Director: Christopher Nolan
Starring: Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr, Florence Pugh, Josh Hartnett, Casey Affleck, Rami Malek, Kenneth Branagh, Benny Safdie, Jason Clarke,
Certificate: 15
Run Time: 180 mins

Oppenheimer is the latest by Christopher Nolan and nominally a biopic on the father of the atomic bomb. Although $100 million is a relatively high budget, it’s his smallest film since The Prestige. Inspired by the 2005 novel, American Prometheus, the film opens on exploring Oppenheimer’s (Cillian Murphy) early academia life, his recruitment by Leslie Groves (Matt Damon) and direction of the Manhattan Project to the 1952 security hearing which cemented his fall from grace.

As you’d expect, Nolan doesn’t stick to storytelling convention and Oppenheimer is told in a non-linear fashion.  The colour sequences (titled ‘Fission’) are from the perspective of Oppenheimer and the black-and-white sequences (‘Fusion’) from Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.), the driving force of the revoking of Oppenheimer’s security clearance.

Whilst Nolan is one of, if not my favourite working director, neither Dunkirk or Tenet rank among his best work for me and both left me feeling empty. I was worried Oppenheimer was going to fall into the same camp (and was prepared to lay the blame on Kenneth Branagh who features in all three) but luckily, my apprehension was unfounded. 

Oppenheimer is a tension-fuelled, thought-provoking minor-key masterpiece and is straight up there with Nolan’s best work. It’s an incredibly rich piece of work and it left me feeling stone-cold with its characters haunting deliberation over the consequences of their work. This is a largely dialogue-heavy film for its lengthy three hour running time and except a breathtaking sequence depicting the Trinity test (even more impressive considering the minimal CGI), is largely bereft of action. 

The script is brilliantly written (although I’m sure some will take umbrage that the characters speak like Nolan), constantly ramping in tension and Jennifer Lame’s editing is a monumental achievement. This is a film that will be studied in academia and Nolan cleverly first portrays fragments of a scene to then revisit and develop the image later on is a stroke of genius. Many filmmakers make the mistake of telling rather than showing but Nolan has always treated his audience as being intelligent. 

Cillian Murphy has often represented one of the mechanisms to a successful Nolan film, and steps up to the lead role for Oppenheimer. His performance is simply sensational and a career-best. He conveys many of the emotions Oppenheimer is feeling in any given moment with his facial expressions, his mannerisms note-perfect. I particularly appreciated how Murphy’s demeanour changes when the character realises the consequences of his actions.

It’s not all Murphy’s show and Oppenheimer is stacked with A-list actors. Emily Blunt puts in a terrific performance as the pioneer’s wife, Kitty and Robert Downey Jr is surely going to be Oscar-nominated for his slippery, yet atypical portrayal of Lewis Strauss. 

Elsewhere, Josh Hartnett is great as Ernest Lawrence, a scientist who regularly reminds Oppenheimer “theory will only take you so far” and Benny Sadie is another highlight as  charismatic Hungarian theoretical physicist Edward Teller.  Tom Conti quite literally becomes Albert Einstein and Gary Oldman makes for a chilling President Truman in a memorable scene. I mentioned earlier Kenneth Branagh being the weak point of both Dunkirk and Tenet but he’s great as Niels Bohr, who was an influential influence on Oppenheimer in his early studies. 

The film is beautifully shot by now-Nolan regular Hoyte van Hoytema and Ludwig Göransson’s score is the glue that holds the film together. Both the sound and music are a character in themselves, Göransson’s predominantly string-based score unnerving and beautiful – I will be very surprised if there is a better soundtrack in cinema this year. Some have complained it’s overused but I disagree and the moments where there is silence on the screen are only made more impactful. Many have also criticised the sound mixing on some of Nolan’s past work, in that the sound can often drown out the dialogue, but I didn’t have a problem with it here and it only heightened the drama unfolding on-screen. 

Oppenheimer is a masterpiece in Nolan’s already remarkable career and an unconventional but bold take on the biopic genre. This is especially impressive considering many recent biopics released in the last decade or so have suffered from being formulaic. Effectively Nolan’s JFK, Oppenheimer is not only a riveting and fascinating deconstruction of the nuclear mastermind but an emotional wallop.

Much of what cements Nolan’s best works as cinematic classics is their rewatchability and having seen Oppenheimer twice, I want to see it again. It’s a film so dense and rich that you’ll pick out a new detail each time you revisit it and the three hour length passes by in a flash. In a summer where we’ve had disappointments such as The Flash and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, which have been ugly, big-budget sequels that tarnish their legacy, Oppenheimer has restored my faith in cinema. It’s one of the best films of the year and a must-see. 

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (Perfect)