Review: Oppenheimer

The film is based in a biography of the theoretical physicist

Just watched the film Oppenheimer and it was quite intense, but a cinematic triumph for director Christopher Nolan, featuring an all-star cast bringing to life the complex life and person of J Robert Oppenheimer, known as the father of the atomic bomb.

The three-hour film is an adaptation of the 2005 biography American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin and Nolan wrote the screenplay. As a result Oppenheimer is a pretty accurate portrayal of the historical events that happened, following the American theoretical physicist as he studies quantum physics in England and Germany, brings the subject back to the United States, and then gets recruited to become the director of the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, New Mexico.

Einstein was a contemporary of Oppenheimer

He brings together a team of scientists to create the atomic bomb, but as they are building it, Hitler has died, and the motivation to stop the Nazis has evaporated. But Oppenheimer believes the Japanese need to be stopped and the project continues. Once the test code named Trinity is a success, the US Army moves in to take the bomb plans to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945 respectively, effectively stopping the Japanese.

However, Oppenheimer is not a straight-forward all-American patriot, especially not during the McCarthy era. And this is what makes the film a complex portrayal of the man. While it is not definitive that he was a card-carrying communist, he tried to help Jewish scientists flee the Nazis, supported the Spanish civil war, tried to unionize professors. It perhaps didn't help Oppenheimer that his brother and wife were active communists.

The film also shows his complicated personal life, how he had a passionate affair with Jean Tatlock, but she broke up with him; he soon met his future wife Katherine "Kitty" Puening, who was with her third husband, also Oppenheimer's colleague.

He had an intense relationship with Tatlock

Later Oppenheimer rekindled his relationship with Tatlock while he was married with his first child, but ended it -- she later committed suicide, which affected him profoundly. He also later had an affair with Ruth Tolman, also the wife of Oppenheimer's friend.

In one scene Kitty is seen drunk and unable to care for their son and Oppenheimer takes the baby to his friend to look after him "for a while"... one wonders if he son experienced abandonment issues. Oppenheimer and Kitty later had a daughter.

After the Trinity test, Oppenheimer realises how the atomic bomb will impact humanity and tries to tell the US government it has to stop what will begin as the arms race in the Cold War. 

Another character in the film is Lewis Strauss, head of the Atomic Energy Commission who wants to be confirmed for Secretary of Commerce. Strauss is personally offended when Oppenheimer humiliates him publicly dismissing concerns about exporting radioisotopes. As a result Strauss orchestrates an elaborate plan to silence Oppenheimer with a closed-door hearing to decide whether the scientist should have his security clearance.

Black and white scenes show historical events

The questioning is intense and harsh, making it hard for Oppenheimer to defend himself effectively, but also reveals his character of being unable or unwilling to fight back, and his trusted colleagues and wife have to do it for him.

The cinematography of Oppenheimer shows calculated shots, and apparently no computer-generated images were used, particularly when it came to the Trinity test. Cillian Murphy as the physicist ages gracefully throughout the film, his big blue eyes are very intense and full of emotion. He is in almost all the scenes.

It was only after watching the film did a friend tell me that the scenes in colour were the story through Oppenheimer's eyes, while those in black and white were events as viewed in history.

Meanwhile the costumes were fantastic, bringing back sharp suits with high-waisted trousers, broad-rimmed porkpie hat. There was also a lot of smoking going on and Oppenheimer has a cigarette lit most of the time; is it surprising he died of throat cancer at the age of 62 in 1967?

Oppenheimer is a complex portrait of the man, how he was not just into physics, but was well read, faced moral issues with regards to humanity and was loyal to his colleagues. Should he have invented the atomic bomb? He was proud of his achievement, but saddened that it resulted in ratcheted tensions with the Soviet Union.

Oppenheimer

Directed by Christopher Nolan

180 minutes