The brilliant nuclear power of Cillian Murphy

You have to give it to Christopher Nolan: The Londoner (52) knows when to scale back.

While the star director had taken his visionary way of intricate storytelling to the extreme in his most recent coup “Tenet” (2020), he knew one thing about the vita of the “father of the atomic bomb”: Here lies the power at the core of the true story of J. Robert Oppenheimer – a brilliant, controversial spirit who turned the mill wheels of history in order to be ground by them. Almost conventional by his standards, Nolan develops a political and socio-political thriller that leads deep into the world conflagration of the 20th century. It’s a visually exciting revamped three-act play with an enticing effect.

The first act: How does Oppenheimer become the researcher who makes the difference? Act Two: How does he manage to build the bomb as leader of the “Manhattan Project”? Act three, in which Nolan uses “the guilt” of atomic hellfire as an amplifier in an excellently harrowing way: how does the American hero become a fallen one?

The powerful core of this film is lead actor Cillian Murphy, who needs so little to sum up everything: the shattered order in “Oppie’s” compartment by nuclear fission and that of the world by Hitler. In addition, Nolan has enough poetic imagery, rumbling, vibrating sound, just the same music by Swede Ludwig Göransson and a star ensemble, in which above all Robert Downey Jr. as a windy opponent makes everyone forget that he was ever “Iron Man”.

The only aspects Nolan leaves the audience hanging on are Oppenheimer’s formative childhood and the major political upheavals in the USA. You have to know the subject well to understand that Nolan has pulled off a bang here.

Oppenheimer: GB/USA 2023, 180 mins, in cinemas now

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