Art film pretensions
'Oppenheimer' is not a great film, but it is a worthy endeavor, and for that, we should be grateful.
During the last hour of Christopher Nolan’s new film Oppenheimer, I was involuntarily reminded of Francis Coppola’s 1979 epic Apocalypse Now. Rather, I was reminded of something I have always thought about Apocalypse Now: “It dies in the last third.” So, one regrets to say, does Oppenheimer.
There are those who will undoubtedly disagree with me on both counts. Apocalypse Now is currently revered as one of the greatest films ever made (it isn’t) and the reviews for Oppenheimer have been mostly rapturous.
To a certain extent, they had to be. Given the current state of American cinema, over which one of Oppenheimer’s bombs might as well have detonated, Nolan’s film is at least an attempt at something more.
Indeed, unlike literally everything else Hollywood makes today, Oppenheimer is not a mercenary enterprise. Nolan is at least trying to say something in this film. He doesn’t quite manage to do so, but given the domination of the box office by sociopathic cultists like Tom Cruise and CGI-generated rollercoasters like the Marvel franchise, the attempt is a noble one.
And it is only fair to say that Nolan’s retelling of the tragic tale of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the gifted physicist who shepherded the atomic bomb to completion, only to be tortured by the consequences of his superweapon and toppled by the Red Scare, has a lot going for it.
First and foremost, there is the cast, which with a few minor exceptions outdoes itself. Cillian Murphy will or ought to have an Oscar for his extraordinary performance in the title role. He effortlessly conveys the essential ambiguity of Oppenheimer, the kaleidoscopic nature of a man composed of striking charisma, interpersonal ineptitude, intellectual genius, political naiveté, not entirely unbounded ambition, moral paralysis, and—in perhaps the most interesting twist—intense sexuality.
Equally brilliant is Robert Downey, Jr., who gives perhaps the best performance of his career as the scheming but never entirely villainous official Lewis Strauss. Strauss is driven by arrogance and petty resentments, but also believes he is acting in the best interests of his country, even if he must destroy a man who does not deserve it in order to do so. Laden with old-age makeup, Downey manages to dispense entirely with his aura of stardom through a kind of labored shabbiness, and this is all to the good. He is, after all, playing a gray man who does terrible things because he is a gray man.
The sprawling cast of geniuses who join Oppenheimer in his quest for the bomb and populate Los Alamos are uniformly excellent, from Kenneth Branagh as a dignified Niels Bohr to a brief turn by Jack Quaid as the gloriously undignified Richard Feynman. There is also a wonderful cameo from Tom Conti as Albert Einstein, who perfectly conveys the genius’ strange combination of gentleness and world-weary cynicism.
Also striking is Florence Pugh’s brief appearance as Oppenheimer’s doomed lover Jean Tatlock. She gives this headstrong woman who was, in many ways, ahead of her time, a feral combination of raw sexuality and ferocious intelligence. One cannot help feeling that she ought to have been the love of Oppenheimer’s life, yet chose not to be.
The only missteps are Matt Damon, who is too much the Boston brahmin to be believable as the scabrous Gen. Leslie Groves, and Emily Blunt as Oppenheimer’s wife Kitty, who ought to be tragic but is instead simply dislikeable.
Unfortunately, the film itself is no match for its cast. Certainly, Nolan gives it his all, clearly reaching for the kind of audio and visual virtuosity of a Stanley Kubrick. Nolan is extremely talented, but he is not Stanley Kubrick, and rather than virtuosity, Nolan’s efforts leave the audience feeling as if it has been hit by a freight train in Dolby Stereo.
The editing is impossibly rapid, with non-linear cuts coming so quickly that scenes rarely have a moment to breathe, let alone play out in full. Comprehension is meant to be aided by the use of black and white for certain scenes, but the attempt ultimately fails due to the endless chronological chaos.
At the same time, the pounding score rattles the eardrums and often rises in intensity at bizarre moments, perhaps attempting to elevate the banal but instead creating an odd feeling of dissonance. This is nothing compared to the sound effects, which are so deafening that I saw audience members literally covering their ears in the theater. Certainly, atomic bombs are extremely loud, but this hardly justifies the use of booming thunder and electronic screeching every few seconds.
