How Cillian Murphy Perfected Oppenheimer

[Music] now I am become death the destroyer of worlds watching Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer is like watching two movies at the same time an American success story about a team of scientists overcoming the odds to achieve impossible things and an American Horror Story the consequences of which we still live into this day a story that still feels terrifyingly incomplete and yet both of these stories both of these feelings somehow need to be expressed in one performance playing the father of the atomic bomb is no easy task this man has affected every single audience member's life and will continue to until the day they die Nolan even called him the most important person that ever lived and considered these events literally the most dramatic moment in history so there was immense pressure to cast the right actor and even more pressure on that actor to deliver a layered performance that can somehow encapsulate the viewer's complex relationship with a man they will never even meet but having consistently worked with him for two decades no that intuitively knew that Killian Murphy was the one for the job Murphy had already built an impressive career predominantly playing villains and Marly ambiguous protagonists but it was now at the age of 46 that he was going to have to put all those skills to use and deliver perhaps the most defining performance of his life as a story of this weight with a director of this caliber was inevitably going to attract a gigantic audience so let's take a deeper look at what made Killian Murphy's portrayal of J Robert Oppenheimer so hauntingly memorable the first key is the physicality of the character now when it comes to playing a real person viewers are always going to expect some physical resemblance to help them suspend their disbelief but when it comes to Oppenheimer it's not just the iconic look but the sound Oppenheimer has a distinctive voice that Murphy characterizes as somewhere between Orson Wells and Mr Rogers I'm very concerned that our society is much more interested in information than Wonder not in person no but uh you might say our paths crossed there's a certain Rhythm to his speech the sentences are usually broken apart into sections which adds a degree of waste to each word rather than running them together this vocal style speaks to the calculated nature of the man there is an emotional distance with his words how he truly feels about what he's saying is hidden behind a mysterious veneer of logic and presentation after all Oppenheimer was always an educator whether it was in a classroom a government office or directly to the public he was a figure of authority so to convey his self assurance Killian consistently employs this hands on the hips pose that can be seen in many of the old photographs during the Manhattan Project it's a visually strong defining characteristic that showcases how assertive and goal oriented Oppenheimer was but what's beautiful about this performance is that it comes in two parts there's before the bomb and after the bomb and while beforehand he was stoic composed and confident in the aftermath he seems physically weighed down by what he's inflicted on this world so Murphy's physicality switches from a power posee as his character leaves his Mark to a mercy pose hunched over with his hands clasped together even his normally clear oration is disturbed by what he's done physicists and and and and and I'm concerned these newly infused stutters and stammers conveys a man plagued by fear and self-doubt now awkwardly tripping and hanging over each word so he changes from being full of self assurance to being full of trepidation as if he was previously so focused on if it could be done and now all he can think about is what could go wrong which leads into the second key eye contact most actors use eye contact to play off each other as long as they have someone's eyes they can look to then they always have a center a focal point that keeps the audience's attention on the space between their faces where both characters relationship develops but Murphy's performance is distinctive due to the Char character's sparse use of eye contact when he does look into someone's eyes it's usually just a quick Splash before he's looking away again as if he's visibly distracted by ideas that are bigger than himself or the conversation he's engaging in this makes him feel more cold and considered like he's always weighing up his options I remember Chris pulled me aside and he said um remember he's not he's not a boxer he's a chess player Oppenheimer does occasionally make wide eye contact with certain people he truly likes especially those that he admires who are joining his team as if he's welcoming them into his world and into his mind but otherwise the best you can hope for is a fleeting second here and there so unlike almost everyone else on screen Killian doesn't use his fellow actors as a focal point instead he finds his Center by searching internally for answers and we can physically see him carefully processing each calculation with each eye movement this decision unconsciously creates a disconnect between the matter he's thinking about and the human that will be affected by his actions which is a Core theme of the movie it may seem like a small detail but it emotionally Alters who the viewer feels is a more empathetic or Humane person for example in this scene with Albert Einstein Oppenheimer shares his concerns that he may create a chain reaction that destroys the world now notice how Einstein is consistently looking at Oppenheimer he's either scanning his face for reactions or looking him directly in the eye making him seem emotionally present warm and empathetic we can see he cares about human lives as it's being demonstrated by his visual interest in humans whereas Oppenheimer can barely meet his gaze he's less concerned with the human cost and more invested in the scientific possibilities he's morally colder than his contemporary so his pupils Bounce Around mostly looking away as if he's ashamed by his findings but still not sure what he'll do as he's operating from a different value system if he was sharing clear eye contact throughout this scene the two would emotionally connect but instead they're like passing ships different directions different priorities different moral codes if we examine the old footage we can see this same pattern as his eyes tend to wander around the corners of his mind more than they look to the person he's speaking to these avoidant behaviors appear to be a symptom of guilt and shame as if he's struggling to meet the Gaze of everyone he's wronged we see this throughout Murphy's performance when he's asking a friend to take care of his child he labels himself and kitty awful people before he hangs his head in shame and his eyes plummet to the floor or after Jean dies an emotionally rattled Oppenheimer cannot even look up at his wife as he's ashamed to be so devastated about the woman he had an affair with this emotional pattern will prove