Why Nolan’s latest work is his best, and why it accentuates his limitations.
The press junkets for a film of Oppenheimer’s scale are long and often gruelling. The actors travel all over the world. They are subjected to repetitive and tedious questions regarding how they were cast, what it was like to work with such wonderfully talented creatives, and how it felt to be filmed with IMAX cameras. As such, they begin to develop a shorthand: “any actor in the world would say yes to Chris Nolan”, “Cillian is carrying this whole thing on his shoulders, we are really there just to support his performance”, “to be honest you kind of get used to the massive cameras – they do make an awful noise though”. However, one such shorthand stood out to me, as it epitomises everything brilliant and flawed about Oppenheimer: the idea that Christopher Nolan has “refined” his filmmaking vision and achieved his “magnum opus”.
Now, exactly how Cillian Murphy and Matt Damon – the two actors who purported the above notion – understand the meaning of “refined” is open to interpretation. I cannot claim to speak for them. What their claim implies, however, is that Oppenheimer should not only be the purest of Nolan’s filmography – the most Nolian of Nolan films – but also the closest to achieving the ever-moving target of cinematic perfection.
Let’s consider what the film does well in relation to Nolan’s filmography. Like many of his other films, Oppenheimerrejects linearity, jumping between timelines and perspectives. To the film’s credit, this is wonderfully achieved. Where Tenet falls short due to its high concept or Interstellar labours under expositional dialogue, Oppenheimer is seamless. The film keeps a fast-pace and never feels overly convoluted. Of course, some of the credit here must go to the editing of Jennifer Lame, to my mind one of the outstanding editors working in Hollywood today.
Likewise, the cinematography indicates a mastery of craft on the part of Hoyte van Hoytema. Every frame belongs in a gallery, and the ingenuity and creativity from Hoytema and Nolan to use IMAX cameras – which have become a staple of Nolan’s style – to shoot close-ups cannot be understated. This is, without doubt, the most visually polished film Nolan has ever produced. Within such beautiful cinematography lies a wealth of outstanding performances from the likes of Robert Downey Jr., Emily Blunt, Benny Safdie, and, of course, Cillian Murphy, who I anticipate will be the first actor to win an Oscar for a Nolan film since Heath Ledger.
Finally, there is the sound design, which has often been credited as one of Nolan’s greatest weaknesses. For those fearing the muffled, disguised dialogue seen in The Dark Night Rises, Tenet, or Dunkirk, you can rest easy. This too is improved and, I would argue, is Oppenheimer’s greatest strength. The sound from the IMAX speakers in my theatre created tension; inspired dread, and even provoked a physical response from me. No other filmmaker employs or understands the power of sound to the extent that Nolan does. This is a film that demands to be seen on the big screen. There is one sequence where Oppenheimer announces that the atomic bomb has been dropped on Hiroshima that combines editing, cinematography, performance, and sound to create one of the greatest cinematic sequences of the 21stcentury. Truly, it is Nolan at his best.
Surely, therefore, Oppenheimer is the most “refined” of Nolan’s works, as Murphy and Damon suggest. To be fair, I do think there is some truth to the statement. What Nolan normally does well, he does excellently here.
That is not to say that the film is without flaw. Firstly, the female characters are tremendously under-written. Florence Pugh’s Jean Tadlock is given minimal screentime, in which she is generally presented as a mentally unstable, volatile symbol of temptation to Oppenheimer – both sexual and political. While these characteristics may reflect reality, we are not given enough time with the character to experience any depth beyond these basic traits. Most jarring is a sex scene – Nolan’s first – in which Tadlock pauses intercourse with Oppenheimer to pull a book of Sanskrit scripture off of his bookshelf, randomly open to a page containing his infamous “I am become death, destroyer of worlds” quote, have him read it to her, and then presume intercourse. All of course, while topless. Nudity and exposition each have a place in film, but why combine them needlessly and lazily in this single scene?
Emily Blunt’s Kitty Oppenheimer is given slightly more space to breathe and, at points, is able to see the reality that escapes her husband. There is no denying her ferocity or intellect. However, much of her screen-time goes towards painting her as incompetent, mainly due to her alcoholism and failings as a mother, sowing the seeds of doubt as to whether she will be able to testify on behalf of Oppenheimer. When Kitty does eventually testify, proving herself immensely competent, it only makes the incompetency Nolan goes to such great lengths to emphasise earlier in the film feel like the lead-up to some sort of plot-twist; “surprise! This woman is smarter than the men in the room, who’da thunk it?!”.
Alongside the film’s under-developed and under-utilised female characters, is its dedication to tell don’t show. We spent most of the first hour of the film watching characters tell Oppenheimer how brilliant he is, without ever really seeing this brilliance in action. When it comes to the development of the bomb itself, it seems that there were many other people equally if not more responsible for the creation of the atomic bomb than Oppenheimer. If you are trying to convince me that this physicist is the most important human of all time, you should probably show him doing some more physics.
Hence, Oppenheimer cannot be Nolan’s “refined” vision. Or can it? Nolan has always struggled to write women, think Olivia Wenscombe in The Prestige, Rachel Dawes in The Dark Knight, Ariadne in Inception, or Brand in Interstellar. All of whom generally motivate a male character through their love or their death, reject logic in favour of emotion, or pepper their more intelligent male counterparts with exposition-facilitating questions. Equally, Nolan has never been subtle. Consider Interstellar where Cooper – NASA’s ‘best astronaut’ – requires his crewmate to explain the basic premise of a black hole or Tenet where the film’s final twist is shown on camera, while being explained by Robert Pattinson’s Neil. Therefore, Nolan’s inability to write women and inability to show without telling are, as opposed to flaws of his style, staples of it. It makes sense that in his most “refined” vision, these elements of his filmmaking are at their most prominent.
This is not to say that Nolan is not an immensely accomplished filmmaker. Nor does it mean that Oppenheimer is a bad film. In fact, I would go as far to say that it is a great film from one of our greatest auteurs. However, I have lost hope that Nolan will be able to overcome his shortcomings. When his work is most “refined”, his weaknesses are at their most obvious.
“23-07-15 04 Oppenheimer Film” by Felton Davis is licensed under CC BY 2.0.