'Oppenheimer' review: Christopher Nolan’s shallowest film

Director's latest offering is only made impactful by great editing and sound

KARACHI:

The first time Christopher Nolan left me completely enchanted was when I watched The Prestige back in 2007. The film wasn’t released in cinemas in Pakistan so one had to rely on a pirated DVD, and even on that small PC screen, the magic of his storytelling had me on my nerves. Initially, because it was the first film in my late teens that used non-linear narrative story-telling and editing to such excellence that you watched it again and again, to figure out how you were tricked into believing what the filmmaker wanted you to believe, despite everything taking place in front of your eyes.

The Prestige was nothing short of magic itself, and perhaps, offered one of the slickest exposition of characters in film history. The Prestige gave birth to both the phenomenon that Nolan was going to become and a cult that had watched The Prestige and embraced Nolan right away. I, too, was initiated.

With films such as Inception, the non-linear style emboldened into a formula and gimmick for Nolan. The cult became a fandom, and slowly and gradually, the initial disciples started feeling out of breath. One might argue that Inception, and how it ‘messed’ with fans and their imagination, was the epitome of The Prestige formula, but it wasn’t even half as well-imagined and set up. By now, most of the disciples had left the room and you are not going to find any one of them returning to watch Oppenheimer, again.

That’s the beauty of Nolandom and his initial days of brilliant filmmaking, that no matter how dejected a fan you are, you still believe in his supremacy, that somewhere that stroke of genius is still there. That infectious opening sequence from The Dark Knight will go down as perhaps the most well-directed and meticulously edited sequence ever.

Oppenheimer is neither The Dark Knight nor The Prestige and no Nolan film since the rivalry between Bordon and Angier has been as great as The Prestige. With Oppenheimer, however, his fandom will finally find some closure in the fact that the sage’s impeccable legacy is all about incredible editing and engineering of the format, not telling a compelling story.

Oppenheimer relies solely on the enigma that Oppenheimer the scientist was, and combs his contradictions with the sharpness of a cricket bat. Communism versus American patriotism is the only thing that carries the story forward and the only thing that holds Oppenheimer’s character together in the story world, leaving little breathing space for the audience when they get overwhelmed by back-to-back talking heads played by back-to-back stars, in multiple colour tones, on the big screen, for three hours.

The audience is made to walk on eggshells, and any trick of the imagination that makes you think of Oppenheimer beyond a product of American war politics will be detrimental and throw you off track. Speculations are rife that Oppi’s conception must have been a struggle between American patriotism and communism and not a human act of passion between two individuals.

Any attempt to humanise or even explore the controversial scientist beyond a product of McCarthyism fails at multiple levels despite there being flashes that could have turned into fire. The famous scene in which Oppi is having sex with his Communist girlfriend who asks him to narrate from the Gita also comes in the film from nowhere.

Not the sex, obviously - there was a clear build-up to that - but the Gita reference. It would have helped the film and the audience contextualise what made Oppi interested in Hindu texts, even if it was a fascination with learning languages than what fascinated him about the East and Eastern tradition. There must have been more to the ‘polymath’.

If it was just one of the many fashionable extensions of the scientist, then why did the quote ‘I am the destroyer’ serve as a motif in the film? Such intellectual inclinations can prove to be great character and plot-building devices, but it seems Nolan was more concerned about the quote’s thematic justice (fire and bombs of course) and exotic appeal than what it could have actually unveiled about Oppi, the person. The Gita quote in Oppenheimer reminds us how the West has embraced Indian spiritual practices such as Yoga and Ayurveda through burning scented candles and incense. Perhaps, like Nolan, even Oppi was in it for the exotic appeal? Only better research could tell us that.

Cillian Murphy has come of age and Peaky Blinders fame has only helped his combination of good looks and good acting get popular, especially in Pakistan, where a number of people watched Oppenheimer because of Thomas Shelby. Minus the accents and the peaky hats, Murphy doesn’t play Oppenheimer very differently than Thomas Shelby, perhaps because there are far too many parallels in the screen versions of both characters.

Both suffer from moments of utmost pride and dedication to their trade, both used Communism to climb ladders, both had problematic personal lives and while Oppi suffered from guilt after his invention started an unwinnable war, Thomas a was product of war and a patient of PTSD himself. Even in the most vulnerable of moments of Cillian as Oppi, you can’t convince yourself that you haven’t seen this before. Robert Downey Jr is unrecognisable and he is the star of all performers, despite fulfilling deliveries by Matt Damon, Emily Blunt and other terrific cameos.

Even then, the film doesn’t get boring, and that’s where Nolan’s genius work with the sound design and the ability to engineer whatever semblance of a script and story he has, comes into play. No other director in current times would have created so much impact, with so little substance and a thinning narrative thread as Nolan did. Ludwig Göransson rightly described his score for the film as ‘dynamic’ – it’s fairly simple at times with just a single instrument providing you the rhythm of thought, and then turns into a complete orchestra experience with equal amounts of grandeur and haunting.

The soundtrack and the accompanying visual montages do more in giving the film a deeper message of fire and annihilation being the ultimate divine experience than the script or the overall narrative itself. Oppenheimer, the film, signifies nothing, but the sound and fury are worth the experience - only if you can tolerate that not a single Japanese person is shown, out of choice, out of guilt, or perhaps out of the American ego.

3/5