consistent with the character as Kitty says to him you don't get to commit the sin and then have us all feel sorry for you that it had consequences so if he can barely look his wife in the eye after wronging her it makes sense that he struggles to look the world in the eye after wronging [Music] them and this leads to the final key inner turmoil this movie is about conflict both internal and external it's a moral dilemma that each audience member emotionally goes back and forth on so it's only right that we get to experience the decision from the perspective of the man in charge and although there is a cold veneer to his enigmatic image Murphy doesn't let us walk away thinking his character wasn't burdened by the weight of his decisions especially after the bomb is dropped as Christopher Nolan stated I wrote this script in the first person it's what I told Killian you are the eyes of the audience and he takes us there which he undeniably does does although he may not look other characters in the eye that doesn't mean the audience is denied access to his vision Killian Murphy is the master of the thousand yard stair these haunting wide-eyed gazes that are uninterrupted by a single blink show us the inner turmoil of a man who has seen too much some nightmares that have yet to come and others that have been fully realized and Murphy lets us know when something truly hurts his character by shutting down our window into his soul when when we're this used to watching an actor's eyes being open and active the simple Act of shutting them indicates the character has arrived at a certain pain thresholds that he can no longer tolerate even when he's describing the potential ramifications of dropping the bomb his eyes are wide open like he can see the impending horror dropped from a barely noticed b29 the atomic bomb will be a terrible revelation of divine power and then just before the last words this double blink kicks in like his heart is fluttering as it skips a beat these little creative flourishes help us to get under the skin and into the mind of J Robert Oppenheimer he's not just a man in a room saying things he's stuck in a constant Loop between thinking and feeling given he's usually wearing a suit as a costume Killian is mostly only left with two instruments to communicate his characters in her workings his head and His Hands which is interesting as if you could only pay attention to where Murphy's hands are and what they're doing you would actually get a good read on where the character is at emotionally whether he's being strong and assertive an educational showman or squirming on the inside for instance when his friend tells him he doesn't want to join the project Killian looks at him and although his upper half seems stoic in his lower half we can see his finger stressfully churning back and forth then when his friend expresses his fears that the bomb will fall not only on the J but the unjust we see the contemplative chess player up top as he looks away to process but the fingers keep spiraling below so we can physically see the wheels of his mind turning or when he tells Groves that they might be about to blow up the world we see Killian's signature lack of eye contact as he discusses a topic he wants to emotionally disconnect from but his fingers nervously start reconfiguring around the mug almost like he's solving a Rubik's Cube as he outlines the scientific possibilities without these subtle little tals into the Comfort level of the character the audience may feel left out or uninvolved but Murphy lets us feel the stress with him at the same level he does by using every part of his body that's in our eyeline to communicate with us everything we've discussed comes together in this one intense scene when Oppenheimer is under the most pressure while being interrogated by government officials even if you saw this as a photograph you could tell the character's state of mind without needing to say a word he's physically hunched over stiff as a board with the weight of the world on his shoulders and his hands tied together as if they're pleading for Mercy his eyes shift rapidly around the corners of his mind as he has to recount the rationale for dropping the bomb which is naturally going to reignite all of his trauma but then he gets asked how many died he initially tries to underplay it to 70,000 but then then has to add Hiroshima and Nagasaki and while stating the true number his eyes shut as the agonizing reality of that statistic surpasses his regular pain threshold so here Killian allows the truth to emotionally hit him so hard that he has to Flinch he then rotates his chin out of discomfort his eyebrows raise and his jaw clenches all of these micro movements highlighting different sources of pain across his face like little explosions on a map there are so many subtle details here that you forget you're actually just watching a man sitting still answering questions when asked if he has any moral Scruples about the total death toll 220,000 now we see his hands squeezing in distress and he locks eyes with his interrogator to confirm terrible ones as unlike before when he was avoiding culpability now he's suffering because he's taking responsibility what's so fascinating is how we can actually compare the distressed mannerisms in Murphy's performance with the real footage of Oppenheimer himself when he's asked a similar question despite being in a more relaxed setting we still see the same scanning eyes the same Ki discomfort the same clenching jaw nevertheless with all the rationalization with all the inevitability of the decision that history demonstrates to us you and many like you who brought the bomb into being still seemed to suffer may I say from a bad conscience about it biographical performances can often feel like glorified Impressions but in the case of Killian Murphy he welcomed us into the complex mind of J Robert Oppenheimer by allowing us under his skin we can see when he feels and when he doesn't when he prioritizes his curiosity and when he prior prioritizes human life his performance leads us through the agonizing moral dilemas to the uncomfortable reality we live in today guiding and mirroring our own uncertainties every step of the way Christopher Nolan's biopic was always going to be an explosive spectacle but it wouldn't truly hit home without the right leading man capable of delivering multiple performances in one from the Innovative hero to the calculating villain to the traumatized Soldier but who exactly the father of the atomic bomb will be remembered as terrifyingly remains to be seen the movie may be over but just like Oppenheimer himself the viewer is left with a stirring sense of dread wondering if and when there will be more chapters to this story or perhaps just one catastrophic conclusion well well if you've made it this far 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Channel: Just an Observation

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Id: lAkgMEONMIQ

Length: 15min 12sec (912 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 14 2024