Oppenheimer | Bomb witnesses

Oppenheimer is not just a biographical film about “the father of the atomic bomb” or just the story of a page of history. What Christopher Nolan offers is an immersion in the lives of men who changed the destiny of humanity.

We look Oppenheimer as if we were there. In college classrooms, in the lab village of Los Alamos, in the cramped room of the physicist’s security hearing. The director of Dunkirk and D’Inception manages to transport us by placing his camera in the middle of scientific, political, but also human conversations. This last aspect may be a shortcoming of his past works.

Short, fast-paced scenes, especially in the first hour, as well as jumps back and forth in time simulate as much the excitement in the brain of young J. Robert Oppenheimer as the pressure exerted on it during the McCarthy era. The tension is exacerbated by Ludwig Göransson’s score, as brilliant as it is distressing (tenetboth Black Panther).

But what really keeps us in the moment is the gaze of Cillian Murphy, who masterfully embodies the German-American. With a gentle intensity, we feel his determination to defeat the Nazis in the race for the bomb, his discomfort with the use of atomic weapons against Japan, but also his romantic and social uncertainties – very present in his marriage (tragic Emily Blunt in the role of his wife Kitty). The Irish actor will certainly win all the awards.

Multiple fissions

According to the book American Prometheus, by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, Christopher Nolan divided his film in two ways. The life of J. Robert Oppenheimer is told in three stages, in a rather linear way, starting with his studies at Harvard, then in Europe, and his return to the United States, at the University of California at Berkeley. It is there that he is recruited for the Manhattan project, in 1942, by Major Leslie Groves (Matt Damon, who still finds a way to be convincing). Faced with the urgency of creating an atomic bomb before Germany, Oppenheimer assembles a team made up of the most brilliant minds in the country and brings them together in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where a vast campus is established in record time in which the scientists and their families also live.

This is where the action moves for the second part of the three-hour feature film. The verbal contests between scholars and the dynamics in the village are fascinating and could have been more exploited. It is also in this sector that the Trinity atomic test takes place. Although we know that it will be conclusive, we experience the same fear that we read on each of the faces covered with protective glasses. Here again, Ludwig Göransson’s music has a lot to do with it, as do Hoyte Van Hoytema’s images and Jennifer Lame’s editing. The force of the explosion – created without digital special effects – is indescribable. The composition of this scene will be studied in film lessons.

Narrative fusion

President Harry Truman’s (Gary Oldman, briefly excellent) decision to drop bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki kicks off the final act.

The atrocity is not shown, but we feel it. Oppenheimer believes he has “blood on his hands”. He tries to use his influence to improve international control of nuclear weapons.

The creation of the United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in 1946, then of an advisory committee chaired by Oppenheimer, leads to friction between the scientist and politicians, including Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr., who could win his first Oscar).

This is at the center of a series of black and white scenes that Christopher Nolan has been scattering from the first minutes. A former president of the AEC, Strauss goes before a committee in the hope of obtaining a position in the Senate.

The other flashback we’ve been following from the start, this one in drab colors, is Oppenheimer’s security hearing. His leftist ideas and his old Communist Party associates, including Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh on edge), are seen as risks by an administration in the midst of the Cold War. His loyalty and integrity are questioned.

These two parallel stories make up the finale ofOppenheimer and come together wonderfully in the final scene between the title character and Albert Einstein (Tom Conti, totally believable).

Oppenheimer is a great film that will go down in history, especially because it tells it so well. As far as we are concerned, however, it is not the expected masterpiece. By his audacity and his sensitivity, Interstellar remains our favorite from Christopher Nolan. This is of course a matter of taste, but which is justified here by the experience offered. The impression of witnessing the events ofOppenheimer is so strong and the reflection offered at the very end so powerful that it is almost impossible to enjoy it as mere entertainment. That’s not a bad thing, however. It’s cinema.

Indoors

Biographical drama

Oppenheimer

Christopher Nolan

With Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Robert Downey Jr.

3 a.m.

8.5/10