We see droplets rippling in a pond outward into circular reverberations and then get a glimpse at this phenomena’s perceiver, Oppenheimer (Cilian Murphy), our protagonist, who relates this watery vision against one predicated on a countervailing elemental source, a world of fire, flames pluming out and flowing as a liquid, a state of plasma, an analogous movement to the echoing droplets.

From this point on, we’re treated to a variety of visuals which evade traditional classification as their scopes cannot be disambiguated. Visions of fire remain indeterminable as they take one of two roles depending on perspective: either they represent molecular entanglements of atoms blasting against one another or they are eruptions of flames on a scale familiar to us, eruptions that we would traditionally classify as such vis-à-vis our “naked” eyes.

As the montage of these visions continues, text eventually intervenes into the frame describing a divine story: “Prometheus stole fire from the Gods and gave it to man. For this he was chained to a rock and tortured for eternity.” A tale of divinity rendered contiguous with a visual plane depicting these flames from a scientific vantage point – this dichotomy is one that will seep into and develop through the film.

Accompanying this concisely phrased religious summation is an increasingly intense rumbling which enters the soundscape, source undetermined, which crowds out all other noises.

The sound continues until we cut to the visage of our phenomenological observer whose eyes are resolutely closed. Once he opens them up, the deafening, unidentifiable stamping noise immediately dissipates – a vision broken through as its dreamer wakes up. A supertitle, “Fission”, appears on the frame, setting the start of the formal patterns which will segment the film from this point on.

Oppenheimer begins to read a statement regarding his life to the audience and its filmic analog, persons which he regards as judges, while he explains that his decisions can only be evaluated against such a grand narrative. Meanwhile, the crowd evaluating the same refuses this classification as judges, clarifying that they instead serve as members of a security board – a semantic distinction operating as bureaucratic gesture.

Immediately, the film cuts to a close-up of another man, Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.), with the supertitle of “Fusion” appearing on the frame. This new filmic subject comments on the previous scene, explaining that Oppenheimer engaged in his aforementioned testimony for a month. He’s informed that he will be forced to explain his position towards the Oppenheimer security hearing, an issue which still divides America, in his confirmation hearing but is assured that this is not a trial – an inverted echo of the earlier statement from Fission wherein the audience clarified they were not judges, the prosecutors of a trial.

Thus, from the start the film the two formal strands by which it bifurcates itself, the colored world of “Fission” and the black-and-white world of “Fusion” are explicitly tied to the point-of-views of two distinctive men respectively, Oppenheimer and Strauss, who each find themselves at the heart of their own respective hearings which bear the markings of trials but are officially not classified as such while they’re forced to justify their lives. These two sections act as assemblages, gaining formal powers as the film continues to build a series of relationships and explicit patterns that define these partitions and grant them the power to frame the content they depict in radically distinctive fashions.^[1] DeLanda, M. (n.d.). In Assemblage Theory. introduction. These two chronologies will come to stand-in for a variety of ideas, separate from one another, constantly inviting the viewer to ascertain the reasons for such distinctions.

“Fission”, as per its molecular namesake, is predicated on the manner in which parts collide with one another, splitting into one another to create products in a chain reaction.^[2] Fission and fusion: What is the difference?. Energy.gov. (n.d.). https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/fission-and-fusion-what-difference Consequently, the section is associated the realm of the “subjective”, taking the mental projections of its associated character, Oppenheimer, as the atoms to split in the process and demonstrating this chain reaction through a fragmented chronology featuring a host of surreal images and quantum interludes like those featured in the opening.

“Fusion”, likewise, is based another molecular process, occurring when two atoms slam together to create something greater. The process is shorter-lived but has a much greater power.^[3] Fission and fusion: What is the difference?. Energy.gov. (n.d.). https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/fission-and-fusion-what-difference This section, the shorter of the two, indexed towards Strauss as opposed to Oppenheimer, makes sense of the fragmented nature of “Fission” and puts it back together, weaving the interstices of the aforementioned hearing and the context surrounding it into a newly consolidated image, one based in “realism”, a move away from the realm of the “subjective” to the world of “objectivity”, the world of bureaucratic power.

