Best Pictures #105: 2023 (96th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee
“Who would want to justify their whole life?”
Damon seems like he should be the antagonist; he is a pragmatist concerned with getting the project done and Oppenheimer is the creative idealist, but this actually makes them allies. Damon, who looks quite natural in a general’s uniform, also serves as the film’s sort of comic relief, or at least as a tension breaker. He is like the principal to Oppenheimer’s cool teacher, actually giving him a lot of leeway while keeping the higher ups off his back. Likewise, Emily Blunt as Oppenheimer’s wife, Kitty, is also a pragmatist which also makes her a good partner for him, though they clash just like Groves and Oppenheimer clash. She too is a scientist, a biologist and botanist, but is relegated to the role of wife and mother. “Oppy” is most alive when doing theory work, managing Los Alamos, or talking about science and theory. This is fine for friends and fellow scientists but perhaps it explains why his relationships with his wife and on-again-off-again girlfriend turned mistress, Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh), feel very important but not very intimate and is the cause of the discord in each relationship. Both Blunt and Pugh give great performances as strong minded women who find happiness and strife with Oppenheimer.
Oppenheimer’s true antagonist is admiral turned bureaucrat Lewis Strauss—pronounced “straws”—who Oppenheimer thinks so little of that he doesn’t even register as a rival. Robert Downey Jr., an immensely talented actor, gives his best and most complex performance in years. Strauss brings Oppenheimer to Princeton, where Einstein already works, seemingly to add to his collection of famous scientists. In interviews, Downey Jr compared his character to Salieri, the composer desperate for acknowledgment and so jealous of Mozart that plotted to kill him in Amadeus. He does a wonderful job playing a modern Salieri, a petty and frail ego, and his Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor is most deserved.
The supporting cast is a treasure trove of familiar names and faces including: Josh Harnett, Kenneth Branagh, Jason Clarke, David Krumholtz, Rami Malek, Alden Ehrenreich, and the list goes on and on. No matter how big or small the role, each cast member gives a great performance. Nolan and casting director John Papsidera wisely chose performers with distinctive and memorable faces, so even if you don’t remember every minor character’s name you still don’t lose track of them.
The score by Ludwig Göransson is ever present but not intrusive. It is dramatic and abstract as needed and enhances the emotions and situations on film instead of cuing the audience on how to feel. The cinematography by Hoyte Van Hoytema is impressive not just because it utilizes the IMAX format to capture the vistas of New Mexico and the stunning splendor and horror of the clouds of fire of the first nuclear test, but also because of how it captures the actors. IMAX cameras lose focus easily, but Nolan and Van Hoytema turned this into an advantage by making great use of close ups–and performers like Murphy, Downey Jr, and Blunt know how make the most of a close up without overacting. 
At times Oppenheimer feels like a heist movie: a couple of characters have an impossible task to achieve in little time and must assemble a team and work out a practical plan. This is where the excitement comes in as Oppenheimer recruits scientists, many of whom are famous in their own right and have theories, equations, and labs named after them. They are in a race to beat the Nazis, who have a two year head start. They are also driven by the thrill of discovery and doing something that’s never been done before. Yet, over every moment looms the weight of the very real and terrible death and destruction of the atomic bomb. There are no scenes of carnage, no real life documentary footage or photos of the effects of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but Oppenheimer, and the audience, fully understand the horror of what has happened. “I have blood on my hands,” he says to an unmoved President Truman and his concerns about the consequences of the atomic age fall of deaf ears. 
Nolan focuses the last hour of the movie on what is behind Oppenheimer’s haunted face. His masterful use of filmmaking leaves the audience haunted too. Nolan’s screenplay is based on the biography by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin titled American Prometheus and that is a perfect title for the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Niels Bohr (Kenneth Branagh), the Danish physicist who proved Einstein wrong about quantum theory tells Oppenheimer, “You are an American Prometheus. A man who gave them the power to destroy themselves.”
