‘Oppenheimer’ is an epic, but not quite the bomb

“Oppenheimer” is the most important piece of cinematic homework of 2023, something that would be invaluable to civics classes learning about the back rooms of U.S. governmental maneuvering. (But is that stuff taught in civics classes?) Writer-director Christopher Nolan also accidentally shows why there hadn’t been a major movie made about the most pivotal and controversial figure in American history until now – it’s really hard to make this stuff coherent enough to be compelling.

He almost pulls it off, helped by the through-line of Oppenheimer himself (Cillian Murphy), who is timid enough to be led around on a leash by the people above him but driven enough to lead the team of scientists below him. The film positions him midway between American hero (his invention of the atomic bomb ended WWII and prevented additional deaths) and human monster (hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed in order for the war to end).

Perhaps to the film’s credit — but also to its confusion, and certainly to its detriment as pure entertainment — it’s more about political machinations. The Senate confirmation hearings of Robert Downey Jr.’s cabinet-post-seeker Strauss and a kangaroo court backroom hearing about Oppenheimer’s loyalty to the U.S. provide the framing mechanism. It leads to a fascinating takeaway: The father of the atomic bomb was silenced when he could’ve become a great speaker against weapons proliferation.

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Talking the world to death

The maneuverings are hard to follow at first, and of so much less moral importance than the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Hiroshima and Nagasaki civilians. Rightly or wrongly, it’s not an obvious storytelling choice by Nolan.

I do think it’s wrong that “Oppenheimer” is 3 hours, though. Three hours for a mix of action, intrigue and spectacle can be forgivable – the “Mission: Impossibles,” “John Wicks” and “Spider-Mans” – but the first 90 minutes of this dialog-heavy film feels like 9 hours.

The back 90 minutes are better, and this is where the Oscars will be won. The pacing becomes varied starting with the Los Alamos test bomb. In a film slathered with Ludwig Göransson’s score to the point where I was getting jittery, Nolan finally tones it down and lets the visuals of the explosion and scientists’ reactions speak for themselves.

This is an impossible experiment to pull off, since you can’t prove a negative, but I bet someone who watches only the last 90 minutes will have nearly the same experience as someone who watches the full 180. Yes, they’ll be missing a little something. But the Strauss and Oppenheimer hearings are so packed with backstabbing, obfuscation and gamesmanship that even an attentive viewer of this behind-closed-doors drama never becomes an insider.

The shift of time devotion away from the Japan bombings – they’re not shown on screen, although scientists’ reactions to the news make an impression – and toward rooms of chattering people seemingly makes “Oppenheimer” less showy.

It ultimately affirms a common view

Seemingly, Nolan crafts a moral think piece rather than a twisted version of a thrilling, heroic space-race movie. However, he does rely on broad heroes and villains in any given moment. For example, Matt Damon comes in as General Groves, the security chief at Los Alamos.

Groves’ only purpose is to harass Oppenheimer and distract him from his scientific work. Later, the film does the broad switch where all is forgiven between the powerful military man and the infamous scientist, but this is a mainstream moviemaking cheat, not subtle characterization.

For crying out loud, Groves (or at least colleagues he can influence, such as human slime played by Casey Affleck) has people killed on the off chance they might leak information – despite the fact that sharing information with the Soviet Union might’ve been a perfectly sane policy.

“Oppenheimer” illustrates the waste of taxpayer money on bomb development and the associated security apparatus and spy games, but it’s also clearly in favor of spending that money. It highlights the wrongness of harassing Americans for being members of the Communist Party, but it seems unengaged with the irony that the harassers themselves use Communist-type coercion.

The film takes the standard view that it’s morally wrong to kill innocent people, but with one exception: if it prevents future deaths of American soldiers and innocents. So if the nausea-inducing means is the only – or best – way to achieve the wonderful end, then it is defensible. That’s the position of most American viewers going into the film.

The end of the world after all

“Oppenheimer” spends a lot of its time weaving through the shadowlands of politics and reveals a lot of disgusting truths, yet doesn’t make any particularly daring statements. And it’s not a math or science teaching tool. Nolan completely skims over that stuff. Oppenheimer himself says he’s not a math guy – he has a team for that.

The technical filmmaking prowess can’t be denied. This is among the most impressive aging makeup I’ve ever seen; in particular, note Oppenheimer and his wife Kitty (Emily Blunt). About 30 “Oh, I know that guy!” actors parade through the film as it covers several decades, and you’ll even recognize some of them right away.

Nolan’s final statement – in a conversation between Oppenheimer and his old friend Einstein (Tom Conti) – ties the 1940s in with 2023 in a powerful fashion. I’m not sure if “Oppenheimer” makes this final sharp point on purpose or by accident.

One of the most shocking “things that haven’t happened” in world history is that the human race has not been obliterated by atomic-bomb warfare. The creation of the atomic bomb did ultimately lead to the end of the world as we know it (the expiration date is the only thing still up for debate), but it did so via the mainstreaming of all the bad early 20^th century political ideas – most notably the idea that money can be created by the government without ill effects.

As the government builds the whole town of Los Alamos in a month, hires scientists and people to spy on the scientists (and people to spy on the spies, and people to judge the spies), not once does an official say “But can we afford this?”

IMDb Top 250 trivia

• As with all Christopher Nolan films, IMDb voters love “Oppenheimer.” Released in July, the film ranks at No. 67 with an 8.4 rating.
• Even so, it’s beat out by five other Nolan films: “The Dark Knight” (No. 3, 9.0), “Inception” (No. 14, 8.8), “Interstellar” (No. 22, 8.7), “The Prestige” (No. 42, 8.5) and “Memento” (No. 56, 8.4).