My impressions of the film Oppenheimer

Rain is often symbolized as a giver of life, of renewal. Director Christopher Nolan makes use of them in the opening shot of his latest film: Oppenheimer.

Raindrops falling on the ground forming concentric circles (expanding waves?) to then be replaced by a powerful and muffled explosion with the face of the omnipresent and distant protagonist. Life and death. Death and a possible redemption.

In this first biographical film Nolan presents us with the details, the before and after of the theorization and invention of the first atomic bomb in Los Alamos (New Mexico) by a team of remarkable scientists led by Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer.

To do so, the director, as he usually does in his filmography, plays with the narrative times by dividing the story into three intermingling times, sometimes in quick succession; and at the same time the two stories closest chronologically (Fission), he gave them color while the third, Fusion, is in a forceful and vintage black and white.

The most linear of these stories is a biography of the founder of quantum physics in the United States, "Oppie" to those close to him, from his days as a student in 1930s Europe, his development as a scientist, his flirtations with leftist ideas, his many loves, and the development of the atomic bomb as early as the 1940s.

Another line takes place in 1954 when Oppenheimer is summoned to appear at a secret hearing to decide whether to renew once again his security clearances at the Atomic Energy Commission and the third line in 1959 during the debates to ratify the appointment of Lewis Strauss (the main antagonist of the film) whose story impacts on the protagonist's story.

Cillian Murphy delivers a sober, restrained impersonation of Oppenheimer, where the main resource used is his faraway look that lets us guess both his arrogance, egocentrism and arrogance and his passion for his political and humanitarian convictions, his love for theoretical science and the moral dilemma caused by his actions; not for the creation itself, but for its possible continued use and proliferation.

An unrecognizable Robert Downey Jr. in the role of Admiral Strauss does a brilliant job, far from his usual mannerisms and excesses, proving that he is a great actor; Matt Damon as General Leslie Groves, who hires Oppie for the Manhattan Project, gives a performance full of strength, vitality and humor; Gary Oldman as President Harry Truman shows us in the few minutes of screen time why he is one of the best actors of his generation; Josh Hartnett is Oppie's Berkeley partner Ernest Lawrence, who brings freshness and brightness to the scenes.

As for the female leads Nolan fails to create in them strong and gravitating characters in the stories, Florence Pugh plays Jean Tatlock, psychiatrist and Oppenheimer's occasional lover who beyond her defiant postures and aggressive sensuality lacks emotional development, as does Emily Blunt who as Kitty Oppenheimer is shown throughout her performance as the emotional and emotional part of her impassive husband and little else.

In general, Nolan fails to endow his actresses with more memorable and artistically challenging personalities, making it difficult for us to sympathize with any of the female performances.

The film suffers from a lack of concreteness in the resolution of the main character.

After the detonation of the bomb Oppenheimer seems immersed in regret and doubt but never manages to express it only through his gaze and postures.

At no time does he manage to verbalize his regret and the sensation remains that after the explosion he is a man swept away by the wind, timid and irresolute, not because of the character's own characteristics (at this point it becomes contradictory, where is that self-sufficient egomaniac? ) but because of the director's inability to put that remorse into words.

Beyond the usual (chronic?) compositional shortcomings in terms of characters, Nolan gives us a sample of his mastery in the formulation of the plot, his undeniable talent in the composition of images, in the superb photography (the hand of Hoyte van Hoytema is noticeable) and shots and his traditional taste for concurrent timelines. Overall, it is an excellent film.