finding himself with decades of filmmaking and life experiences under his belt and on the other side of 50, Nolan remains as committed as ever to making movies on the biggest scale. But as he ages, so do his interests, and more importantly, his beliefs.
Nolan is no longer interested in using Batman as a Trojan horse to tell a story about fear, or chaos, or inequality — those days are long gone. What Christopher Nolan now finds himself interested in, first with Dunkirk and now with Oppenheimer, is projecting his uncanny ability to make audiences ponder life’s biggest questions inward to simply force us to ask ourselves: who are we and what have we done?
And that, ultimately, is why Oppenheimer might end up being the most important movie Nolan ever makes, as it’s taking a concept as abstract and existential as humanity creating the ability to destroy itself, and shrinking it down into a three-hour cinematic experience that almost every person on earth can understand, enjoy, and therefore ponder.
In this pursuit of nearly cosmic self-reflection, Oppenheimer becomes The Social Network of World War II films, as Nolan uses every tool in his arsenal — writing, cinematography, his unique ability to recruit A-list stars, and so on — to craft the most definitive and important biopic since David Fincher’s Facebook film over a decade ago.
As for the actual construction of Oppenheimer, each act of the film has a very clearly defined story that it follows. The first act is about Oppenheimer’s young life as an up-and-coming scientist and establishes his personality, both his faults and his unique, world-changing strengths. The second is about the making of Los Alamos, the recruitment of fellow scientists, and the show-stopping Trinity Test that simply must be seen on the biggest screen possible. The third act is then the fallout from the United States military’s use of atomic bombs on Japan.
Now, while it’s an immaculate story, I did find myself rubbing up against the pace and impetus of the plot, especially in the second act after the Germans surrender World War II, which therefore removes the “space race movie” element of the film that thrust it through its first 90 minutes.
Amazingly, though, Nolan circles the wagons in the third act as he examines the decay of Oppenheimer’s psyche as a result of his overwhelming guilt, and the political machinations working against him in order to silence him despite his best attempts to do the right thing (or, at least, what he *believes* is the right thing).
The third act was my favorite part and the one that will be circling my brain for weeks to come, as it’s where Nolan truly hammers home his thematic message of humanity not only being the biggest threat to ourselves but that we almost always realize that very fact when it’s far too late. The final few moments in particular, in typical Nolan fashion, is bravura stuff that will surely leave audiences staggering out of the theater in a paradoxically hopeful yet devastated daze, simultaneously amazed and horrified by our very potential.
The result — all 3 hours of it, which hum along as if it’s using the weight of history itself as its propulsion device and some of the greatest actors and filmmakers alive as its navigation system — is a perfectly calculated alchemy of storytelling and a harrowing and stunning moral tale that not only asks what have we done to ourselves and when will we stop, but begs us to answer those questions before it’s too late.
Oppenheimer will hit movie theaters across the United States on Friday, July 21.