The budget of a film has nothing to do with the analysis of a film. However, it is impossible to talk about the cinema that Christopher Nolan currently produces and ignore that he is the only filmmaker to whom “the great powers” still grant this kind of resources for a film that is not a sequel or has characters with flashy names and costumes. And it’s even more impossible to ignore when the same director tries so hard to draw our attention to his making. In this sense, his most recent film oppenheimeris no different.
That budgetary freedom to fulfill all his practical filming impulses – notably, Nolan refuses to use CGI – has led him to produce some of the most spectacular and visually stunning sequences in recent history. The show and the narrative labyrinths have always been at the center of the work of the British filmmaker.
To tell the real life story of J Robert Oppenheimer –the physicist who developed the first nuclear bomb–, Nolan’s task was complicated, since not having the freedom to invent his own twists and turns, the spectacle and the maze would have to come from elsewhere. In Oppenheimer, the spectacle is in the tormented faces of its characters and the labyrinth in the unstable perspective from which the story is told.
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The film’s narrative follows, on the one hand, Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) and his work as director of Los Alamos National Laboratory, the town built in the New Mexico desert where the bomb was first developed (and detonated). This entire section, including his tumultuous relationship with his wife Kitty (Emily Blunt) and his mistress (Florence Pugh) are filmed in color and represent the scientist’s subjective vision. We don’t know if things happened like this, but that’s how he lived them (or how Nolan supposes he lived them).
The second part of the film is in black and white (IMAX literally invented a material with these characteristics at the request of the director) and tells the most objective parts of the story: the events as they happened. When we understand this division, the contradictions and paradoxes of this historical chapter that so fascinated Nolan begin to become clear.
Some viewers may be disappointed (if not tired, after its three-hour run) with the lack of a traditional summer show and a story that is more interested in making us think and raising questions than actually following a plot like the ones we’ve been accustomed to in commercial Hollywood. However, beyond his crusade to save the cinematic experience in a theater, credit must be given to Nolan for trying to stretch his skills as a storyteller.
If something has been criticized throughout his career, it is the superficiality of his characters. Almost all of them act as plot drivers, like figures created specifically to navigate the maze the filmmaker created for them. We have the clearest example in his last tape, Tenetin which John David Washington’s character didn’t even bother to name him.
Unlike the characters in his previous films, Oppenheimer’s motivations do not respond to what the film’s plot needs of him and in reality they are constantly a mystery. For the first time, Nolan tries to approach the study of character and directs his fascination with the cinematographic spectacle to the words and the faces of his main cast. Although the impressive panoramas of the desert are there and the explosion at the center of the film is, without a doubt, a marvel to witness, in reality his interest was in portraying the subtleties of human behavior under a microscope and projecting them on a staggering scale.
Yet in terms of the script, the filmmaker actually does very little to come close to that exploration. The weight and responsibility of this character study then falls on Cillian Murphy. The Irishman does an extraordinary job of portraying someone whose mind and thoughts haunt him almost as much as they inspire him. Overall the movie is populated by some of the best actors and actresses Hollywood has right now: Robert Downey, Jr., Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh, Casey Affleck, Kenneth Branagh, and Gary Oldman.
They all jumped at the opportunity to work with one of the best craftsmen in today’s cinema. Even if the role only required a few lines of dialogue, as is the case with Oscar winner Rami Malek. And on the face of each one of them – especially on the 16 meter high screen of IMAX – falls the responsibility of making us guess what it is that makes them do what they do.
Oppenheimer, the film, without a doubt is a spectacle of behavior to be admired. And it’s one that leaves us with the kind of questions about intentions, regrets, and motivations that any worthwhile film leaves us with. It’s impossible to know if Nolan has any answers or just wanted us to wonder the same thing he did. In the end, the film is reflective, has striking visuals, and leaves it up to us to discuss morality, causality, and that question that has plagued humanity in its apparent search for peace…does the end really justify the means?
J. Ivan Morales Writer, film director and editorial director at his friendly neighbor film publication, Cine PREMIERE. He will never give up hope for a second season of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and Firefly.