The virtuosity of this film is evident from every frame, but this is a feat without self-magnification. Big subject matter can turn even well-meaning filmmakers into overblown history trying to do justice. Nolan avoids that trap by obsessively placing Oppenheimer in the larger context, especially in black and white. One section deals with the politically motivated confidentiality hearings of 1954, the witch hunt that damaged his reputation. The second follows the recognition of former U.S. Atomic Energy Commission chairman Louis Strauss (the seductive but largely unrecognized Downey) as a Cabinet nominee in 1959.
Using scenes from the hearing and its confirmation (Strauss’s role in the hearing and his relationship with Oppenheimer directly influenced the outcome of the confirmation), Nolan integrated these black-and-white parts with the color parts. , producing a dialectical synthesis. His one of the most effective examples of this approach is that Oppenheimer and other Jewish project scientists (some of whom were refugees from his Nazi Germany) put their research into a rigorous existential I’ve clarified how I see it from my point of view. But Oppenheimer’s genius, his credentials, his international reputation, and his contributions to the wartime U.S. government also made him a political juggernaut, dwarf vanity, and the outright anti-Semitism of the Red Scare. cannot be saved from
These black and white sequences define the final third of “Oppenheimer”. They can seem too long, and in this part of the film, it sometimes feels like Nolan is too caught up in the ordeal that America’s most famous physicist went through. Rather, it is here that director Nolan puts the finishing touches on a portrait of a man who contributed to a transformative age of scientific discovery, personifying the intersection of science and politics, and where the complexity of the film and its many fragments finally converge. I do. In the role of the communist boogeyman, transformed by his role in the production of weapons of mass destruction, he immediately sounded the alarm about the dangers of nuclear war.
François Truffaut once said, “War films, even pacifist or at their best, glorify war and make it attractive in some way, voluntarily or not.” I wrote. This, I think, makes Nolan understand why he refuses to portray the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the events that ultimately defined the world. Estimated death toll 100,000 to 200,000+ souls. But you see Oppenheimer watching the first bomb test and, importantly, you can also hear his famous words as the mushroom cloud rose: “Now I It will be death and the destroyer of the world.” As Nolan reminded us, the world rapidly embraced the atomic bomb out of fear of war. Now we too have become death, destroyers of the world.
oppenheimer
Rated R for disturbing images and adult behavior. Running time: 3 hours. at the theater.
