It took nine seconds to decimate the city of Hiroshima with just one first generation atom bomb. That was in 1945. Today, and as of January 2023, there are over 12,500 advanced nuclear warheads around the world. Relating that fact to the review of this film, it doesn’t matter whether the atom bomb was invented or the ability to split the nucleus of an atom was discovered. If we could put the knowledge of weaponizing atomic energy into a box, lock it and through away the key, we would still have a huge problem; because the name on that box would read – Pandora.
Greek mythology also tells us that Pandora was betrothed to Prometheus. Ironically, the Prometheus referred to in this review is the Pulitzer winning autobiography of the titular J. Robert Oppenheimer. Based on American Prometheus, Oppenheimer from revered director Christopher Nolan sets about telling us exactly what the book does, and that is to relive the triumph and tragedy of the ‘father of the atom bomb’.
True to Nolan’s style of presenting an organic puzzle, the narrative is an interview within an interview interconnecting three crucial timelines in Oppenheimer’s life. Presented in black and white is the 1959 Senate Confirmation Hearing of the Atomic Energy Commission for Director Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr) who was responsible for defaming Oppenheimer as a traitor, communist and spying for the Russians. Due to this accusation, the AEC hearing begins in 1954 revoking Oppenheimer’s security clearance. And the planning and resources leading up to the detonation of the first atom bomb – codenamed Trinity – takes place in 1945. During the constant shift in these timelines, we come across a plethora of characters (from A-list actors) orbiting Oppenheimer like charged neutrons, pun intended. The most important are General Leslie Groves (Matt Damon) supervising the Trinity program at the New Mexico desert in Los Alamos. Director Lewis Strauss as a direct threat and rival from the get go. And the women in his life, wife Kitty (Emily Blunt) and mistress Jean (Florence Pugh).
Several other important characters weave in and out of his life as a professor of theoretical physics, to heading the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, to his downfall as an all-American hero. During all this time, we are witnessing the slow build-up and moral anguish of a man who used his intellect and charismatic leadership to create something the world has never known before, and then realise that his creation is nothing but the key to end all life as we know it. This epiphany, if we can call it that, comes to Oppenheimer in flashes of vivid and horrific images. But even before that, Oppenheimer’s most tortured vision is the materialisation of a Sanskrit verse from the ancient scripture of the Bhagavad Gita – “I am now become Death, the destroyer of worlds”. With sunken eye sockets and haunting blue eyes looking at a distant but devastating future, Cillian Murphy as the titular Oppenheimer is an instant front-runner come awards season. Not because he ate one almond a day to transform his physical appearance, or because of his brilliant and layered personification of a psychologically tortured character, or because of the cold and unaffected relationship with the women in his life, but because of that short yet powerful scene when those words are spoken.
From its very first scene of rain drops creating ripple effects on the puddle of water it falls on, to the very last scene depicting annihilation of all life on Earth, Oppenheimer is an indicator that Nolan defies convention and mediocrity. Despite being overlong at 180 minutes, and seemingly unevenly paced, Oppenheimer is Nolan stepping away from his penchant for action and sci-fi adventure films while getting back to his roots. If you’re thinking Memento, you are in for a cerebral experience. Known for making us think, and even question what we see, this is Nolan channelling his magnum opus in not just telling the world what we have deliberately forgotten, but telling it a way we will never forget. With continuous bombardment of facts and figures, theoretical science and application, and historic names behind the nuclear arms development program, it’s a marathon of a film to get through, but never dull. The moment every viewer is waiting for comes two hours into the film and turns out to be Nolan’s crowning sequence. We first see it, then we hear it. Then, at the very end of the film and during a hair-raising conversation between Oppenheimer and Einstein, we feel it in all its wrath. We feel a sunken weight like watching a Greek tragedy unfold – and that is Prometheus stealing fire from Zeus and gifting it to mankind.
Rating: 