Visually, however, it must be said that the film is stunning, particularly the special effects. According to Nolan, they all wonderfully analog, proving that CGI is not, or not yet, the answer to everything. Nolan seeks to place the viewer inside atoms and quarks, and then into the hearts of stars and the infinite emptiness of black holes. He succeeds to a striking degree, and this may be the only aspect of the film that does achieve some semblance of Kubrickian greatness.
Nonetheless, in this case the devil is not in the details. When one steps back from the film and takes it as a whole, it becomes clear quite quickly that it doesn’t work.
I have no idea what people mean when they say a film is “too long.” Some of the greatest films ever made run well over three hours. But it is possible for a film to exhaust itself before the finish line, to reach a point when its constituent parts lose their integrity and fly to pieces.
In Apocalypse Now, the moment is obvious: The assassin Willard’s arrival at the mad Kurtz’s compound. There, he is confronted with a shaven-headed Marlon Brando who endlessly mumbles pretentious improvised dialogue. When Willard finally kills him, one is grateful that he finally shut the man up.
Oppenheimer suffers from a similar problem. It reaches its climax in the Trinity test—the detonation of the first atomic bomb. This must be the climax, Nolan knows it, and here he shines. The countdown ends with a brilliant flash of white light and, in accordance with the laws of physics, there is no sound. We hear only Oppenheimer’s breathing as the enormous fireball swells up and erupts into the sky. Then come the famous words, “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds,” which Oppenheimer claimed came to his mind in that moment.
A few seconds later, as it would have been in life, the unthinkable thunder of the explosion is heard. Here the deafening soundtrack works as it should, throwing the viewer back with what feels like the same strong force that bowls over the characters onscreen. It’s a tour de force sequence, and worth the price of admission.
From here, one feels the film should move relatively quickly to its end. Certainly, the denouement of the conspiracy to revoke Oppenheimer’s security clearance over alleged communist ties is yet to come, but Nolan has already depicted much of it in the non-linear flashbacks and flash-forwards that preceded the detonation. One thinks there cannot be much left to say, and unfortunately, there isn’t.
Nonetheless, Nolan presses on, and the film continues for something like another hour. It depicts a series of machinations that fly by so fast, with so many twists and turns, that one can barely comprehend them. Nor, after witnessing the extraordinary detonation sequence, can they do anything but pale in comparison.
There are moments that are clearly meant to be emotional climaxes, but the editing is so rapid that there is no time for them to develop. Thus, when they come, they have little or no impact. My reaction to all this, I regret to say, was boredom. Judging by the conversations I overheard among departing viewers, this was the general consensus.
Indeed, it is remarkable that, for a film this long and complex, Oppenheimer contains only two really great scenes: The detonation sequence and a beautifully written final meeting between Oppenheimer and Einstein, in which the two men, laid low by time and fate, quietly discuss the possibility that what they have helped to construct will annihilate the world. The film is worth seeing for these two scenes alone, but not for much more than that.
This is a difficult thing to accept, because Christopher Nolan is a very unique and important figure in American cinema. Michael Herr once said that Stanley Kubrick made art films with blockbuster pretensions. Nolan essentially makes blockbusters with art film pretensions. While they may be pretensions, however, they nonetheless exist. This alone places him a step above everybody else working in Hollywood, most of whom seem to be dedicated to spending enormous amounts of money on extremely bad movies and then learning nothing from their failure.
Thus, one very much wants Nolan to succeed. He is perhaps the last Hollywood filmmaker who can command huge budgets in order to make something that is not an exercise in populist barbarism.
Nonetheless, the truth is that Nolan has made only one really great film—his World War II epic Dunkirk. Even when given all the freedom and resources necessary to make a film like Oppenheimer, he still fails to completely rise above the decimated ruins that Hollywood has become.
Nonetheless, at least Nolan tries, which is more than one can say for any of his compatriots. Oppenheimer is not a great film, but it is a worthy endeavor. For that alone, we should be grateful.