These are opposite processes, one based on separation and the other on collision. Whereas “Fission” is shown in full color, letting the various hues of the spectrum bounce around the frames, “Fusion”, is shown in black-and-white, an intentional choice which ties it to the mode of classic cinema, a gesture towards tradition. The film will intercut between these two paradigmatic approaches in regards to the same subject matter, that of Oppenheimer’s life, from two different vantage points whose relation to one another develops and informs the audience of the truth behind “power” and the manner by which it relates to the subjects it governs.

We cut back to Fission where Oppenheimer begins to recount his days as a student back in Europe, a time he explicitly recalls as less than satisfactory as the “visions of a hidden universe” troubled him. These visions, some of which we’ve already seen in the opening, come back into fray, adopting a wholly new color scheme more in line with the rain and its reverberating droplets, serving as molecular interludes. Like Terrence Malick did with his cosmic interludes in his opus, The Tree of Life, to frame his story about a family, more specifically a boy from that family now grown up, dealing with personal pain, against the backdrop of the creation of the universe, thus raising the particular to the level of the universal, director Christopher Nolan does here, using the molecular interludes as a cosmic stand-in, tying together the different strands of Oppenheimer’s life to the very forces underpinning them.

Thought itself is rendered corporeal as these moments are rendered with the same intensity as Oppenheimer’s actions in the world around him. They become an interface between the physical and the metaphysical through their surreal depiction which grants them the same visual status as the world that Oppenheimer finds himself navigating.

We see him do science in a lab, but he’s not nearly as skilled in working in this domain as he is with traversing the ones in his mind and accidentally breaks glassware. His professor, Blackett (James D’Arcy), chastises him for the mistake and orders Oppenheimer to stay in the lab to clean up while the rest of the students and staff go to attend a lecture on quantum theory by Niels Bohr (Kenneth Branagh), Oppenheimer’s personal idol.

This perceived slight upsets the young scientist who takes matters into his own drastic hands. He sees an apple on a table – the Edenic symbol of man’s eventual corruption and Fall. He reaches for poison and injects the fruit with it, transforming it from a source of nourishment into an object of death, a perversion in purpose.

He runs through the rain to get to the lecture hall, coming in right as Bohr is speaking about the manner by which quantum theory offers a new way to understand “reality”, a way to peer through into a “world inside our world” made up of “energy and paradox.”

This explanation brings Oppenheimer no peace as this newfound reality continues to assault his senses, haunting his waking visions. His only course of action is to go into the world of his dreams. His eyes close.

The molecular matter transforms into the night sky, stars taking the place of atoms. The fiery explosions become domesticated into the peaceful warmth of a fire. This is a precious memory, one that brings peace. Here, Oppenheimer tenderly feeds a horse an apple from his hand, granting sustenance to his furry friend.

But then he wakes and thinks back to the apple. The fruit of comfort from his dreams has become a nightmare enacted by his own hand in reality. He runs back to the classroom to get rid of this marker of sin and sees Bohr in the classroom. The two engage in dialogue. It’s revealed that Oppenheimer has seen Bohr in another lecture hall and had asked the latter the same question at two different occasions in an attempt to get another answer, a better answer.

Bohr issues a slight warning, another Edenic allusion: “You can lift the stone without being ready for the snake that’s revealed.” Lurking behind quantum theory is a world of probabilities which may not offer comfort and instead only point out visions of filled with sin. It’s no coincidence that Bohr says as much while holding the apple that Oppenheimer so desperately wants to throw away. Finally, Oppenheimer grabs at it and throws it away, claiming the fruit suffered from a “wormhole.” This excuse has a double meaning, referring to either a hole in the fruit dug through by a worm or the scientific structure professed through Einstein’s works which can connect distinctive points in space-time; religious symbolism and scientific inquiry are once again linked to one another.

With potential death now out of the way, the older scientist tells his scientific fan to go to Germany to learn the ways of theory, likening the science to sheet music. The question is not whether Oppenheimer can read this music but whether he can “hear it.”

It’s at this moment when composer Ludwig Göransson’s monumental score truly lifts off and sweeps Oppenheimer and by extension the audience off their feet, as the aptly titled track “Can You Hear the Music?” dominates the aural plane as Nolan and editor Jennifer Lame weave through a plethora of seemingly discrete images in a wonderful montage that lasts nearly 90-seconds.

