Blow Up the Outside World

I have to admit that I’m not exactly certain what makes a Christopher Nolan movie into, well, a Christopher Nolan movie. Back in the earlier part of his career I could have identified him as a director that wanted to make grounded films with interesting hooks. Whether it was Memento or Insomnia, a BatmanOne of the longest running, consistently in-print superheroes ever (matched only by Superman and Wonder Woman), Batman has been a force in entertainment for nearly as long as there's been an entertainment industry. It only makes sense, then that he is also the most regularly adapted, and consistently successful, superhero to grace the Silver Screen. movie or the The Prestige, I could trust there would be some odd storytelling flex that would give the film its unique and interesting perspective. “This movie is about putting Batman into a real, street-level world where a hero could actually exist,” or, “this is a movie about magicians that twists its timeline around itself.” I knew a Nolan film would be interesting, with a hook that would suck me in.

Lately, though, I tend to find that Nolan doesn’t so much have an interesting hook devised for his conceptually strong films so much as he comes up with a hook and then tries to make a film that’s interesting around it. Those two ways of approaching the film are not the same. A movie with magicians set in a grounded world (right up until it isn’t) comes from the story and then works its hooks in, whereas, “what if we told a movie forward and then told it backwards” (i.e. Tenet) is a hook looking for a story and it’s not the same thing.

I thought about this going into Oppenheimer. On the one hand there are a number of the characteristics of Nolan’s storytelling here: the focus on a single, dedicated man who will stop at nothing to achieve his goal; a twisting story that spans multiple decades and goes back and forth around its own story; muted color schemes and heavy, pounding music. But at the same time, I don’t see the hook of the movie. I won’t deny this is an interesting story with solid performances, but as far as Nolan’s style is concerned, this feels like one of his more muted efforts. When the only thing you have to do to make it less “Nolan” is set the film in proper, chronological order, then it doesn’t really feel like one of his stronger efforts.

The film follows the life and career of J. Robert Oppenheimer (played in the movie by Cillian Murphy). Oppenheimer, as we learn very early on, was the key, pivotal figure in the development of the United States’ Atomic Bomb. Without Oppenheimer’s drive and determination, as well as his brilliant mind, it is unlikely the U.S. would have developed the bomb so quickly, and so successfully, during World War II. Dropping the two bombs was how the U.S. was able to guarantee the complete surrender of Japan during the war. It was a defining moment of that war, and that was all due to Oppenheimer.

Like most driven, focused, brilliant men, Oppenheimer wasn’t easy to get along with. He drove many people away, and only a few men and women, including his wife, Kitty (Emily Blunt), could stand to work with him. He made his share of enemies, including the head of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), retired Rear Admiral Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey, Jr.). Strauss was, in fact, the man behind Oppenheimer’s downfall, calling into question the scientist’s allegiance to the U.S. and attempting to get his security clearance revoked, all over a perceived slight. This left Oppenheimer fighting for his life, so to speak, to try and keep his professional status in the community lest it all get stripped away.

The story of J. Robert Oppenheimer is interesting. As a man working in the 1930s and 1940s, it was inevitable that fears of communism and the Red Scare would pop up and affect his life. He had friends who were part of the American Communist Party. He, himself, was pro-union and supported workers rights. While he was never part of the Communist Party, he didn’t disagree with all of their points. He was a scientist and, as a man with a very analytical mind, he thought, “these things are right, these things are wrong, and that’s just the way it is.” He was not political, and that bit him in the end. That’s an interesting story, and credit where it’s due, Nolan does make (as writer and director) a very interesting character study of the man.

What struck me, though, was that Nolan did this in a way that felt like he was trying to give it an interesting hook, and then wrote the story of Oppenheimer around that hook. Instead of going from Oppenheimer’s early life, through his career as a professor, and then the head of the Los Alamos nuclear testing program, and beyond, the film starts late, with the beginning of his hearing on his security status, and then it bounces back and forth across three or four different periods in his life, telling a time-twisted story from something very simple and linear. And the time twisting, at least for me, was absolutely not needed.

Part of the issue is that, at times, it’s hard to keep track of where we are on the timeline. Nolan plays with a simple contrivance, having events in the future be shown in black and white while events in the past are shown in color. This works if there’s two time periods we’re bouncing between, so we can see when we’re at the hearing and when we’re following Oppenheimer’s life. But then there are other moments, in either black and white or color, that take place outside the standard timeline, like a meeting Oppenheimer had with Strauss, or an event at Los Alamos before we jump back further. These don’t have their own color scheme, either showing in black and white or color, and it takes a beat to understand where on the timeline they resolve to. These moments stick out, and they pull you from the movie, forcing you to try and understand what’s going on and why.

For me, it felt like these moments should have had their own color scheme. A more muted color the closer to the present we got, maybe even with a blue or sepia color tone so we could identify where we were. And it doesn’t help that as we move from the past and further towards the present, certain scenes are shown again, in color, giving us material we’ve already seen but not adding in context that may or may not align with what we already knew or assumed. It’s all too much, too twisted, when a more conventional structure actually would have helped the film.

I get it, Nolan wanted to give us a sense of what Oppenheimer was facing before we went back to see his life. A few scenes at the hearing, contextually tied to the scenes in the past we were watching, would have done that trick. We could have sensed something was wrong, that people were tearing apart his life, and then we could see what they were asking about. But going so non-traditional with the timeline, though, I felt that Nolan was just flexing, and for no reason. The way the timeline aligns didn’t help the flow of the film. For me it hurt it at the expense of being “artistic.”

It sucks that I found the timeline confusing in moments because the film around these times is fantastic. I loved the performances from Murphy and Blunt, two people who completely own their roles, and the screen as well. I could have spent even more time with these two actors as these two people, as their on screen presence was so good. If somehow there was an Oppenheimer II: Let’s Tackle the Warp Drive, I would absolutely show up for it, stupid as it would be, just to see Murphy and Blunt in their roles again.

And the main meat of the movie is good. It’s a long film, clocking in at three hours, but it moves at a quick pace, giving us just the scenes we need (in the past) to see how Oppenheimer went from physics student to head of the U.S. atomic weapons development program. It never feels boring or tedious even though ninety-five percent of the film is people just sitting or standing, talking about physics and fission and fusion and stuff. The material gives you what you need to understand the science talk, all without talking down to the audience. This story works.

I just wish Nolan hadn’t tried to be so Nolan about it. Worse, I wish he hadn’t failed on that front. By trying to be the auteur everyone expects, he actually took a straightforward, interesting story and made it weird and convoluted. It feels like he wanted to make a movie about Oppenheimer but with the weird, sci-fi flourish of Tenet. I found that movie to be tedious and overly complex, and while Oppenheimer is never tedious, and is still needlessly complex. Nolan needs to settle down and actually focus on what he’s good at: telling great stories about complex people. If he could just do that, every film of his would be a winner.