OPPENHEIMER, WHEN THE US STARTED TO LOSE THEIR ETHICS

CHRISTOPHER NOLAN — OPPENHEIMER — 2023

The film is admirable, like a work of art in the Louvre or the Tate Galleries because of the technical achievement in this film. The Imax format of 65-mm film gives a tremendous quality to the image that multiplies the possibilities to have detail and special effects like the use of black and white sequences, the shooting of which had to be invented for the Imax format. In the same way, this high-resolution picture requires special treatment of lights and movements, facial expressions and close-up pictures. The digital special effects are also beautiful since they can be so finely detailed that they become far more than impressive. The sequence of the firing of the test A-bomb is very representative of this format and its inventiveness.

The film is also extremely well done with very good actors. It is not an action or war film, so no battles, no fights, no innumerable body doubles, and no stunt performers. The actors have to do the work by themselves. True enough it is not too dangerous. But body language, facial language, various expressions centered on the eyes, the face, and the feelings that can be expressed by the lips, mouth, cheeks, chin, or simply the positioning of the head. Cillian Murphy is very good at that kind of acting, and he is helped in this stiff stance, often unemotional, by the use of some stressed-looking behavior more than any violence or brisk or brusque movements of the arms, hands, or body in general. A very old debate about which one is funnier, Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin? Cillian Murphy is more on the Buster Keaton side. Christopher Nolan can say what he wants, but this film is a biopic and a bio-doc as much at least as a plain movie. It has to respect what we know about the main character and his social, cultural, ideological, and political behaviors. Strangely enough, no real Jewish presence or dimension is specified concerning Oppenheimer himself, so Judaism becomes part of the environment. But I believe his being a Jew explains his left-leaning years or positions, his engagement in the fight for an A-bomb, and later on his refusal of the H-bomb, his general position against war. His famous sentence that the A-bomb might be the end of all wars is also dictated by a certain reading of the Thora.