Oppenheimer might be the most Christopher Nolan movie yet. The biopic is sprawling in scope, a knotted braid of three different time periods presented in interpolated order. It's more star-studded you than possibly imagine, with practically every character (no matter how few lines they have) played by a recognizable actor looking to check "work with Christopher Nolan" off their bucket list. And, of course, its run time is epic too, clocking in at three hours.
To some extent, I think Oppenheimer is successful enough to earn these indulgences. The timey-wimey-ness of the biopic largely works (save an exception I'll get to) because it directly juxtaposes two core, critical truths of its subject: the man ushered in a previously impossible era for Weapons of Mass Destruction, and later became an outspoken opponent of them. The length of the film largely works (again, save an exception) because it provides the space to show that these two "versions" of Oppenheimer were not as incompatible as one might think, but were both within the man all along.
The star-studdedness of film just works, period, because when you can assemble a team of All Stars like this, you can rely on having an entertaining Home Run Derby. It would spoil the fun to reveal too many of the people who show up in Oppenheimer at one point or another, though certainly it spoils nothing to say that Cillian Murphy is strong at the hub of the movie. And most of the time, just as I'm beginning to wonder why such a big name would take such a small part, you get the grandstanding scene that shows why. (Emily Blunt is the strongest example of this.)
However, there is an aspect of the movie that simply didn't work for me at all: the "political thriller" story line. Oppenheimer tracks the man's "rise" and "fall" as you would expect, but also spends an outsized amount of time focusing on a Senate confirmation hearing for the man who orchestrated that fall, Lewis Strauss. I think that on just about every level, this aspect of the movie -- which takes up a full third of its run time -- is a misguided detour in an otherwise powerful film.
At the most basic level, I think the "Strauss hearing" story line fails because Oppenheimer himself appears nowhere in it. It's manifestly not about the biopic's principle subject. Structurally, it isn't woven into the film very effectively; where other "rise" and "fall" moments are juxtaposed right against each other to pair every triumph with a setback (and vice versa), the movie's expected climax -- the bomb test -- comes with a full hour of run time remaining... and then most of what follows is this awkward coda of the Senate hearing.
Most notably: thematically, this plot line doesn't work because it undermines the key emotional takeaway of the movie. The bulk of the story is keen to deliver a complex picture of J. Robert Oppenheimer, and leave you torn about how to evaluate his place in history: is he a hero or a villain? But the hearing story line is a lengthy take down of a man who tried to take Oppenheimer down, which slides an unhelpful thumb on the scales. If we need to witness the comeuppance of a man clearly presented as a "villain," that must by proxy make the object of his ire a "hero."
In short, I'd excise the entire Strauss hearing from the movie, relegating it to one of those on-screen blocks of "what happened next" text you often see at the end of a biopic. This would give the added benefit of removing one of the more unnecessary indulgences of the movie -- the fact that this story line is presented in black and white. I think the only thing you'd lose is that two of the stronger performances, from Robert Downey Jr. and Alden Ehrenreich, are centered in this part of the movie.
(Though there is one other indulgence where you just have to let Nolan be Nolan: it's kind of laughable to film this entire movie on IMAX cameras when the bulk of it is about tense conversations in tiny rooms. Collectively, there are only about 10 minutes of footage over three hours that showcase the scope one would associate with an IMAX screen. Short version: you can totally watch this movie at home and lose nothing.)
If I dedicated more of my write-up here to identifying what I didn't like about Oppenheimer, let me close by circling back to say that I still found it pretty good overall. (In any case, I think plenty of louder voices than mine are out there singing its praises.) I give it a B-. If you're the sort of person who cares about Hollywood award season, this is probably a movie you'll have to watch between now and then to be in the loop (and it will be better than many of the other movies you'll "have to watch"). But I think Christopher Nolan has been better than this.
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