THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – TO SEE
Born in 1904, died in 1967, Julius Robert Oppenheimer, from a wealthy Jewish family, fellow traveler of the Communist Party of the United States of America, subject to depression, emeritus chemist and genius physicist, pioneer in mechanics in 1943, was appointed scientific director of the Manhattan Project, developed in the greatest secrecy at Los Alamos as part of the arms race against the Nazi regime. Oppenheimer is, as such, considered the father of the atomic bomb, but he will influence his point of view after the war as to the merits of the thermonuclear weapon (H-bomb), while campaigning for international control of this type of armament.
Disavowed in this regard by President Harry Truman, suspected in the eyes of conservatives for his former communist affinities, he was soon overtaken by the paranoid frenzy of witch-hunting, which brought him to appear for espionage in 1954 before a special commission where his fate is sealed in advance. Finally recognized as a loyal citizen, he was nonetheless found guilty of serious failings and, as such, ousted from the advisory committee of the Atomic Energy Commission.
Devoid of a beginning (nothing about childhood) or an end (nothing about his future after the disavowal), here, roughly sketched, is the part of Robert Oppenheimer that Christopher Nolan chooses to highlight in this biopic, his twelfth feature film . The question which occupies the filmmaker, insofar as the fairly elliptical structure of the film makes it possible to discern it, is in fact entirely contained therein: are scientists indebted, before their own conscience as before the judgment of men, of the use that politicians make of their inventions? You have three hours…
Chronological nesting
It’s the time that Nolan takes, in any case, to respond, brilliantly as usual, but with this taste for conceptuality and emphasis which means that his films only rarely escape the dangers of mannerism. In these times of Hollywood infantilization, one would almost hesitate to complain about it. We are here, however, in the soft expression of the formula, with, it is the least, the narrative juxtaposition of three eras, each opening by a sort of chronological interlocking, on the revision of the previous one.
Let’s take the image of Russian dolls to remedy the illegibility that points. The largest and most advanced in time – in black and white, for some unknown reason – depicts the passage of a high-ranking official named Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.) before a commission which is investigating the role he has played in the impeachment and impeachment of Robert Oppenheimer a few years earlier. It turns out that this role, for reasons both ideological – Strauss is a rabid conservative – and personal – Oppenheimer publicly humiliated him – was particularly harmful.
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