There was a running joke during the production of Oppenheimer that writer-director Christopher Nolan, famous for his fanatical aversion to CGI, would actually detonate a nuclear bomb on-screen. While real bombs were indeed used to achieve Nolan’s shots, none of them were atomic in nature and scale. They may as well have been though. Walking out of the IMAX cinema after a screening of Oppenheimer, I felt physically and emotionally battered, like the very molecules that made up my composition had been violently assaulted in a three-hour-long sustained explosion. This is weaponized filmmaking.

Nolan’s best work in a career already stacked with best works, Oppenheimer is an intimate-biopic-by-way-of-bombastic-blockbuster which documents the life of the titular J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy), the self-important, womanizing, and extremely polarizing “Father of the Atomic Bomb”. Nolan tackles Oppenheimer’s rise from iconoclastic scientific prodigy to head of the Manhattan Project – the U.S. government’s WWII scientific thinktank striving to develop the first nuclear bomb before the Nazis. Events culminate in a political aftermath that saw Oppenheimer’s earlier flirtations with Communism threaten his legacy and legitimacy.

The latter impacted the lives and careers of people around him as well, most notably Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.), a founder of the Atomic Energy Commission, whose longtime collaboration with Oppenheimer is brought up during hearings to decide his nomination as U.S. Secretary of Commerce. Also tying into these events in pivotal moments are Oppenheimer’s stormy romance with card-carrying Communist Party member Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh), and his complicated marriage to Kitty Oppenheimer (Emily Blunt), a hard-drinking, even-harder-nosed ex-biologist.

This being Christopher Nolan though, none of the above happens in a straight line. Our perspective flits back and forth over the course of nearly three decades, masterfully overlapped and stitched together for the most dramatic effect. Nolan and editor Jennifer Lame seem shoe-ins for Oscar nominations for Best Editing, not just for the titanic effort of having all these timelines converge coherently, but for taking what could be the driest of subject matter (unless you’re a science geek like me) and editing it with a level of whiz-bang energy the likes of which you would normally find in those big superhero tentpoles that Nolan has publicly said he would no longer be making.

In fact, if there’s any criticism to be made about this truly monumental film, it’s that it may be a smidge too kinetic in places. Not in the negative way you may think though. This is a story filled with dozens of plot beats and character moments, some of which I would have liked to spend more time with on top of the already staggering 180-minute runtime, just because what we get is so good.

A lot of that has to do with the film’s performances, which are uniformly excellent. No surprise there since the cast list is a murderers’ row so stacked that it’s genuinely laughable how some big names show up just to deliver a handful of lines before exiting again. These are the types of high caliber stars that would normally headline productions themselves, and include the likes of Matt Damon, Josh Hartnett, Kenneth Branagh, Rami Malek, Olivia Thirlby, Alden Ehrenreich, Casey Affleck, Dane DeHaan, David Dastmalchian, Jason Clarke, David Krumholtz, Macon Blair, Matthias Schweighöfer, and many more.

Damon gets the lion’s share of the supporting cast screentime, simply devouring his role as the no-nonsense General Leslie Groves, the military head of the Manhattan Project who took a gamble on appointing Oppenheimer and helping him build Los Alamos, the community of America’s brightest minds tasked with achieving the unthinkable. Similarly, Blunt gets an equally showy performance as Kitty, a complex woman who found herself the partner of an even more complex man. Expect lots of awards buzz for them as well as Downey Jr., whose boisterous final scene alone would be enough to earn him some nominations.

As Oppenheimer, Murphy gets far less overt opportunities for scenery chewing, but nevertheless turns in an award-worthy performance himself. His rake-thin scientist possesses a godlike confidence in his intellect and silk-smooth charm around women, while internally he’s a simmering cauldron of conflicting emotions. Both driven and haunted by his manic desire to achieve the impossible, Oppenheimer knew that there was only ever one outcome from the moment he and his team started work on the bomb – the deaths of tens of thousands – and he did it anyway. He believed in and was loyal to his country, but was outspoken about the type of political rhetoric that could (and did) put him in the crosshairs of a U.S. government still gripped by the Red Scare.

And unlike the quantum physics Oppenheimer pioneered in the United States, Nolan leaves no ambiguity as to his feelings about the events that transpired 80 years ago, and how they set the world on a horrific path we have not yet turned away from. There are several layers to the story, evoking thoughts on modern day “Them vs. Us” politics, and even touching on mental health. There’s no denying that the result is a heavy and gloom-ridden film, but to call its message anti-war fatalism would be too simplistic. Instead, it’s anti-total annihilation of the human race. A cinematic clarion call.

There’s more to this film than just thespian excellence and sobering intellectual ponderings though. For a movie that spends most of its time with people in rooms just talking, Oppenheimer absolutely thunders along with not a single dull moment to be found. With musical wunderkind Ludwig Göransson’s brilliant score, constructed from recurring motifs and Geiger-counter clicks, spliced together with whirring visuals and atomic sparks, Nolan builds intense tension, awe, or dread. And when the release from all of that happens a number of times in the film, it hits home with the best sound I’ve ever heard in a movie.

Much has been made of Nolan and cinematographer Hoyt van Hoytema filming with 70mm IMAX cameras, and there’s certainly no complaints here about the results. Oppenheimer is a beautiful film, its eye-popping imagery dwarfing you when viewed on a screen big enough to give it its fully deserved showcase. But if I had to give you one criterion with which to pick where/how you view this movie, it would be whatever has the biggest and best sound system you can find (For reference, the screening I attended was at the new IMAX screen at V&A Waterfront in Cape Town, and the sound mix was pitch perfect).

In a film in which several facets seemed destined for awards season gold, Oppenheimer’s sound mixing/editing towers over all as the surest bet. Nolan meticulously builds up and maintains a soundscape that sometimes borders on the subliminal, and at other times – trust me, you’ll know when – ragdolls your spine with a godly rumbling. What makes it all so exceptional, though, is not just the volume and power, and split-second editing for peak effect, but also the restraint. As much as booming against your eardrums, Nolan also knows exactly when to use the sudden absence of sound to absolutely shatter you. It’s staggering stuff.

As a result, Oppenheimer stands as Nolan’s magnum opus. Its story and themes are timely, realized on screen by a collection of genius and talent the likes of which would rival the community of Los Alamos in 1942. In a post-pandemic world where the film industry is still striving to return to audience attendance norms, if there was ever a movie that demanded the full cinema experience instead of waiting to watch it at home, Oppenheimer would unequivocally be it.

Ironically, it’s a film that find its metaphorical parallel not in the nuclear fusion-powered atomic bomb at the heart of its story, but rather the hydrogen bomb which the eponymous scientist opposed. Instead of fission, that “super” bomb used fusion, meticulously combining various elements through perfectly calculated but functionally insane pressure and force, exponentially building energy and tension until it resulted in a devastating explosion of sight, sound, and concussive force unlike anything that ever came before it. The hydrogen bomb obliterates anything in its path, which is Oppenheimer in a nutshell. Be prepared to be blown away.

Oppenheimer is in cinemas, including IMAX, from 21 July.


Oppenheimer review

Boasting a masterly level of technical craft, combined with awards-worthy performances from the entire cast, and deep, thoughtful scripting, writer-director Christopher Nolan has produced the best work of his illustrious career. Oppenheimer is staggering in its achievement and demands to be seen on the biggest screen with the best sound to do it justice.

 10
Oppenheimer was reviewed on IMAX