Movie reviews: 'Oppenheimer' is Nolan firing on all cylinders; the esoteric big, beating heart of 'Barbie'

This week, pop culture critic Richard Crouse reviews new movies: 'Oppenheimer,' 'Barbie' and 'Theater Camp'

“Oppenheimer,” the story of the father of the atomic bomb, isn’t exactly a biopic of scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer. In his twelfth film, director Christopher Nolan includes biographical details in telling the tale of the man who invented the first nuclear weapons, but the movie is more about consequences than creation.

“Just because we’re building it doesn’t mean we get to decide how it’s used,” he says of the atomic bomb.

Nolan divides the story into two sections. The brightly colored “Fission” portrays the prickly Oppenheimer’s (Cillian Murphy) life as a tortured genius who overcame anti-Semitism to rise through the ranks of the European and American scientific elite to be recruited by the gruff Lt. Gen. Leslie Groves (Matt Damon) as the director of the Manhattan Project. Charged with beating the Nazis and the Russians in a race to build a weapon of mass destruction, Oppenheimer became, in his own words, “the destroyer of worlds.”

His close ties to the Communist Party, through his ex-girlfriend, psychiatrist Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh) and brother Frank (Dylan Arnold), is just one element of the left-leaning beliefs that eventually got his security clearance revoked. His political views, and second-thoughts about the destructive power he unleashed on the world, pitted him against his military bosses and founding commissioner of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.). Those events provide fodder for the film’s other section, the austere black-and-white “Fusion.”

An adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer” by Martin Sherwin and Kai Bird, the three-hour “Oppenheimer” is as downbeat as its weekend competition “Barbie” is upbeat.

Nolan takes his time with the telling of the tale, weaving together the scientific, psychological and political story threads to create rich tapestry that transcends the talky nature of the script. He teases great drama and tension out of a story that is essentially, a retelling of two tribunals, punctuated by the big bang that would change history.

Much of the film’s success is owed to Murphy, who, despite reciting reams of dialogue, goes internal to portray Oppenheimer’s towering intellect. Cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema frames Murphy’s stoic face in wide screen close-ups that showcase the actor’s ability to expose not only the character’s great intelligence, but also the realization that the power he spearheaded wouldn’t be fully understood until it was too late.