A towering, awe-inspiring technical achievement and a deeply disturbing, harrowing, brilliant examination and condemnation of American exceptionalism, the military-industrial complex, McCarthyism, unchecked ego, the pursuit of scientific and technological progress without regard for ethics or consequences, and the perversion of that progress for untold evil.

I’ve always considered myself more of a Christopher Nolan skeptic than a lot of others seem to be. I thought he was certainly a solid director but wasn’t as much of a Nolan disciple as others; there was always something in each of his films that I couldn’t quite put my finger on holding them back from being truly all-timers for me. So, while I figured Oppenheimer would be pretty decent, my expectations weren’t all that high. Especially concerning for me was how Nolan was going to handle the politics of the Manhattan Project and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The politics of his previous films have all been sort of dubiously bad; Interstellar seemingly argues that we should abandon a dying Earth and find a new planet to colonize and continue the mode of production and consumption habits that led to Earth’s demise in the first place, The Dark Knight is honestly kind of inscrutable for me as far as what exactly Nolan is trying to say (but at the risk of sounding very stupid and silly, just feels reactionary to me), and The Dark Knight Rises has a genuinely evil message that’s a super transparent attack on the Occupy movement and class warfare in general. Therefore, I assumed that Nolan would take the unfortunately popular (and totally incorrect and ahistorical) view that the atomic bombings were a necessary evil to end World War II and prevent further bloodshed.

Imagine my shock to see that all these doubts were entirely wrong. Oppenheimer has completely surpassed everything else in Nolan’s filmography, even building on themes and ideas he’s wrestled with previously (but smarter and more well-realized) and employing filmmaking techniques and unique story structuring he’s used before (but even more competently). From start to finish, an absolutely gripping film that immediately pulls you in and never lets you go. On top of that, Oppenheimer is a nuanced exploration on the morality of the Manhattan Project and, more than anything else, of J. Robert Oppenheimer as an individual. Contrary to my fears, I don’t think the politics here regarding the atomic bombings could have been any better! Oppenheimer very clearly presents the atomic bombings as an imaginable, irredeemable evil that ultimately did nothing to end the war and instead has likely doomed us to extinction in nuclear hellfire. I am genuinely mystified as to how anyone could walk away from this understanding it to be arguing anything else, let alone being a piece of pro-war, pro-American propaganda. Of course, characters in the film argue that the bombings are a necessary evil to end the war, but the film makes no indication whatsoever that these people are remotely in the right – quite the opposite in fact! They’re portrayed as inhuman, callous monsters with no regard for human life!

The nonlinear story structure of Oppenheimer and the editing employed to realize it are honestly kind of genius. The first two hours leading up to the Trinity Test, cutting between Oppenheimer’s journey from Cambridge to Los Alamos, his McCarthyite kangaroo court, and Lewis Strauss’ confirmation hearing feel like one big montage, like we’re watching these events not in real time but as events already transpired, already in the past, already a memory that one can only look back on and watch in horror; the entire runtime of this first two hours are permeated with such a real sense of inevitability, predestination, regret, and especially dread. This section of the film has a such a deeply horrifying and strange energy propelling it along. There’s hardly any room to breathe as it builds and builds (guided by Ludwig Göransson’s amazing score) to the event that the entire film is structured around – the Trinity Test.

Ohhhhh the Trinity Test. Ohhhhh. Probably the best thing Nolan has ever put to film? I can’t remember the last time I had a physical response to a sequence in a film to the degree that I did during the Trinity Test in Oppenheimer. The tension is so palpable, aided by the powerful sense of urgency that the previous two hours were creating. Maybe the biggest theme/idea of the film is the narrow-mindedness and tunnel vision of Oppenheimer and the other scientists in their quest to make the bomb being so extreme that they totally abstract away the real world consequences and unimaginable evil of what they’re doing, regarding it all as totally theoretical; the people that are going to be incinerated by this thing aren’t even occupying a fraction of their minds. It’s like Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park: “Yeah, yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should.” Hammering home this idea is moments like the death of Adolf Hitler and the surrender of Germany being little more than footnotes, momentary announcements before they resume work on the bomb. It gets to a point where you’re almost as tunnel-visioned as they are; even if you’re feeling that dread that comes with the hindsight of knowing the subsequent history of nuclear weapons, knowing the world they’re doomed to create, you want to see it done as much as they do.
So the buildup to the Trinity Test, both the preceding two hours and the actual final moments before the explosion, leave with you a contradictory sense of dread and excitement. The explosion itself? Masterful. Genuinely one of the most powerful images ever put to film. A good 5-10 minutes after the Trinity Test scene I noticed my jaw was hanging open and wondered how long it had been doing so. It looks and feels like the fire of the gods, or perhaps hellfire from the depths, has been summoned to Earth to be wielded by mortal men. I can’t emphasize enough how awe-inspiring, beautiful, and horrifying the Trinity Test is. I can now define my life into two time periods – the person I was before I saw the Trinity Test scene in Oppenheimer, and the person I am now. God-tier stuff, truly masterclass filmmaking from Christopher Nolan. No notes.

But some of the stuff after is what truly takes the cake for me. The scene where Oppenheimer gives a half-hearted jingoistic speech, celebrating the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and saying things he doesn’t really believe (“If only we could’ve used it on Germany!”) before an animalistic, barbaric audience baying for blood and waving American flags, cheering on, in ecstasy, the doom they’ve unleashed upon the planet…deeply haunting and disturbing stuff. Horrified and frightened me in a way that only a very small handful of films ever have. And that’s before Oppenheimer envisions the nukes going off, melting the flesh of the people before and steps in a charred corpse. It’s just…wow. I don’t have the words.

And the last hour is a brilliant unraveling of Oppenheimer and the ego and hubris that have brought him this far. He’s unleashed something beyond his control and spends the rest of the film trying to rein it back in, only to find that the bureaucracy and institutions he once served have no interest whatsoever in putting that genie back in the bottle. During his hearing, he’s framed as either out of focus or off the side (literally being sidelined!) or in extreme closeups, so the only thing we can perceive is the haunting look of guilt and despair etched into his face. The post-Trinity section of the film opens with the bombs being taken away from Oppenheimer, sealed away into boxes beyond his control, now in the clutches of institutions beyond his understanding. Again…generationally incredible stuff here.

Haven’t talked about any of the performances here. Obviously, everyone is talking about Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr., as they should. Easily both their best performances ever – really great to see RDJ in particular do real acting in a real movie again after a decade plus of quipping in front of green screen. Another standout is Alden Ehrenreich. If I’m being honest, everybody here is firing on all cylinders. Career best performances from everybody involved.

I haven’t been this blown away by a film in a while. Easily the biggest surprise for me of the year thus far – totally exceeded all expectations. Christopher Nolan has surpassed what I previously figured him incapable of achieving and created a film that is absolutely brilliant and haunting. This one will stick with me and leave me wrestling with it for a long, long time.

(Also, this is the 300th film I’ve watched this year: yay!)