Oppenhype

If you’re lucky enough to see a 70mm screening of Oppenheimer, I envy you. You won’t have to sit through twenty minutes of mostly bad trailers because the movie itself is already pushing the limits of the IMAX film size. Pictures of the 11-mile long reel look as if its been jury-rigged to fit existing projectors. Unfortunately, it would have taken my group longer to drive to the nearest 70mm screening of Oppenheimer than it takes to actually watch it, so we settled for the digital IMAX projection even though there is a local theater projecting it on 35mm film.

I’m glad we chose to see it big. I love big movies with big aspect ratios. Oppenheimer is certainly big, but it’s also bold. Director Christopher Nolan famously avoids CGI whenever possible, but the limitations of shooting this way are sometimes obvious in his previous films. Dunkirk features thousands of soldiers when there should be hundreds of thousands. The climactic shootout at the end of Tenet seemed more like a paintball match than a spectacle. What you get here is a three-hour picture that promises a big detonation and only shows it to you in glimpses reminiscent of what it must have been like to see it in person, carefully peeking out from behind cover miles way.

That’s not a complaint, it’s an admirable choice. There’s not a shred of war footage in the entire movie. The only violence we see is the violence in Oppenheimer’s head.

Was the real Oppenheimer capable of such empathy? Early on, we get our first indication that the character is going to be a challenging person to like when he injects cyanide into a professor’s apple over a classroom disagreement. Later, he’s disturbed by what he did and races back to the classroom to retrieve the poisoned apple moments before it unleashes unintended collateral damage. The historical accuracy of the scene is debatable, but I think it’s a peculiar coincidence that Alan Turing, another neurodivergent mastermind of the Allied victory in World War II, chose to kill himself with a cyanide-laced apple.

The film is so quickly paced (and dazzlingly scored) that even the audience with its benefit of hindsight is caught up in the scientists’ enthusiasm to build the mother of all weapons. By the time we remember the terrible implications, it’s too late, and the film abruptly cuts to Oppenheimer watching helplessly as two ominous crates ship out of Los Alamos. Soon after, Oppenheimer meets President Truman in person. Of the two men in this scene, one is portrayed as a tortured man who has a deep understanding of the very branch of science that eluded Einstein’s genius. The other is portrayed by Gary Oldman as a rankled sort with a high school education and the newfound power to cause unimaginable destruction. At the end of the scene, Truman ends up calling Oppenheimer a pussy when he doesn’t share his enthusiasm for the lives lost.

Famous actors with bit roles wander in and out of the movie at every other scene: Casey Affleck, Raimi Malek, Olivia Thirlby, James Remar, Tony Goldwyn, Matthew Modine to name only a few of these supporting-supporting actors. Josh Hartnett proves to be a surprisingly complex and capable actor. Macon Blair, the Jeremy Saulnier favorite who’s reportedly directing the Hollywood remake of The Toxic Avenger, levels up in this movie in a most impressive way as well. I’ve held Florence Pugh at arms length for some time now, but now I’m eager to reexamine her previous roles with a different eye. Saying the star power in this one is huge is an understatement.

Cillian Murphy deserves to be nominated for this movie, but my gut feeling is the Academy will overlook him as well as Emily Blunt. Robert Downey Jr. is just as deserving and I think he’ll probably win. I hope so. He’s never been better.