Christopher Nolan’s biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer is a welcome departure from present film trends. The story of the ‘father’ of the atom bomb prioritizes the scientist’s dilemma — the nation wants Oppie’s expertise to make a super-weapon, but won’t tolerate his opinions about the atomic future. Was there ever a 3-hour epic devoted mostly to security clearances?  The intelligent screenplay makes sense of dozens of historical figures, embodied by a cast that includes Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Robert Downey Jr., Matt Damon, Alden Ehrenreich, Jason Clarke, Kenneth Branagh, Gregory Jbara, Tom Conti, David Krumholtz, Josh Hartnett, Florence Pugh, Matthew Modine, James Remar and Gary Oldman.

Oppenheimer
4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital
Universal
2023 / Color / multiple aspect ratios; filmed in 35mm and 65mm / 181 min. / Street Date November 21, 2023 / Available from Amazon / 49.98
Starring: Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Robert Downey Jr., Matt Damon, Alden Ehrenreich, Scott Grimes, Jason Clarke, Kurt Koehler, Macon Blair, Kenneth Branagh, Gregory Jbara, Tom Conti, David Krumholtz, Matthias Schweighöfer, Josh Hartnett, Alex Wolff, Josh Zuckerman, Florence Pugh, Dylan Arnold, Emma Dumont, Jefferson Hall, Matthew Modine, Louise Lombard, Bennie Safdie, Danny Deferrari, Christopher Denham, James Remar, Gary Oldman, Hap Lawrence.
Cinematography: Hoyte Van Hoytema
Production Designer: Ruth De Jong
Art Directors: Samantha Englender, Anthony D. Parrillo, Jake Cavallo
Costume Design: Ellen Mirojnick
Film Editor: Jennifer Lame
Original Music: Ludwig Göransson
Written for the Screen by Christopher Nolan
Based on a book by Kai Bird, Martin Sherwin
Produced by Christopher Nolan, Emma Thomas, Charles Roven
Directed by Christopher Nolan

Think a moment of Hollywood’s many ‘important’ historical films so riddled with falsehoods, so as to make them useless in discussions of anything but their own dishonesty … the forgotten WW2 super-bio Wilson comes to mind. Have times changed?  Christopher Nolan’s cinema epic appears to be true to both its human subject and the contentious politics of its time.

Nolan’s Oppenheimer was seen theatrically by a great many and has garnered a great deal of praise. We are pleasantly surprised because we weren’t expecting something so disciplined and focused. The people that didn’t care for the show — a few good friends walked out — complained that it was three hours of talking heads with a hundred speaking roles that were not easy to keep straight.

My first bit of advice is that this disc is a good candidate to watch with the IMDB open in front of you to keep all of the names and actors straight. I do it only for the same reason I opt for subtitles — so as not to fumble some plot point or character I.D.. It also doesn’t hurt to have some foreknowledge of the subject. We really knew only a few names and their roles in this chunk of history — or the roles assigned to them by earlier historians and biographers. I remember a high school book that lauded Oppenheimer’s genius building the bomb, and then became fuzzy when explaining what happened to him later.

We are happily surprised that today’s audience stuck with Oppenheimer, a cerebral, action-challenged piece of political history. The story of the father of the A-Bomb has been dramatized before, but not like this. The propagandistic The Beginning or The End (1946) simplified the details of the Manhattan Project, added mawkish subplots, and signed off with the message that atom power will save the world, so let’s all get on the bandwagon. Hume Cronyn plays Oppenheimer. The show is now mostly something for historians to pick apart, and a sad comment on how the war ended with no coherent plan to ‘wage the peace.’  (note: Greenbriar just did a piece on Beginning or the End, January 1, 2024.)

1989’s Fat Man and Little Boy does a decent job jamming the Manhattan Project and the J. Robert Oppenheimer story into one brisk narrative, sacrificing detail and enhancing the characters with fictional inventions. Dwight Schultz is Oppenheimer. The show has so much ground to cover that exposition duties are assigned to a M*AS*H – like public address system, relaying war news. We like Roland Joffe’s show, but were it any more streamlined, it would have to leave out major events.

Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer doesn’t try to be all-comprehensive. It tells the story of the building of the bomb in well-chosen broad strokes, and it takes no direct position on the controversy of the bomb’s use. Some online buzz expressed dismay that the film’s primary mission wasn’t to corroborate a particular political viewpoint. How could Nolan not show the Japan bombs being dropped, not show the death, devastation and suffering visited on the Japanese?   And how come the movie doesn’t advocate total disarmament?

Those arguments are all present, but expressed as they were in real life, by people (mostly scientists) without a voice in the new security state. Robert Oppenheimer tries to ask President Truman to avoid an arms race, and the President dismisses him as a crybaby.

You Had to Be There . . .

Nolan instead sticks with Robert Oppenheimer’s personal ordeal, almost from the scientist’s personal POV. Over half of the running time is devoted to the duties and relationships that shape and guide Oppenheimer’s actions. Cilian Murphy captures the brilliance, zeal, and charisma that made Oppie an excellent choice to head a major project. We also see Oppenheimer as a puffed-up egotist convinced he’s pursuing a great destiny, one that will eclipse even that of Albert Einstein. Oppenheimer is possessed of a charming arrogance that wins people over. He’s so ‘exceptional,’ his colleagues forgive him when he breaks serious rules, like sleeping with their wives. He maintains a half-affair with Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh) even after marriage to Kitty (Emily Blunt), a socialite attracted to his limitless future. By the time that the Army’s Leslie Groves (Matt Damon) needs someone to supervise the most complicated, expensive and security-critical technological project of all time, Oppie is the Go-To guy, the best choice.

We get a taste of Oppenheimer’s ease with enormous technical difficulties as he allocates his brain-trust personnel to solve 1,000 ‘unknown’ scientific challenges. The building of the Los Alamos ‘atomic city’ is given just enough attention to show us how vast an undertaking it was. Groves and his engineers had to ‘secretly’ truck everything in, on new roads. All of their electronic components were pre-transistor . . .

The script does not attempt to explain nuclear fission, yet doesn’t dumb-down the physics involved. We instead are impressed by the scientific talent on tap, geniuses like the charismatic Niels Bohr (Kenneth Branagh). Einstein (Tom Conti) is already a retiree, an éminence grise offering advice for Oppenheimer regarding security clearances.

It’s really about an Inquisition.

The structure of Oppenheimer tells us its real subject is the scientist’s fraught relationship with the country’s security apparatus — the war gave birth to a new realm of extra-legal intelligence agencies military and civilian. Flashbacks tell most of the story from the vantage point of the hearings that revoke Oppenheimer’s security clearance, banning him from the bomb program that he made possible. Cut out of the intelligence loop, Oppie won’t have direct information about the development of the hydrogen bomb. The use of monochrome makes it easy to keep things straight — the postwar hearings are in B&W and the backstory segments are in color. The scripting is good enough to keep us straight between old and new, even when other factors (clothes, age makeup) aren’t emphasized.

In the 1930s Oppenheimer has the good sense not to become directly involved with the American Communist Party, even though many of his friends and colleagues encourage him to join. He instead contributes to specific social issues that only the CP seems to care about. The explication of his security status is so good, that we understand that General Groves okays him to head Manhattan because he’s a ‘radical,’ not in spite of that fact: Groves will be able to control him. The big initial Alamagordo test gets quite a bit of emphasis, but from the moment the completed bomb roll out of camp, Oppie’s role is diminished. Groves and his military experts no longer need theoreticians to deliver the weapon; Oppie has to learn from the radio that the bombs were actually dropped.

In the third hour, after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Oppenheimer’s personal ordeal is just beginning. He now mulls over the doubts and misgivings that dogged him throughout project, when he held firm against the protests of some of his pacifist colleagues. Many signed on to stop Hitler, not to strike out at the (already defeated?) Japanese. Postwar politics embroil Oppenheimer in a career conflict that could have been scripted by Shakespeare. The influential politician Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.) plots to discredit Oppenheimer for practical opportunism and personal revenge. Strauss’s mini-conspiracy uses right-wing zealots to falsely brand Oppie as a friend of the Soviet Union. The Oppenheimer-can’t-be-trusted argument is echoed by Edward Teller (Bennie Safdie), a career competitor who clearly resented his colleague’s authority. Oppie’s reluctance to forge ahead with the next generation of super weapon, is taken as a form of disloyalty.

