I couldn’t write about this without include some small spoilers (not about facts of history obviously but more so stylistic choices and meanings and messages) so I would recommend seeing it before reading if you are interested!

A lot was made during the height of the Barbenheimer craze about, if you were doing a double feature, which movie you should see first: Barbie or Oppenheimer? Before seeing either, I was convinced you had to see Oppenheimer first and then Barbie afterwards as a pick me up after the drama of Oppenheimer. Nothing else made sense. But now, after seeing both (on separate days), I’ve realized that the best way to view both films is not as a double feature at all. Particularly Oppenheimer is the kind of movie you need to sit with and process for long after you leave the theater and jumping straight into another film would not give you the full effect. Oppenheimer has that power. It stays with you. I’m still now thinking about some of the ideas posed, the concepts questioned, what it meant then, what it means now, and what it will mean for the future. 

At its most basic level, the movie tells the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer, a physicist tapped to lead the mission to create the atomic bomb during World War II. The movie is both a profile of a tortured genius (tortured by his own genius, the things he knows and can understand that no one else can) and a historical drama. I knew vaguely about this event in history but essentially none of the details. It was fascinating to see everything play out in the film. Yes, I understand this is not a documentary and not 100% historically accurate but it tries to stay true to the facts. So much so actually that it doesn’t do something many historical movies usually do which is create composite characters out of multiple real historical figures to streamline the story. Oppenheimer includes all real people with real names which honestly makes the story harder to follow, but helps it to feel more real. 

Along those lines, the movie starts off at a relentless pace. I struggled to keep up at first and was stressed that I was missing things, like who certain characters were and how they knew each other and their names and motivations, etc. But at a certain point, I had to just surrender to the movie and hope I understood enough that it would come together in the end and it did. It is not the kind of movie that stops to explain anything to the audience: not the science, not the plot. You pick up whatever you can and make do. Ultimately, anything I may have missed did not affect my enjoyment of the movie or the impact I felt like it had on me and just makes me all the more eager to see what I notice on repeat viewings that I didn’t get the first time.

Speaking of the pace, this movie is a solid 3 hours long. It is essentially broken up into 3 acts across the 3 hours: 1) J. Robert Oppenheimer’s background and career, 2) building the bomb, 3) the aftermath of dropping the bomb. When the first hour took off running and zipped through locations and years, I thought the movie would feel way shorter than 3 hours because of how fast it was moving. But it actually had the opposite effect; they covered so much ground in the first part, I thought way more than an hour would have passed in that time. The first was probably my least favorite hour of the film, just setting the scene. However, from what I’ve seen and heard, it seems like most people disliked the third hour the most. This hour, the aftermath section of the film, kind of becomes like a legal drama. I think the people who disliked it felt that way because it is a lot of just people talking which, if you’re a Christopher Nolan fan looking for action, I can see how that would not be your speed. But I loved it. I’m always interested in a courtroom drama (I’m basically a lawyer from the amount of Law and Order I’ve watched) and there were plot twists in places I didn’t even know I should be expecting twists. I think, overall, if you go into this movie expecting action like you’d find in Mission Impossible or even Christopher Nolan’s other movies like Inception or The Dark Knight, you will be disappointed. For a movie about an enormous bomb, there is definitely more talking than physical action. Tense, dramatic, extremely consequential talking, but talking nonetheless.

To offset the many talking scenes, the movies employs some bold stylistic choices that keep it visually interesting. The most obvious of these from the start is the use of black and white vs. color. The movie switches back and forth between color palettes, with certain scenes in black and white and others in color. At first it seems like the reason might be to separate timelines, but then some scenes we’ve already seen in black and white are then shown in color and it all gets muddled. By the end, we realize it’s a question of objectivity vs. subjectivity. The black and white scenes are meant to be an objective view of what happened while the color scenes are J. Robert Oppenheimer’s perspective on those moments. I think this delineation paints a fascinating picture of what it was like to be inside this man’s head.

Narratively, the movie also returns multiple times to one interaction between J. Robert Oppenheimer and Albert Einstein. Each time we see it, we are given more information about it and the level of significance of the moment changes, until suddenly it seems as if the whole film hinges on this one moment. I loved the reveal it brings at the end and the impact of that scene, how one small interaction can be interpreted so many ways that say more about the interpreter than the moment itself.

The other major stylistic choice came in the moment of the Trinity test, the first test of the atomic bomb. This is essentially THE moment of the film. The moment you know is coming from the beginning, the moment that concluded act 2, the moment that is make or break for history. This is why you go see the film in a theater, to experience that impact in a physical way. There are agonizing minutes of lead up, showing everyone prepping for the explosion. When the countdown began, I could literally feel everyone in the theater on the edge of their seats. The tension and anxiety built up so perfectly. At “one”, everyone physically braced for impact. And then nothing. It was silent. White flashed across the screen, we saw characters’ reactions, the destruction, but it was totally and completely silent. At first, I felt slightly disappointed and confused. It didn’t seem as impactful to show an enormous explosion with no noise. I thought the moment would be more visceral. But the longer the silence went on, the more and more unsettling it became to hear only your own breathing and blood rushing in your ears to the point where it was actually terrifying how quiet it was. The silence created way more fear and anxiety than a loud noise could have. I thought it was really genius the way it subverted expectation and heightened the anxiety even more. It’s like, for a moment, we were all still holding our breaths, not yet ready to process the fact that this experiment actually did work and what that would mean for the future. And then, once we’ve accepted the silence, we’re hit with what I’ve aptly heard described as an “audio jumpscare”. The boom comes in, so delayed and so loud I actually jumped in my seat. Reality is back. 

