“We are not judges.”
The opening of Christopher Nolan’s (dir) latest film Oppenheimer has J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) defending himself in a hearing, but he is told by the committee that they are not judges.
Nolan, however, does want us to judge him, and everyone else we will see over the next three hours. This film is a study of a single experience in human history that we are being asked to not only assess but apply to ourselves and other moments in time.
So do we judge them?
A typical Nolan film is purposefully obfuscating and confusing. He has an unnatural love for time and uses it to distort the audience’s understanding of what is going on. Thankfully, this film has less preoccupation with time, however, this film does happen in distinct periods of time.
In Oppenheimer, Nolan uses different time periods but this film is more interested in perspective. The black and white footage is told objectively and the colour footage is told from Oppenheimers subjective point of view.
How do we judge with only pieces of understanding?
The film focuses on two key issues.
The black-and-white footage is about Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr) trying to get appointed as Secretary of Commerce and the colour footage is about Oppenheimer’s involvement in the Manhattan Project, the creation of the nuclear bomb that would later be dropped on Japan.
What ties these two men together is Strauss wanting to build the Hydrogen Bomb and Oppenheimer’s refusal to be involved.
Who are we now judging? Strauss, Oppenheimer? The War? The Bomb?
One good thing about this movie is that it doesn’t show someone that is intelligent as having autism or being brilliant at everything and speaking a million miles an hour. The film revolves around Oppenheimer and for all his brilliance we are also shown his flaws. He is a great man but he is not a great Man. The two women in his life, his early girlfriend Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh) and wife Kitty (Emily Blunt) can speak to the failings of this man.
He routinely gets things wrong and listens to others working while on the manhattan project. He has doubts and is conflicted about what he is doing, with science, politics, and relationships. Blunt and Pugh both play quiet screaming rage so well as Oppenheimer reveals who he also can be, just a man, so we judge.
It is also a war film, or is it a film about war? The cost of it, the tacit approval of it. Is it a scientific curiosity to build the bomb or are you complicit in the death of hundreds of thousands of people? We judge.
But mostly this is a film about slights. Both men, Strauss and Oppenheimer feel aggrieved at one another and this whole film sets out to show that even though these men did great things they are just men and it is we the audience who put them on pedestals.
Nolan is asking us to judge, but not these people. He is asking why we still champion petty small men with power who act like children because they respond like 2-year-olds when their ego is at all threatened. It is a parable for the modern world told through the lens of one of the turning points in modern history.
I think Nolan is saying we should judge more harshly, and I agree.
Luke McMeeken-Ruscoe
2 July 2023