Oppenheimer

The modern biopic has butted up against a problem that kneecaps them before cameras ever start rolling: the value of the subject as an IP. If biopics are too honest, they risk devaluing the subject. The biopic should mostly be a puff piece, the struggles touched in only insofar as they relate to the subject's ongoing life story; a loss or a setback drives them onward, helps in their recovery, or what have you. The danger of this (aside from gross historical inaccuracy) is the flattening of the subject and their life; they stop being a complex tangle of contradictions, as all human beings are, and become a vehicle for the narrative. Michael Jackson is reduced to a Willy Wonka-esque genius who had to escape a bad upbringing to bring joy to the masses, instead of a relentless perfectionist whose abuse may have been recycled in the worst way. PT Barnum becomes a champion of outsiders and a dreamer, instead of the manipulative social climber and exploiter of people thrown away by "polite society". Oppenheimer should have one advantage over most other subjects: J. Robert Oppenheimer not a beloved entertainer or iconic figure of history. He's responsible for the invention of the most destructive weapon in human history, and he never showed remorse for it. There are no playlists of him on Spotify, and no Funko Pops or t-shirts at Spencer's Gifts, but he maintains a significant role in the history of the world nonetheless. Whether a person vilifies him or views him as a tragic figure, his involvement in the Manhattan Project and the years thereafter should prove, from an objective historical standpoint, to be fascinating. And then Christopher "what's an emotion?" Nolan enters the picture, and it all goes sideways. I know he's a darling of critics and fans alike, but sorry-not-sorry, I'm not. I think he's a mediocre egotist who got lucky with Batman and stumbled ass-backwards into respect he has never justified. All his movies, even the Batman movies, reveal that Nolan has a fundamental confusion about the difference between mood and emotion. And I'll give him credit for setting the mood; whether it's the icy cold creepiness of Insomnia, the jittery, off-kilter world of Memento, or the magical mystery of The Prestige, his movies ooze with the atmosphere he envisions in his head. But he can't translate that to the acting or the script, and Oppenheimer is perhaps the grossest example I've seen of it so far. Almost nobody is allowed to emote in this movie, especially its titular subject. Cillian Murphy is a fantastic actor, and yet Nolan decides to turn Oppenheimer into a vacuum of personality. Three hours, and not one minute is spent actually getting to know him or what makes him tick, and quick cuts to stars and explosions do not count as insight. In Nolan's hands, Oppenheimer is is a cardboard cutout with a speaker. We see that he is passionate about science, but not why. We are told he is a loyal American, but he never does anything to demonstrate it. We are told he is a womanizer, but aside from one dalliance with his ex-girlfriend, he appears faithful (if emotionally distant) to his wife, Kitty. The only people who ever emote in Oppenheimer are Kitty Oppenheimer (and only in short bursts of misplaced indignation) and Lewis Strauss (and only near the end, when his cabinet confirmation hearing goes off the rails). Everybody else emotes with all the range of a water cooler. It would be one thing if it were Oppenheimer only, as it would reflect a man so focused on his work that he neglects the world and the people around him. But most everybody else is limited to the same emotional grayscaling. That leaves the movie itself to communicate emotions and themes either by ham-handed visuals, dialogue, or an intrusive score. I have seen more subtlety in elementary school performances than Oppenheimer, and what's truly baffling is that this is what Nolan intended. How do I know this? He wrote and directed it. This is him, top to bottom, front to back. It's also a waste of so many actors. Matt Damon seems to have been told "be Matt Damon". Gary Oldman plays President Truman in a role that lasts less time than it takes to microwave popcorn, and James Remar gets about the same as the Secretary of War. Kenneth Branagh has two walk-on scenes that amount to almost nothing whatsoever. Josh Hartnett, Rami Malek, David Dastmalchian, and Dane DeHaan all seem to have been cast by accidentally walking on the set one day and performed as such. Alden Ehrenreich doesn't even get a name, despite being the aide to Robert Downey Jr's Strauss. I could list another dozen actors at least who probably spent