When science is politics, unpopular opinions are no longer acceptable.

The final hour shows Oppenheimer ground down by unjust accusations. Oppie’s wife and friends cannot help him. A security system that didn’t exist when he began now brands him as untrustworthy, a political loose cannon. Some would say that he abetted his own political destruction by cooperating with the kangaroo-court predisposed to condemn him. He really is a broken man.

We were shocked by how swiftly the three hours of Oppenheimer passed. Yes, it could have used an intermission, which a disc player’s Pause button provides. The parade of interesting characters are all exceedingly well-played. It’s a super-ensemble in which only Cilian Murphy is portrayed 100%, but a couple of dozen personages are finely delineated. Not already mentioned are Alden Erenreich as Lewis Strauss’s sounding board-aide, Jason Clarke as the his chief inquisitor, Josh Hartnett as a not-so-loyal friend, Rami Malek as as staunch defender, and Casey Affleck as a right-wing accuser. Gary Oldman makes a brief but effective appearance as Harry S. Truman. We’re surprised at how well Oppenheimer’s unusual home life was sketched, in so few strokes. Emily Blunt’s wife at first seems an emotional liability, but she never abandons him. By the time Oppie’s fortunes are sinking, we no longer see people like Leslie Groves as malicious. After his ‘golden boy’ spirit is broken, Oppie is in such poor emotional shape that he may actually be unreliable.

Oppenheimer’s theatrical rollout came with a confusion of multiple formats and aspect ratios. Our viewing venue was 4K disc, where we didn’t notice the AR shifts. The same thing happened when enjoying Nolan’s Dunkirk — only later did I note the shifts in screen shape. This we count as proof that a movie is working — when we’re fully engaged in the story, we’re less distracted by technique.

We also didn’t worry about the film’s special effects. The publicity releases assured us that Christopher Nolan doesn’t make ‘greenscreen’ movies, but instead shoots whereever possible in real locations, in physical sets. We appreciate the organic appearance of shots. The glimpses we get of San Francisco in the 1940s, etc., convince without overplaying the period.

Subatomic harmonies.

Nolan expresses Oppenheimer’s inner life through special visuals. Niels Bohr talks about the math of quantum physics being meaningless to those who cannot ‘hear the music’ in the formulas. That word image is backed up with images of swirling particles and mystery substances, ‘mood universes’ that appear to be Oppie’s feelings as he engages in abstract math and formulas.  Nolan keeps these abstract cutaways to a minimum, thus avoiding the Doctor Zhivago problem of ‘too many visual similies.’ David Lean expressed Zhivago’s poetic genius via beautiful visuals — when Zhivago smiles at vistas of flowers blooming and ice crystals forming, we’re supposed to believe that we’re seeing him create poetic beauty.

Some of Oppenheimer’s phantom visions feel like ‘insomnia mind storms,’ when one can’t make one’s brain wind down. Much later, when the reality of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki horror is sinking in, Nolan confronts Oppie with nightmarish hallucinations of burn victims, of the kind we’re accustomed to seeing in psychological horror pictures.

The bomb explosion is also slightly abstracted. We see no images of actual bomb blasts. The blast visual doesn’t emulate a classic mushroom cloud, as in the excellent vintage special effect faux-mushroom clouds concocted for The War of the Worlds,  Hell and High Water and  20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Nolan instead goes for a mental impression of billowing flames, a fireball that might be bursting from the sun — an abstraction that won’t interrupt the focus on Robert Oppenheimer’s personal experience.

No direct nuclear horror.