We see majestic establishing shots of skylines and cities, Oppenheimer exploring the beauty of cathedrals while bathing in their luxurious glasswork, equations being written on boards, a host of molecular interludes now freed from their former domains as they appear in the frame with Oppenheimer himself, an effect of the wonderful practical effects being used which makes science surreal through seamless juxtaposition. A poignant moment in this mixture involves a set of tracking shots, pushing in on both Oppenheimer and Picasso’s “Woman Sitting With Crossed Arms”, a cubist representation of a woman which flattens her dimensions into one smooth visual representation.

This flattening effect is the point of the montage and the reason that music is framed as a method by which to engage in the sciences as Oppenheimer’s mind treats all these distinctive images of the world, of sciences, of art, of nature, of buildings, of equations as part and parcel of the same ontological fabric, operating on the same plane and waiting for someone to connect them together. Far from being discrete images, the procession invites the audience to join Oppenheimer in processing the way that these shapes and representations fire off from one another, atoms splitting from another in a chain reaction.

And then the magic abruptly ends.

The color, creativity, catharsis crumble in the cracks of bureaucracy as the film cuts back to Fusion. Strauss is tasked with explaining his relationship with Oppenheimer, a task he was not expecting to deal with during this Senate Confirmation hearing, and flashes back to his own past and experience with the scientist we’ve spent the film’s run-time with up till now.

In this past, Oppenheimer is rendered arrogant and ignorant, casually demeaning Strauss with a variety of statements even though it’s unclear if he intended to do as much. Our newfound positioning with Strauss paints these comments as clear insults with no basis. From his view, he’s offering a job at one of the most prestigious institutions with a slew of benefits and is experiencing an unjustified pushback.

Their conversation comes to a pause when they spot Einstein (Tom Conti) at a pond near the facility. Strauss questions Oppenheimer’s decision to not involve the esteemed scientist in the Manhattan Project. The latter explains that the Father of Relativity wouldn’t embrace the quantum world his theories revealed which Strauss pins down to Einstein’s statement on the same: “God doesn’t play dice.” The statement, an indictment of the lack of definitive order necessitated by quantum theory, serves as an interesting counterpoint to Oppenheimer, a character who has been and will continue to be tied to the divine. Scientific paradigm is transformed into an act of faith. Which way will he leap?

Strauss offers to introduce the two but Oppenheimer brushes him off and goes to meet off with Einstein on his own terms, explaining that the duo has been acquainted for many years. But when Strauss attempts to approach the couple, Einstein brushes past him and walks off, ignoring the would-be introducer.

Power has been usurped and Strauss attempts to elicit a reason for such behavior from Oppenheimer, but the latter refuses to give up any information and instead turns the conversation to the contents of his security file, a point of concern for the scientist being asked to take a prestigious position at the Atomic Energy Commission. Strauss confirms that Oppenheimer’s act of patriotism vis-à-vis his work on the Manhattan Project is demonstrative proof of his loyalties and that any compromising information from said file should have no bearing on his status – a fact that we know is a lie given the way Fission starts in and is framed by a meeting to determine Oppenheimer’s security clearance. The film’s form and chronology thus introduce a question, how have we gotten from here to there and will lay the roadmap as it progresses.

We cut back to the present where Strauss’s inquisitors question the Cabinet Nominee on his knowledge of Oppenheimer’s past associations and why such knowledge didn’t concern him. He explains, in a seemingly joking manner, one which we learn is not the case at all and know based on the antagonist posturing of the duo in the flashback, that he was instead entirely consumed with what Oppenheimer “must have said to Einstein to sour him on” Strauss.

The crowd laughs at what they think is a humorous bit, but the mood is once again silenced by the governmental machine who persists in their questions. They ask Strauss if these concerns came up later. He responds: “Well, we all know what happened later.” It’s here that one recognizes the chronological circuitry the film is playing with, rendering time in one formal strand as a past that the other one can access; past, present, and future all become relative as they’re placed in proximity to one another and Strauss’s retort reveals this because the “later” he refers to is an event we’ve yet to see based on our vantage point from the “past” being showcased in Fission.

