Oppenheimer was released on July 21, 2023. It’s currently still playing in local theaters at the same time that it’s blowing-up online streaming. On Sunday, March 10, this movie will triumph at the Oscars, but it won’t come as a big surprise. Oppenheimer was way up on my list of must-see 2023 films, and the Barbenheimer summer movie frenzy felt like the real return to the theaters after years of pandemic paranoia. It also demonstrated the enduring lure of staring at giant images and listening to big sounds in the dark with strangers. We don’t acknowledge it in this secular post-postmodernity, but film screenings are rituals and theaters are sacred spaces.
Oppenheimer is part historical apology, part war picture, part bedroom drama. Mix them all together and watch it go boom! Sort of. Christopher Nolan brings a signature, subdued style of acting to all of his films. You see similar stylized performances in Kubrick movies and — to some degree — in Hitchcock. Kubrick’s affected actors bring a lot of weird tension to their interactions. But where Kubrick achieves a subtle surrealism, Nolan is sometimes accused of only draining the emotion out of his actor’s performances.
But Nolan’s penchant for flat characters creates a lot of space for Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr., Emily Blunt and Florence Pugh to deliver one of the best ensemble performances of 2023 in Oppenheimer. Another aspect of Nolan’s muted emotional tone is that it helps to embed his cast of cameo actors into the film with less movie star disruption. Matt Damon, Gary Oldman, Kenneth Branagh, cult icon character actor James Remar, Casey Affleck and many, many more all play supporting parts here. The Oscars don’t have an ensemble award, but Oppenheimer might take Best Cast in a Motion Picture at the SAG Awards on Feb. 24 by sheer force of numbers. That’s how we won the big one, kids.
Cillian Murphy is extremely likely to win the Best Actor Oscar for his title turn in Oppenheimer. Murphy delivers a transformational characterization of a heroic, haunted and horny Robert J. Oppenheimer, the “father of the atomic bomb.” It’s a legacy performance that cements Murphy as one of the great actors of his generation. And Emily Blunt gets my vote for Best Supporting Actress. Blunt plays Oppenheimer’s wife, Kitty Oppenheimer. She’s a super complex character, but she’s ultimately only revealed through a handful of scenes. I want to watch Oppenheimer again just to watch Blunt. The further I get from the film the more important and exactly written this character feels. Pugh isn’t nominated for an Oscar, but she’s luminous as Oppenheimer’s longtime lover and a communist radical. Her character stirs-up lots of personal and political complexities here. And, like Blunt, Pugh and Nolan deserve plenty of credit for bringing many memorable moments to a relatively small amount of screen time.
One of the wonders of Murphy’s performance is that he’s in nearly every scene of this film. The only other actor who’s really given real room to roam is Robert Downey Jr. in what might be his best performance in a career full of great ones. RDJ is Atomic Energy Commission chairman, Lewis Strauss. He is magnetically unlikable as a conniving bureaucrat who resents Oppenheimer’s political clout after his bombs secure the Japanese surrender and the end of World War II. Contributor readers might remember his early career as a breakout member of Hollywood’s 1980s Brat Pack. That was before the actor thoroughly derailed his professional reputation with a series of legal scandals resulting from an out of control drug addiction. RDJ was nominated for his first Oscar for his title role in Chaplin (1992) before he went to prison and even experienced homelessness just as he was emerging as one of Generation X’s best young actors. He’ll get his Oscar this year, completing one of the most inspiring creative comebacks we’ve seen in movies.
Oppenheimer is currently playing on all screens everywhere.
Joe Nolan is a critic, columnist and performing singer/songwriter based in East Nashville. Find out more about his projects at www.joenolan.com.