“Oppenheimer”, The Right Movie at The Right Time

One of the big talking points around the potential impact of Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, is of course the reflection of nuclear power in today's world. The fear surrounding the atomic weapon has only grown in recent years and Nolan's film on the figure who helped develop it is likely going to cause much conversation on the state of that power. But it is not just Oppenheimer that has related to current conflicts in the world today because many examples in Nolan's filmography have often been reflective of the times they release in, or films that extrapolate the fears of those given periods.

So, it is not unknown that Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer is coming out in a time where the fears of nuclear annihilation have never been higher. And when you dive deep into the story of the man who helped develop the atomic bomb, there's so much that essentially kickstarted where we are today. Oppie, as he's nicknamed in the American Prometheus book, at first helped develop a weapon that would hopefully end all greater wars and one that would be developed before the nazis could do so themselves.

If they did, we may have been looking at a completely different world today. Over time, we learnt that the nazis weren't close to developing one, but the US government and military still used that weapon in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to stop an escalation of war with Japan afterwards. Japan themselves were apparently ready to surrender before and that very action itself became a huge question mark. One that would also become very psychologically damaging for Oppie and those who helped build the gadget. And after all of this came the political side to the story, where Oppie had tried to prevent a heightened nuclear arms race by getting more involved in American politics.

The later aspects of his life were haunted by the ramifications of what this weapon could do in the future but it was also affected by the humiliating trials that claimed Oppenheimer was feeding information to the soviets. The claim was that he was untrustworthy because of his connections to those who were communists and this was in a time where the Russians were progressing their nuclear arsenal in the years following that very first trinity test. Oppenheimer and others believed that America should be open with the Russians after the use of an atomic weapon so that there could be this process of rebuilding trust in turn, pushing for a no first-us law, where countries would agree to never use these weapons first. Things transpired and led us to today, where we now find ourselves in quite a worrying situation.

One where Russia is advancing their attacks on Ukraine and their president is continuously mentioning their nuclear arsenal. Whether one of these weapons is ever used is of course unknown but the very existence of nuclear weapons themselves and the history of them, makes it inconceivable that someone would use them today. Because if one does go off, then it is likely the hit nation would retaliate, leading to all-out annihilation on a global scale. This is a central fear in the minds of many people today and while, you wouldn't believe that this would ever happen because of the consequences, still, there's always that small percentage as we inch closer to midnight on the doomsday clock. So, this leads us to a big talking point about Oppenheimer as a film, one that relates to how Christopher Nolan has on multiple occasions, released a movie at the right time.

So, lets first take a trip back to a few of Nolan's other films and talk about how the director makes a movie that reflects the real-world landscape at a given time. Starting with 2008's The Dark Knight, a film that is often considered as one of, if not the greatest comic book movie of all time and also one of the most defining blockbusters of the 21st century. A film that changed the comic book genre if you will or one that became connected to the conversation that the X-men films started, which was that this genre could tap into the deeper questions that we had towards big real-world themes and from a filmmaking sense, a movie with more realistic lens.

Primarily, the dark knight was a reflection and reaction to 9/11. This film was really a large-scale property that explored the world of that time. The poster was a reflection of terror and 9/11. The use of technology in that film, especially in the third act, was an extension of our fears towards surveillance. And the Joker himself in The Dark Knight is the manifestation of terrorism conducted by an individual who wants to watch the world burn. It is a film that only becomes richer on more rewatches and lasts the test of time, because it speaks to people on a much deeper level. Yes, you can watch it as a batman film and get the thrills and action that you expect. But you can also view it as a piece about the modern world of that time and a film in communication with the fears that modern America had after 9/11.

So, Nolan right from that film was making projects that directly speak to the time they came out in through large-scale filmmaking. And when we move forward to say Dunkirk, he did it again. In the UK in 2017 we were going through a little thing called Brexit and others around the world were falling out with their neighbor countries. There was this sense of separation amongst people and this idea of the collective was increasingly becoming fragmented, whatever way you look at it. Dunkirk in its very nature is yes, a film set in World War 2, but it’s also a survival thriller about different individuals who we know nothing about fighting across the channel in an effort to just get home alive.

And what happens in the later parts of that movie very much touches on the idea of the separating world and the needed push for a communal effort. We watch three narratives, one of air, one of sea and one land eventually come together, and the individuals that we followed throughout help each other on a small boat to just simply survive. It's communal heroism and showing how little efforts can build a much more heroic act. So as a whole, Nolan has consistently made films that speak to a global audience in the time they release, even if they are of a particular genre or they focus on characters that you typically wouldn't relate to. And that's because thematically, the story connects to everyone. Even look at Interstellar and its argument for putting more love into the science and reflecting the outlook of us needing to look more beyond our own solar system if we're going to survive.