more time in wardrobe than they did in meaningful scenes, but in that sentence lies another insulting fact: the dearth of meaningful female roles in this movie. Emily Blunt, who plays Kitty Oppenheimer, seems to have been told to channel a caricature of the nagging wife Rodney Dangerfield always talked about Olivia Thirlby plays a Manhattan Project scientist who flirts with meaning, threatening to organize the scientists into a union of sorts until Oppenheimer shuts it down with a rah-rah speech that is as lifeless as my couch, and then she's never heard from again. Florence Pugh seems to have been cast solely for her willingness to provide nudity, as her role as Oppenheimer's one-upon-a-time booty call Jean Tatlock could be excised from the film and it wouldn't make a difference. I'd list other women who were done dirty by this bloated script, but the rest are throwaway roles who get a line here or there at random. As insulting as it is to see so many great actors wasted, it is doubly so to see how the few women in Oppenheimer are treated as tokens and hangers-on. I mentioned a couple lines ago that the script was bloated, but that doesn't quite cover it. It seems to have been written almost entirely of monologues and platitudes. It's like the mirror universe version of the dialogue from The Room; instead of being grossly unnatural and sounding like it had been run through several translators and a few malfunctioning AI prompts, Every moment of it is meant to sound profound and meaningful and deeply insightful. There's a moment after Oppenheimer finds out Jean has killed herself, and Kitty confronts him while he's moping. She tells him that just because he's sinned doesn't mean the world has to feel sorry for him. HOW POIGNANT, I WONDER IF THAT'LL HAVE A DOUBLE MEANING LATER. Oppenheimer's dialogue exists to be featured on Oscar clips. And then, finally, the greatest sin: the editing. A few years back, there was an Indian epic action movie called RRR. It ran three hours, and felt a third of that. The movie was constantly on the move, but not in a frantic, hyperactive way; it had momentum and pacing, knowing when to slow it down to let the viewer catch its breath for the next crazy action set piece or dance number or what have you. It made the time fly by. Nolan, again, doesn't seem to understand a basic principle: being making the editing fast-paced doesn't impart a sense of momentum. Oppenheimer's editing is more akin to a movie like Crank (or that fence-jumping scene in Taken). It's like Oppenheimer was edited for the TikTok generation, constantly changing angles, scenes feeling more like blips. Nothing is allowed to breathe. Even if the actors were allowed to emote, they aren't given enough runway to land the emotional plane, because Nolan has to jump to the next scene like he's late for an appointment. Or, that old, familiar and stupid crutch of his, non-linear storytelling. It's a biopic, not a surrealistic fantasy, it doesn't need three timelines running concurrently, Chris. Kindergartners can stay on topic better than Nolan can. There is a fascinating character study to be made about Robert Oppenheimer that explores why he didn't regret his work, and his feelings on being railroaded by a career politician in the 50's. This isn't it, because it isn't interested in letting you into Oppenheimer's mind. There's a fascinating movie to be made about the work done at Los Alamos and how everybody felt about it, how being isolated in the middle of the desert affected the workers and their families, and how Oppenheimer became the cult-like father at the center of it all. This isn't it, because that's just a backdrop to this overly artistic Wikipedia article. At the beginning of this review, I mentioned the problem modern biopics face, but I didn't mention how all of them share one thing in common: they all want to be Oscar bait. Most feel like pablum made for mindless consumption; jukebox musicals, PR stunts, and brand massaging. Oppenheimer doesn't indulge with any of that, because it is too high-minded. This is Art. It has Something To Say. But that's lipstick on a pig, because deep down, this isn't doing anything different from any other biopic. It turns its subject into a cult figure, the world around him into a vehicle for his life story, and turns that life into the culmination of someone with a greater purpose than we mere mortals could ever hope to aspire to. Oppenheimer may have trappings of a better movie with a higher purpose, but at the genetic level, it's still the same slop as Bohemian Rhapsody and Diana and Patch Adams. Nolan isn't a good enough director to hide that.