We cut back to Fission where Oppenheimer discusses his initial meeting with fellow countryman and scientist, Isidor Rabi (David Krumholtz), who is quickly impressed by our protagonist after witnessing him give a lecture on quantum theory entirely in Dutch. Oppenheimer departs the lecture location on train, seeing rain droplets and quantum visuals on the reflection on the window pane, before Rabi enters his compartment and formally introduces himself, drawing Oppenheimer’s attention away from the window pane, a plane where science and nature intertwine with one another, to the other side of the cart where human interaction waits.

The two men find themselves similar in many fashions – Jewish, American, Scientists. Their identity displaces science as the topic of conversation and the milieu’s anti-Semitism is brought up. Given the nature of the film, it’s no wonder that these partitions will become more relevant both within the larger context of the story and within these character’s lives, as these markers of their selves will be manipulated by systems of power. But for now, there are no immediate tensions and Rabi extends a helping hand, a gesture of kindness, by giving Oppenheimer nourishment in the form of fruit. A friendship is born.

The duo sets out to meet the premiere German quantum scientist Werner Heisenberg (Matthias Schweighöfer) who gives a lecture on quantum mechanics, a response of sorts to Einstein’s earlier quotation, where he explains that speculations of a “real” world bound by order, causality, lurking behind probabilities comprising the quantum world are fruitless to speculate on. Read through the framework of divinity hitherto set-up, this summation is an refutation of the Apollonian promise of God, a pure affirmation of the metaphysics of the dice roll where paradox rules.

After the lecture, Oppenheimer converses with Heisenberg and the two share their mutual admiration for one another’s works, both cut from similar scientific cloth, but Oppenheimer’s focus lays elsewhere: America. He wants to go back and spread the scientific gospel in his home nation, a fire to be lit for the masses waiting in the dark.

He comes back to the States, accepting positions at both Caltech and Berkeley, and starts his rise. Quickly making friends with the faculty, he rises to the task at hand and amasses a huge following.

The in-scene editing demonstrates the massive pull of his influence. We start on an empty classroom and one student, Lomanitz (Josh Zuckerman), walks in and attempts to leave upon ascertaining the situation. But Oppenheimer quickly starts to speak and begins to spout on about the paradoxes of quantum theory with such exuberance that the young Lomanitz ends up sitting in.

We see Oppenheimer write on the board, cut to Lomanitz’s enthused reaction, and then cut back to Oppenheimer who begins to leave the board. But as he walks away and goes throughout the room, we realize that we’ve cut to the future; the classroom is now filled with students eager to learn more.

Suddenly, a discussion of a star’s gravity breaks out. We see one of the earlier interludes which is now retroactively determined to be a star contracting due to the force of its gravitation pull being stronger than the force of its furnace pushing its fire out. Gravity condenses the star which triggers a seemingly infinite reaction wherein gravity and density cause the other to increase. Oppenheimer is positioned like this star, his brightness and exuberance pushing out colors and drawing in influence, but as his influence wanes, the gravity of the situation he finds himself in, the forces of bureaucracy, condense his situation into an ordeal that gets so much bigger than him.

We cut back to Fusion as if on cue, a reminder of these governmental forces at play and the manner in which they curb the projection of color, and Strauss explains that Dr. Oppenheimer’s file started while he was at Berkley because of his connection to left-wing political activities.

Another cut – this time to Fission – to a chalkboard filled with a political announcement as opposed to the normal equations which fill its space, politics in lieu of science. This development is chastised by Oppenheimer’s faculty peer and friend, Ernest Lawrence (Josh Hartnett), who issues a warning to keep politics out of the classroom, a fortuitous warning indeed given what we know will happen.

But Oppenheimer persists and pushes back, likening their revolution in physics to similar revolutionary movements in the humanities by thinkers such as: Picasso, Stravisnky, Freud, Marx. This explicit reference serves as a continuation of the ontological flattening demonstrated by the “Can You Hear the Music?” montage, wherein all revolution in thought is cast in the same light. But his line of thinking isn’t ubiquitous, and the conservative leanings of Lawrence come out when he retorts that America has already had its revolution, a paradoxical affirmation that approves of a previous revolution, an upending of values, but refuses to do the same again, a commitment to the status quo.

The duo departs and Oppenheimer heads to a Communist meeting with his brother, Frank (Dylan Arnold), and the latter’s partner, Jackie (Emma Dumont), where he has his first chronological encounter with the powers of politics that be: federal agents are taking pictures of the attendee’s license plates, obviously creating a registry of political thinkers that don’t align with status quo tendencies.