The reality of the atomic bomb is actually an important and interesting question in regards to this movie. The film has sparked many debates online about whether it seems to side in favor of or against the bomb, meaning using it in warfare, building it in the first place, etc. Some have felt that since the movie doesn’t actually show any of the devastation caused by the bomb in Japan, that it is leaving the more negative stuff out of the story in order to gloss over the true heinousness of the moment. But I honestly don’t know how you could watch this movie and think it wanted audiences to come away feeling good about any of this. Sure, there are the more overt moments in the aftermath where J. Robert Oppenheimer is distraught and confused about everything that happened and essentially says as much to various people. Even when giving his “victory speech” to the residents of Los Alamos (the town built in the desert to house the Manhattan Project) after the bomb was successfully deployed, Oppenheimer is completely detached from himself and reality and hears the cheering and clapping as hysterical and deranged. But to me, the most telling moments were the most mundane. One scene in which a group of important men try to decide which cities to drop the bomb on genuinely made me sick to stomach. That they could sit there and so cavalierly discuss something that would cause immense human destruction was so subtly poignant. The tone of the movie communicates so much more than the outright visuals or text. Any scene showing people celebrating any aspect of the bomb’s “success” just feels wrong.

On the real world question of the atomic bomb, that’s much more complicated. I read a review of the film that said we are all taught in school that dropping those bombs on Japan ended World War II and saved the lives of countless U.S. soldiers, but the movie paints a less jingoistic picture. I did not know, and is pointed out in the film, that Germany had already surrendered before the bomb was dropped. Many felt like Japan would be soon to follow and the war would fizzle out on its own. The scientists in the film begin to question if their work was necessary anymore, as did I in the audience. Some had made the argument that research into nuclear weapons was happening across the globe at that point and if the U.S. didn’t move forward with it, someone else would. Basically, if it’s going to get built anyway, it should be us before anyone else. I can kind of buy that argument but it’s flimsy at best. But to convince the scientists to keep working on the project after Germany surrenders, Oppenheimer makes the most compelling version of this argument that I’ve heard and one that I think encapsulates the film’s feelings on the matter. He says that by using a nuclear weapon, we would create a horrific demonstration of why it could never, ever be used again. It’s not about getting there first because that’s some achievement or because it gives you power. It’s about making the argument to everyone else working towards the same thing that just because we can make it, doesn’t mean we should. For the sake of humanity and the planet.

It is impossible to talk about this movie without mentioning the cast. This cast is equal parts extensive and impressive. Every actor in Hollywood was either in Barbie or Oppenheimer this summer. The Oppenheimer casting even became a running joke between my supervisor and I at work because we get industry news emails and every day for 6 months we would get an email that new actors were cast in Oppenheimer. In some ways, it’s an interesting choice to have every character be a known actor because it can take you out of the moment. Every time someone turns around you’re like, “Wait a minute. Is that Josh Peck?” Everybody is somebody. But at the same time, it’s kind of an ingenious way to deal with the problem of not creating composite characters. You have so many different characters and names that are hard to remember and keep straight, but they’re easier to remember from scene to scene when you can recognize the actor. I don’t remember the name of Rami Malek’s character or even really what his official role was, but I could track him throughout the film because I know Rami Malek which definitely aided in my understanding of the story and the players. (Also, as a sidenote, if you Google any of these people, even the most minor characters in the movie, they were all like insanely impressive scientists in real life.)

With such a star-studded cast, we were bound to get incredible performances. Cillian Murphy, of course, is in every way the star. Robert Downey Jr., Matt Damon, Josh Hartnett, and David Krumholtz are all amazing and unique in supporting roles. Emily Blunt as Oppenheimer’s wife is also great, but isn’t given much to do save for one really special monologue towards the end. I could go through each individual performance, but all I will say is expect multiple acting Oscar nominations for this film (in addition to the many other nominations it will likely receive).

Ultimately, I think this movie is definitely worth the watch. Not just as a way to fill your time but really as something powerful that gets under your skin and makes you think. About American history, about global politics, about the way our perspective changes over time as a society, about the way we build people up and then tear them down. The movie has so much to say and says it so well. It can be a lot at times, a lot of talking and science gibberish, and I know that can get boring for some people, but I think if you try to appreciate the bigger picture and the emotion and tension coming off the screen instead of trying to hang on every single word, it’s a much easier and more enjoyable watch. Just know what you’re getting yourself into going in and set your expectations accordingly. I will definitely be revisiting this film and highly, highly recommend everyone watch it if they have the chance.

2023 Count: 15 seasons, 35 movies, 1 special