Oppenheimer: the man who wanted to be God

The dazzling cast including Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr. and Florence Pugh, to name but a few, bring to life Christopher Nolan’s flawless yet thrilling vision of the father of the atomic bomb.

The human never burns as well as what he adored, perhaps to absolve himself of the presumptuousness of having wanted to raise himself to the equal of the gods. Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy, guaranteed to be in the running for an Oscar), one of these fallen gods, “sees” the universe, he “sees” the ballet of electrons and knows how to read in the stars the promise of destruction contained in the fission of the atom.

Is he patriotic? Does he want the United States to win World War II? He will be sorry, in 1954, for not having been able to drop the atomic bombs on Hitler’s Germany, as if to please his accusers. But, at the beginning of his career, it was quantum physics that fascinated him, the possibility that the Universe in which we live was only one reality among many other parallels. He knows Albert Einstein (Tom Conti, badly chosen), criticizes him for not having been able to assume the consequences of his research. Because he can, he is aware of it, he is ready to carry the burden of nuclear destruction on his shoulders and in his soul.

Angel of Death…

Precisely, does Oppenheimer have a soul or is he just a genius tortured by his compatriots? A genius for whom the contingencies of the real world weigh too heavily? A man who reads to his mistress (Florence Pugh, unfortunately underused), in Sanskrit: “I am the angel of death, the destroyer of worlds”, the phrase of the Bhagavad-Gita Hindu, many years before the bombs were dropped. Oppenheimer is a man who, in Los Alamos, notices enough the maternal detachment of his wife (Emily Blunt, the only character to burn with an inner passion and to express it) to entrust their crying newborn child to neighbors and friends.

In his Oppenheimer of 180 min, without ever giving a clear narrative thread, Christopher Nolan puts the past in color and the present of 1954 in black and white. Because the world is no longer the same after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Allied victory having only led to a confrontation within the American authorities, Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.), awaiting his confirmation as Secretary of Commerce, throwing Oppenheimer into food for the McCarthyists.

Anti-communism and anti-Semitism merge, Robert Oppenheimer, the foreigner born of immigrant Jewish parents, the student of Cambridge in England and Göttingen in Germany, has too many European acquaintances not to be suspected. He is an intellectual, on the left, is anti-fascist and provides money to the Spanish Republicans. It is therefore suspicious.

J. Robert Oppenheimer – the “J” is for Julius. Like Caesar, one is tempted to remark – he is suspect because he is himself. Imbued with himself, aware of his superiority, vain – he will fleetingly wear a military uniform when Leslie Groves (Matt Damon, always equal to himself) will appoint him in charge of the Manhattan Project – Oppenheimer is not friendly and Christopher Nolan does not take the trouble to make him a little endearing. By nature, the father of the atomic bomb is disconnected from his humanity, his portrayal by Christopher Nolan therefore leaving moviegoers with an emotional hunger that Ludwig Göransson’s too often overexcited soundtrack fails to satisfy.

Rating: 4 out of 5