COLUMN: Brighter than the sun

With the 96th Academy Awards over and done with last week, I always find it interesting to analyze the reasoning behind the show’s most prestigious award, Best Picture. It’s a chance for the Academy to choose a movie that represents the current year, from new anxieties and shifting worldviews encapsulated into a yearly picture that tells a story of the time it’s released in. This year’s chosen hero is the historical thriller “Oppenheimer.”

“Oppenheimer” is everything one might expect from the outside in regards to a typical Best Picture recipient. A WWII drama buttoned by ensemble cast and led by one of the biggest names in film today; seems like a perfect choice for prime Oscar bait. Three hours of historical context echoes previous winners such as “The King’s Speech” and “Green Book,” but “Oppenheimer” is a little different.

It’s a paradoxical movie, wrapped and ensnared at points in jumping timelines and visual styles. Three hours can dissuade some, but a blistering pace makes up for it, hardly giving time to wallow in its complicated emotional draws. Oppenheimer himself was always a complicated man with his post-war actions despite his involvement in creating the most devastating weapon in human history.

What transpires throughout the movie mirrors this, following the context of his 1954 security hearing, a pointed and critical exploration of his actions. “Oppenheimer” aligns its titular character as an American Prometheus from the opening text (also drawing from the title of the film’s source material), a tragic character who would be sentenced to eternal punishment for his actions.

Early scenes show Oppenheimer transfixed with the paradoxical nature of quantum physics and dreams of stars collapsing upon themselves. His involvement in early lectures, political scenes and conversations with his colleagues paint him as endearingly naive with a bulbous ego, and, with the later context of the 1954 hearing picking apart his life, there’s a deep shame that ruminates and finds new cracks in Oppenheimer’s person as his life is processed and pillaged.

All conversations in the movie could have been written in a dry, complicated manner but there’s a continuous snark in dialogue that gives an edge to create tension in even the most simple of scenes. It compliments the pace, as simple exchanges can become subtle attacks on character.

The picture marks a fascinating return of form for the career of director Christopher Nolan as well, returning to a nonlinear storytelling structure alongside the typical spectacle that has marked his biggest movies. In contrast to his previous works in “Tenet” and “Dunkirk,” the action is minimal and character focus is the main course, led by a powerhouse cast that ignite the screen. “Oppenheimer” marks the first time Nolan has won an Academy Award as well, functioning as a recognition of the director’s long history.

Praise can’t be given more for the cast, which the Academy agreed with, giving awards to Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr. for their work. Downey deserves incredible praise for his work as Lewis Strauss, functioning as the foil for Oppenheimer, obsessed with political pressure and his personal ego to undermine Oppenheimer.

To see the Academy formally praise a fairly big-budget, highly marketed blockbuster (by their standards) is also surprising, considering it’s been since “Argo” in 2011 for a Best Picture winner to make over $100 million domestically. It also throws a bone to studios that are terrified to dive in to more complicated features.

The greater context of war has far more prevalence today than ever. The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas War still continue, and the depressing reality is that they will most likely continue for quite a while. Oppenheimer’s visions and trauma regarding the fate of victims in Japan recognizes the indifference of his weapons, dehumanizing a people and annihilating them for a symbol of overwhelming power.

A few moments in the movie are focused on the concept of a nuclear chain reaction, a theory that describes a nuclear weapon sparking an ignition of the Earth’s atmosphere that would result in the destruction of all life. The chances of this happening are described by Oppenheimer as “near-zero.” The point is not that this will never happen, or even that it has such a minimal chance of occurring. In reality, these calculations were found unrealistic, but that’s also not the point. These weapons will one day destroy the world. Near-zero is not enough, will never be enough, and can only be zero if these weapons never existed at all.