It’s at this meeting that Oppenheimer meets with future friends, acquaintances, and one of his life’s great loves, Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh), who challenges his lack of commitment to the Communist cause. Though he’s sympathetic to their thoughts and ideologies, Oppenheimer is very much a pragmatist whose commitment is less to a single truth than it is to a variety of thoughts which all contain aspects of that. But what appears as “wiggle room” for him appears as lack of dedication to others, and his journey is one that will see him pulled apart by all relevant sides as they try and force him to commit to one system once and for all.

At first glance, the tapestry that is the film seems too massive a task to engage with. Within these first 20-minutes, we’ve been introduced to: a plethora of characters, each important in their own right; discussions related to the arts, sciences, politics, faith and juxtapositions of those ideas against one another; multiple time-lines that are further bracketed into the Fission and Fusion segments which eventually showcase the same actions from different vantage points; an overarching story which constantly breaks its chronology and introduces images and plot points shrouded in mystery, waiting to be retroactively determined and put together in sequence by the spectator as the film continues.

But Nolan consistently demonstrates how fully in control of the viewing experience he’s in. Conversations which may prove to be daunting are edited in kinetic fashion, making wonderful use of Göransson’s score, which plays almost for the film’s entire run-time, ensuring a consistent propulsive force that drives the narrative forward; we’re always aware of exactly what we have to pay attention to so we don’t lose the plot so to speak. When characters are referenced, the film wonderfully cuts to images of them to remind the audience of who they are, but these moments also work formally as we’re firmly latched into a point-of-view which would be thinking back to these faces while talking about them. The visual schema stays compelling in spite of the heavy dialogue laden scenes through the use of wonderful establishing shots, surreal images that break reality, and the lower shot-length in general which ensures there’s always something new on the screen to latch onto.

However, the script itself is arguably Nolan’s finest, featuring razor-sharp dialogue that flows and exudes charisma while neatly layering in sub-text within the text, thematic overtures which build to deafening crescendos as the viewer slowly pieces together the formal pieces of the puzzle together into a much larger, multi-faceted tapestry.

There are the surface level ideas involving moral culpability especially in relation to one’s politics. We know Oppenheimer will build the nuclear bomb, a weapon of mass destruction, a genocidal force, but he will do the same because his country demands it. This neatly leads into the larger discussion on politics proper, whether or not good citizens can have distinctive ideological ideas or if having them compromises them in their ability to fulfill their duties as patriots, whether or not being a patriot is justifiable in lieu of one’s obligations to humanity in general.

Then there are the deeper ideas involving science and religion, the way the latter and former are inextricably tied as explanatory mechanisms for the world and the manners in which they align and diverge from one another, the potential impossibility in reconciling beliefs from one domain with beliefs by the other and how the framing of these ideas within these particular discourses affects the way they’re treated by persons and society at large.

All of these throughlines and more are allowed to collide against one another and recapitulate into new discrete moments because of the formal partitioning of the film, Fission and Fusion, which transform the film into an apparatus of quantum theory itself. The memories of the respective characters serve as the atoms, distinctive vantage points of the same situations demonstrating the way that such a molecule can easily split. The editing serves as the catalyst that galvanizes these collisions and leads to the chain reactions, the explosive power that is transformed into epiphanies that only become clear when scrutinized and analyzed via the vantage points the film offers.

The point is not to push the audience towards a capital T “Truth” but instead to explore the way verisimilitude is generated through power and perspective. As Friedrich Nietzsche puts it: “There is only a seeing from a perspective, only a “knowing” from a perspective, and the more emotions we express over a thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we train on the same thing, the more complete will be our “idea” of that thing, our ‘objectivity.'” ^[4]Nietzsche , F. (1887). Third Essay. In O. Levy (Ed.), H. B. Samuel & J. M. Kennedy (Trans.), On the Genealogy of Morals. essay. Retrieved from … Continue reading Nolan wholeheartedly embraces this epistemic approach in Oppenheimer, approaching his titular character’s life from as many perspectives as possible in an attempt to understand the father of the nuclear bomb, the American Prometheus and give reason explaining why he did what he did.

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