Look at Tenet for its conversations about a main protagonist preventing an attack from the future to save the very present. And look at a film like Inception which touches on the moral corruption of humanity with the effect of corporate control. Essentially the whole motivation for Saito with the inception mission. Everything touches on themes or ideas that are very present in the world today or ones that manifest within our own minds. Yes, a lot of other filmmakers do a good job of reflecting central themes, but with Nolan, he's one of the few to attract a wider audience by taking a genre or complex story and giving it a sense a relatability on a larger scale.

So, when it comes to Oppenheimer, which is meant to be a biopic or thriller film, how could Nolan once again, make the right movie at the right time. Well, regardless of it being a film that won't have much action and one that likely won't play as much on the large-scale blockbuster tendencies of the director, I still think having read the story, that this will connect to a lot of people. And in turn, it will still have a large-scale reaction because of its very themes. The director loves to end his films on a powerful message, something that the audience can react to emotionally or metaphorically. The Dark Knight for instance ended on the idea that a city isn't defeated by the fear of terrorism.

They weren't broken by the chaos that the Joker ensued and Batman himself takes the fall of that to protect the legacy of city's central figure. In Dunkirk it ends on the message that by coming to together you can achieve the most important thing and that is survival. We learn that their survival over the channel was instrumental in winning the next war for Britain. And in Oppenheimer, a lot of this story, especially the later aspects touch on the idea of mistrust and that the world needs more openness.

Neils Bohr, the scientist who Oppenheimer looks up to as a god, inspires this very idea of openness that Oppie eventually tries to transfer towards everything going on with the US government. And the US governments own fears and untrustworthy assertions of the Russians lead them to excel their mistrust of Oppenheimer and everyone he's in contact with. So, Nolan is going to make a big point about there being no trust and that the world essentially can only rebuild with this sense of openness, that Oppenheimer eventually pushes from Bohr. That correlates to the world we currently live in and right now you have countries and political sides who just aren't open enough with one another. They don't make an effort to listen to the other side, they completely distrust what they believe and we even see that reflected in other issues like with censorship. But the very idea of this when it comes to nuclear power, began with those circumstances surrounding Oppenheimer. The world changed through his very creation, which had to be built, but after it changed in some of the worst possible ways.

Now we don't know what themes Nolan is going to centralize in his movie, but this idea of critiquing trust and openness, which is central to the end of the book, is something that he will put at the forefront, because on a large scale, it connects to everyone and everything going on today. So as a whole, Christopher Nolan reflects the fears of the modern world through the films he puts to screen. He takes the biggest themes and storylines and makes them relatable to the audience watching. He takes Batman, grounds him in reality, and portrays our fears towards terrorism in the real world. He takes a World War 2 film, strips out the politics and shows us a survival thriller about many different people coming together just to make it home. And with Oppenheimer, he's going to portray the fears of nuclear annihilation, but primary critique the underlying tension to all of that. And that is the growing sense of mistrust and ultimately, a world without openness.

A world that if it continues down that path could in the long run face complete annihilation. Alongside these integral themes to the story of Oppenheimer and the effects of the atomic weapon on the world as a whole, it’s no surprise that this film comes at a time in the cinematic landscape when we're seeing less and less large-scale films or blockbusters with true cinematic storytelling other than making them for monetary reasons. After the blockbuster successes of Nolan's previous work, other than say Tenet in the height of the pandemic, he's now choosing to go the route of a character driven film that encompasses the big themes and conversations that a large-scale film of the past would include. And I think that very point excites me the most about Oppenheimer. He's taking everything he's learnt about big scale filmmaking, and all the character work that he did in his early career and he's essentially combining it in this one film about one of the most important people who ever lived.

Nolan and his crew said in the recent edition of Total film magazine that all the stuff happening in Ukraine developed while they were filming Oppenheimer. This film isn't a reaction to that news, its simply releasing in a time where the fears of nuclear war have escalated even further. And I think that speaks to Nolan's eye for making a film at the right time. He's clearly interested in talking the biggest themes in large scale movies that a lot of people want to watch and his previous examples of filmmaking only underline that point. We'll have to see how Oppenheimer creates conversations this time, but right now, its again another example of the filmmaker understanding the fears that audiences have today and one that potentially shows he's making a film to critique the very nature of those fears.