OPPENHEIMER (2023)

In spite of an arsenal of filmmaking gifts, for writer/director Christopher Nolan ‘the gift to be simple’ has proven illusive.  Something much missed in this umpteenth telling of the life & times of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy, spookily good) and The Manhattan Project.  A natural at anything scientific thrown at him, academic maturity studying & teaching in the hothouse West Coast left-wing ‘30s culture, along with his taste for high strung women (Nolan seemingly flummoxed by them), set Oppenheimer up as both the natural guy to head research into beating the Axis Powers during WWII at unlocking the power of the atomic bomb, and a natural fall-guy in post-war 1950s Commie-Scare politics.  Not that there weren’t actual Commie villains hanging about for General Leslie Groves (Matt Damon, excellent) to worry about.  (See Klaus Fuchs.)  Fascinating stuff any way you slice it, and Nolan brings his incredible visual chops to the party.  But with multiple, concurrently run storylines (personal relations; atomic rivalries; raising a town in the middle of nowhere; a rush to the finish line) set inside a flashback story structure that unfolds as Oppie defends himself from Washington Commie-hunters, Nolan drops the narrative ball, even with fistfuls of famous faces hanging around to help us keep track of people.  (You’ll still need a scorecard to parse personalities thru the film’s one-size-fits-all staccato dialogue.)  Oddly, Nolan largely misses the most interesting change in our attitude as the vast power of a nuclear device now too well understood to trigger the old terrors whereas merely looking at the artisan handcrafted ‘delivery’ system on display seems a thing of horror.  As mood piece, this is exceptional; as drama, less so.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Among the many documentaries & films orbiting Oppenheimer, and more specifically the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, a pair of competing projects from 1989 stand out: FAT MAN AND LITTLE BOY (a big budget flop from Roland Joffé that wasted its potential; Dwight Schultz as Oppie & Paul Newman as General Groves) and a superior two-night t.v.’event,’ DAY ONE from tv-mini specialist Joseph Sargent; David Strathairn & Brian Dennehy as Oppie & Groves.