The filmmakers know that we’ve all been clobbered with scenes imagining the human horror of a nuclear strike; perhaps the most-seen is in James Cameron’s Terminator 2. Christopher Nolan assumes that we carry those images in our heads. Oppenheimer does not have shock scenes, and neither does it take the political position that the makers of the bomb are war criminals. The show details the particular human dynamics of this collision of advanced technology, wartime exigency and cold war security abuses/necessities.

When the establishment demanded team players, Oppenheimer’s crime was to voice his honest thoughts. He was quoted as confessing, “we did the work of the Devil.”  His lingering public image influenced a stock dramatic character of the postwar period, the The Regretful Atom Scientist. When screenwriters wanted to express topical opinions about the atom age, the conduit was often a scapegoat nuclear scientist. These characters exhibited emotional problems stemming from their work, like Paul Kelly’s guilt-ridden atom expert in The High and the Mighty. The Brits came up with the first atom extortion thriller Seven Days to Noon, in which an atomic ‘boffin’ threatens to blow up London as moral-religious penance. He is also motivated by personal guilt. In Stanley Kramer’s all-star end-of-the-world tale On the Beach, Fred Astaire’s Australian nuclear scientist spends the whole movie apologizing for his sins.

We were greatly surprised by how much we enjoyed this thoughtful picture, with its intelligent characterizations and good performances. The difficult drama is both credible and convincing. I thought Cilian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr., and Emily Blunt were award-worthy. It’s not a superhero sequel and has no typical action or thriller content beyond the suspense of waiting for a detonation that ‘might destroy the world’ — when we already know that it won’t. Christopher Nolan’s industry reputation for gigantic theatrical experiences got the picture rolling, and word of mouth did the rest.

Universal’s 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital of Oppenheimer is a beauty, a presentation at the top of the home video quality pyramid. Christopher Nolan subscribes to the notion that physical film and photochemical images are sacred. 70mm seen in good theatrical conditions can of course be a revelation, but Nolan filmed in multiple formats, including the enormous acreage of IMAX.

What, CineSavant reviews something popular?

We’re also told that Oppenheimer is a monster seller on 4K and Blu-ray, a fact reported in a score of articles and op-eds promoting the continuance of hard media home video. More power to that. Can we presume that the Barbie 4K disc is doing as well or better?  CineSavant inclines more toward tracking upcoming 4Ks of horror and Sci-fi pictures.

If one has a decent 4K home system — a luxury item — the only thing this disc can’t provide is the rush of an enthusiastic audience. Hoyte Van Hoytema’s cinematography has been praised in every review and technical evaluation. The ‘you are there’ illusion is strong in both the interiors and on location in New Mexico. Some of Cilian Murphy’s close-ups appear stylized for psychological effect, with different color textures on his eyes and skin. Its as if the close-ups were recording his emotional texture, or that his complexion shifts as his blood pressure rises. We don’t absorb this as theatrical lighting per se, but a subtle shading of character. When the defeated Oppie sits quietly in the corner while former associates demolish his reputation, his face looks drawn and bloodless, as if he’s turning to stone.

Want to learn More?

Universal arrays the film across three discs, with a 4K and a Blu-ray each for the feature and a second Blu for the generous extras. Viewers intrigued by the movie may be fascinated by the historical documentary included, relating more on J. Robert Oppenheimer, the bomb and the context of the times.

The making-of documentary is almost as long; it’s broken up into multiple chapters.

Technical folk will appreciate a piece examining Christopher Nolan’s employment of multiple film formats and stocks, including a ‘resurrected’ B&W emulsion reportedly put back into production by Kodak especially for this film. A taped Q&A press meeting is present as well.

We know we’ll be watching Oppenheimer again soon. It’s acknowledged as a major contender for Best Picture honors.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Oppenheimer 4K
4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements:
Making-of feature documentary The Story of Our Time
Innovations in Film featurette
Meet the Press Q&A Panel
Feature documentary To End All War: Oppenheimer & the Atomic Bomb
Trailer bundle — the whole package from teasers to an IMAX trailer.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature and all extras)
Packaging: One 4K Ultra-HD disc and two Blu-ray discs in keep case in card sleeve
Reviewed: January 1, 2024
(7054oppe)

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