Cillian Murphy: Restless Minds and Anxious Scientists

In the universe of physical particles that is the film industry and its constituents, few actors have mastered the formidable and explosive energy of the Irishman Cillian Murphy47 years in May and the primacy of being Most nominated actor at the Irish Film and Television Awards (six applications).

Christopher Nolan was one of the first to suspect and experiment on him, who was then one of the survivors of zombie-infested London (28 days later2002), a series of interactions that then allowed him to bind him to disturbing and restless supporting roles. The combination of incarnations that Murphy presented in front of the camera seemed to be effortless, even when it came to getting them to react with some mental coldnessand also where the psyche turned out to be the darkest, confused … murderous.

In his restless characters we recognize the necessity of a resting equilibrium and at the same time the impossibility of attaining it, for each gesture and action are aimed at persistent striving to achieve the goal

. Depleted Oppenheimer from the film of the same name is the last of these men. His moral sense demands that he realize the danger of his invention and the dubiousness of its application, turning it into insecure American Prometheus about delivering fire to people or leaving it in the hands of the gods.

Instead, its creepy characters collection of cold and dangerous clear, silent and delicate sections, which, however, can cause deadly shock waves. This is the case when he removed his Irish accent (perfectly imitating American) to be Jonathan Cranethe Arkham Asylum psychiatrist and the person under the Scarecrow’s jute sack, in a trilogy The Dark Knight. His clinical obsession with fear and the use of a hallucinogenic drug designed to control Gotham’s phobias is the most telling sign of a mind corrupted by a morbid desire to control others.

In Murphy’s career, it was the latter who surpassed the former from the outset. It is useless to embellish the Irish Civil War of the 1960s as an ironic transgender woman smelling like a Golden Globe, because Breakfast on Pluto. The Mark of Evil had already reached him, imprinted in those cold eyes, in those high cheekbones and in that ephebic appearance, moral ambiguity, the apex of which was reached with the anti-hero Tom Shelbyhead of the Birmingham gang Peaky Blinderswhich earned him a BAFTA nomination for Best Actor.

Film and TV wanted it basically like this: villain with an angelic face

. That he was a contract killer on a plane in Red eye or the Keeper of Time stalking Justin Timberlake in Duringit doesn’t really matter why Cillian Murphy was a man to be feared. A formation and cohesion between actor and character that would annoy even those more accustomed to the roles of the antagonist, but not him. Perhaps also due to the measurable breath breaks that Nolan himself, Ken Loach, Danny Boyle and many others were able to offer him, dressing him as a rebel doctor (The wind caresses the grass) or like a frightened soldier Dunkirk (see video review). Otherwise it would be professional decline and impoverishment.

A risk that seems to have been definitively averted thanks to the faithful Nolan, who finally frees him from the second ranks to give him place of honor in biopic Oppenheimer.

There is no malice in this nuclear physicist leading the Manhattan Project that wants to end World War II. He is (only) a brilliant man, but imperfect. Fragmented by bonds of attraction to other people who revolve in his life, merging his mind with that of other scientists or changing his state of motion when choosing a woman to love.

And what does this translator do, who as a child dreamed of being a rock star or a lawyer, but hung a toga and a bass around his neck? Try to live up to the test. He learns the concepts of physics, which he studied with the famous popularizer of science Brian Cox. sunlight (2007), where he was a physicist who needed to launch a stellar bomb so that the sun would not go out, and from there he begins to solve the complex scenario entrusted to him. Then, on Nolan’s advice, he stole Bowie’s Thin White Duke image.and eats only one almond a day to keep the real Robert Oppenheimer thin.

The result is an Oscar-worthy performance.. Yet Cillian Murphy has only one regret: he wasn’t the main character. OURinterstellarfailing to play the role of a scientist traveling in wormholes looking for a new home for humanity. In a word, to add another brilliant but restless mind to those into which he had already penetrated.