Oppenheimer
Christopher Nolan
with Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr., Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh
Oppenheimer is a genius: before taking over the Manhattan Project, building the atomic bomb that will be dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he publishes more than his Nobel Prize-winning teachers (not him, really), he does physics like a tightrope walker, he represents black holes for decades to come. Oppenheimer is fragile: the film tells the story of a “nearly poisoned” apple he left in the chair of a beloved and hated professor, but does not tell the series of psychoanalysts (he had more than Marilyn Monroe) whom he went to. Oppenheimer is a dandy: informal in teaching and in public life, he massacres hearts and loves the wilderness of the desert, where he will later lead scientists to experiment with atomic bombs. Oppenheimer – organizer monster: manages to coordinate the actions of all thinking heads who can create an atomic bomb before the Nazis and at the same time satisfy the military. Oppenheimer is a monster: as he says, when he sees what a bomb is like in action, “I became the god of death.” Quote taken from Baghavad Gitawhere the god Krishna explains to the frightened prince Arjuna the consequences of the space war (but this is his fate, inevitable and written like Oppenheimer, maybe…) “I am time, the destroyer of worlds.” Oppenheimer is an executioner and a victim: when the post-war Cold War “demands” an escalation towards the creation of a hydrogen bomb, he refuses to cooperate and is investigated by Lewis Strauss, the first chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, who once had a laugh. Mechanism? The physicist-dandy-mad warrior is suspected of being too close to the American communists in his youth: can he be trusted now that the Soviets are enemies? Nolan film together normalcrazy and brilliant. OK, because it’s a much-discussed biography of the traditional type, debunked by visual and audio gimmicks. Crazy because the book he relies onOppenheimer Byrd and Sherwin, Garzanti: The Pulitzer Prize) is monumental, and condensing it into a film would drive an atomic physicist to despair. Brilliant, because while you would expect “atomic” special effects from Nolan, the effects he creates in the use of color (crescendo in color, chase in black and white), in sound (watch out for shoes, not atoms) and in the usual (for him) use relativistic narrative time. But if you’re expecting a radioactive graphic novel, you might be disappointed…