Oppenheimer May Look Like A Traditional Oscar Winner, But It's More Complicated Than It Seems
The 2024 Academy Awards are over, and as many predicted, The big winner of the night was Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer." The unlikely megahit of 2023 about the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, his work with the Manhattan Project in the lead up to the Trinity Test and the creation of the atomic bomb, as well as his eventual fall from political grace in the '50s, ended taking home several Oscars. These included Nolan winning Best Director and "Oppenheimer" winning Best Picture."
The film was nearly universally praised upon its release last summer. Our own Chris Evangelista described "Oppenheimer" in his review as "not just a movie, it's a spectacle. A film that asks tough questions and then dares to not give us any easy answers." It went on to become the highest-grossing biopic of all time.
At first glance, "Oppenheimer" is an obvious choice for a Best Picture winner. After all, the movie is a biopic about a big historical figure — which tend to be loved by award voters. It also features an all-star cast of acclaimed, even Academy Award-nominated actors ready to attract more Oscar nominations. If that's all "Oppenheimer" was, however, it's unlikely it would also be such a commercially successful film.
Indeed, "Oppenheimer" looks like an Oscar bait film, but it is so much more. When you get down to it, this movie winning Best Picture is closer to a time gone by when the biggest movie of the year wasn't a superhero movie, but a compelling, well-done drama that won as much money as it did awards. This is a callback to the times of "The Godfather" and "Dances with Wolves" won Best Picture, and the closest we've come to a proper blockbuster winning the Oscar since "Return of the King" swept the Academy Awards.
A well made, thrilling biopic
This is not to say that "Oppenheimer" is not a biopic. It completely is, and it's a very good one. One small but significant aspect of the success of the film is that it doesn't try to encompass everything. This is the bane of most biographical films, that in an attempt to capture an extraordinary life, they can end up as a boring timeline of events.
Sure, "Oppenheimer" does show a bit of Oppenheimer's time as a student, but for the vast majority of the runtime we are focused on something specific — Oppenheimer's road to the Trinity Test and his political stance at the time, and how that cost him everything. The movie's focus on its main subject's politics makes "Oppenheimer" poignant and timely, with talks about unions, and political persecution due to fear of leftist politics.
Of course, the film's draw, and the bulk of its story lies in the lead up to the Trinity Test where the first nuclear bomb was detonated, and it is here that "Oppenheimer" truly takes on being a "biographical epic." Nolan's script, arguably the first since he stopped collaborating with his brother Jonathan, is a tense, thrilling story of doing something terrible seemingly for a good reason — only to have things get out of your control.
A blockbuster epic
Perhaps more surprisingly is how well "Oppenheimer" mixes the look and feel of a massive summer blockbuster with an awards-contending biopic. Christopher Nolan has become a better filmmaker with each new film, but "Oppenheimer" feels like his magnum opus not only in terms of story, but craft and visuals. The use of IMAX not only in the more thrilling moments of atomic testing, but even in dramatic walk and talks where Cillian Murphy's face dominates the entire theater in epic proportions.
"Oppenheimer" has the thrills of an action-packed summer film, but also the emotional weight of a personal drama, and it is that combination that made this film a favorite to win the Oscar. As Jeremy Mathai put it when writing about why "Oppenheimer" was the best movie of 2023, "The tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer is a warning against the dark side of ambition, obsession, and brilliance. There couldn't be a more fitting distillation of one of our most successful living filmmakers — or a more urgently-needed summation of 2023 — than that."
In an era where the Academy Awards go to absurd lengths to try and justify ways to include the latest blockbuster and superhero movie in the ceremony for TV ratings purposes, the success of "Oppenheimer" shows that audiences and awards voters aren't necessarily as disconnected as we all thought. There are movies that connect us all, and sometimes those movies star Cillian Murphy.