(courtesy IMP Awards)
As a general rule, we like to think of history as a thing of clean, linear beauty – x happens, y results and time marches inexorably and uncomplicatedly on, consequence following action over and over until fact stacks upon fact and the story of humanity is told in accessibly, understandable and messy fashion.
But the reality is that no event, or person for that matter, makes clean and easy sense, and approaching historical events as if they will, does them a service and in some ways diminishes the scope of their meaning and importance because we fail to appreciate them in their flawed but impactful entirety.
If ever you wanted a moment in time, or really a series of interlinked moments in time that validate this point, it’s the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the man who is known, in broad and simple brushstrokes as the man who invented the atomic bomb, the act of which played a pivotal role in ending the Pacific theatre of conflict in World War Two.
That in itself is a rash and all too facile recounting of a major event in history which, stripped of a host of other considerations, doesn’t fully represent what was happening at the time especially in respect to Japan’s capacity to continue to wage war, but it serves to prove the point that while Oppenheimer was indeed the man of the helm of a great and terrible discovery both, neither he nor the events that impelled him to that point, were as easily broken down as some might like to believe.
Just how complicated the events of this fearsomely impactful invention were, and how brokenly but inspirationally human Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) was, are laid out in Christopher Nolan’s film, Oppenheimer, based on the book, American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin.
Told in the gifted director’s usual style, which, interestingly in the case of a fully historical event, plays havoc merrily with what events led to others and how one thing flowed into the next, and gives full vent to the playful form of storytelling for which the man is renowned, Oppenheimer is a brisk retelling of how it is that humanity came to be, in ways it simply wasn’t before, the architect of its own comprehensive oblivion (should it choose to, and it very nearly did).
Oppenheimer is illuminatingly told in scenes both past and current; in this case, “current” is the events following World War two where the fight for survival gave way to political manoeuvring of the most career-ending kind when high office aspirant, Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.) sought to discredit Oppenheimer who has become, in the view of some parts of the American establishment, a political liability for his pacifist, non-proliferation views, while the “past” are the pivotal moments that led to the bomb’s creation and use.
At first, as with many Nolan films, it takes your mind a second to grapple with how the story is being told; not because it’s deficient in any way – it is in fact inspired and brilliant with overlapping past and current events serving to more fully explain and makes sense of the other – but because it defies this idea we have that one thing begets the next which gives rise to the next, and so on.
History, and people, are rarely that clean-cut and easy, and by layering past and present in the mixed and swirly way they often exist, both personally and societally since there is never a fine and clearly-defined break before cause and consequence, Nolan helps us to better appreciate that what happened on those two fateful days in August 1945, when nuclear weapons were used for the, to date (and may it stay that way), two and only times, had a great many antecedents.
The key one, of course, was Oppenheimer himself, the man widely credited as bringing quantum physics to his home country of the United States, inspired by the likes of Niels Bohr (Kenneth Branagh) and Werner Heisenberg (Matthias Schweighöfer).
He was, like many brilliant creators and towering figures of history, not an uncomplicated person, with genius and flawed humanity mixing freely and to sometimes damning effect; in that respect, Oppenheimer does the man a service because it restores to him a certain human honesty that many historical accounts lack, giving an arrogant but thrillingly insightful agency that, with the help of other central figures in his life like his brother Frank (Dylan Arnold), wife Kitty (Emily Blunt) and old friend, Albert Einstein (Tom Conti), fuelled the many considerable achievements attributed to him.
Rather than damning him as a person, in line with many biopics which almost effectively act as judge, jury and executioner, Oppenheimer fleshes him out as the person who, with the help of a great many others, was able to come up with the idea of an atomic bomb, and rightly or wrongly, bring it to fruition.
In that way, Nolan, with the collaboration of talented producer (and his wife) Emma Thomas, does what few other directors might manage do in the same situation – he establishes a more fully-formed picture of the eponymous man and why, perhaps alone among others, was able to both be the architect and instigator of the bomb’s creation but also the one who, following World War Two, was brave enough to begin asking why such a thing has been allowed to be invented in the first place and what humanity needed to do in the wake of its appearance, to ensure its full destiny was never realised and capabilities never completely utilised.
For Oppenheimer was troubled by what he had done, and while he acknowledged its supposed necessity, he was also deeply conflicted by what his creation could lead to and how, by liberating one part of the human race from tyranny and war in one moment, he might have damned everyone for the fullness and entirety of time.
Nolan captures that beautifully in Oppenheimer‘s full but artfully and well-used three-hour running time, asking and often answering a great many questions we have, and didn’t realised we had, and establishing in ways that really hit home, that no event in history is cleanly realised nor its effects, neatly felt.
History, like the people who give it birth, is fiendishly messy and complicated and no one event can be viewed untangled from all others, just as no one person, no matter how toweringly influential, can fully be separated from their contemporaries, and Oppenheimer gives that stark and sobering reality full vent in a thoroughly compelling and engrossing film that graphically, and at times, quite movingly, looks at the invention of the atomic bomb and its fearfully wrought aftermath and wonders if, having becoming death, destroyer of worlds (which recalls Oppenheimer’s famous invocation of the Bhagavad Gita), we are still capable of being the architects of the very life which can prevent its full and terrifying effects from come to full and life-ending expression.