I think it does seem to leave
people with some appropriately... troubling or even distressing questions. When taken at face value, the ending to
Oppenheimer gives us a final glimpse into the tormented mind of the father of the
nuclear bomb, revealing a dreadful vision of humanity having opened a Pandora’s
Box that can never be closed again, that has set in motion, as he says to Einstein, a
chain reaction that will destroy the entire world. “It’s an old, defining fear that has been dormant
in recent years, but it’s never really gone away, has it?” – Bilge Ebiri wonders in his review of
the movie. “Recent events in Russia and Ukraine have served as grisly reminders that we all
remain just a hair trigger away from incinerating ourselves in a nuclear holocaust.” However, as
Ebiri also points out, Nolan doesn’t like being didactic, he doesn’t like resolving his stories
with one clear, simple message. Instead, he wanted Oppenheimer’s ending to leave us with, as
Nolan himself put it, “a strong set of troubling reverberations [that] would land differently
with each individual watching the film.” And given how I, like many others, haven’t stopped
thinking about the movie since it came out, I think it’s fair to say that he succeeded, that
there are some deeper meanings here that resonate far beyond the movie’s immediate subject matter.
And today, I want to find out what they are. This video is brought to you by MUBI, go to mubi.com/likestoriesofold
for an extended free trial I think the first thing you have to understand to
get at the heart of Oppenheimer is that for the first time in years, Nolan has made a genuine
tragedy. Unlike Tenet, Dunkirk, Interstellar, Inception and the Dark Knight movies, there is no
heroic triumph here, only a tragic downfall. In this sense, we’re better off comparing Oppenheimer
to Nolan’s earlier works such as The Prestige, Insomnia, and most importantly; Memento.
I’m not a killer. I’m just someone who wanted to make things right.
Memento is especially relevant here because it has a very similar structure as Oppenheimer, and
this reveals the second thing that is important for understanding the movie’s ending, which is its
place within the larger structure of the story. In Memento, we were presented with two timelines,
one that one starts at the very end of the story and that plays out in reverse chronological
order. And one that unfolds regularly from the earliest point in the story. These timelines
then continuously intercut and inform each other until they ultimately converge in the
middle, which to us is the end of the movie. Oppenheimer essentially pulls the same trick.
Although its narrative structure is arguably even more complicated than Memento’s, if
we strip it down to its absolute essence, there are also 2 converging timelines here;
one that follows Oppenheimer’s life up until the Trinity test in 1945, and one that begins with
Strauss’s senate confirmation hearing in 1959 and that sort of looks backwards to cover everything
that happens after Oppenheimer creates the bomb. The point of convergence for both of these
stories is a conversation between Oppenheimer and Einstein that took place in 1947,
which is hinted at throughout the movie, but which we don’t fully get to see until the
very end. And the reason this structural context matters is because, going back to Memento, it’s
in this climax, or chronologically speaking, in this middle section of the story, that we
find a key revelation that not only ties the two storylines together, but that also gives
us a pivotal insight into our main character. Do I lie to myself to be happy? Yes, I will.
And this is exactly what the ending to Oppenheimer offers us from a narrative point
of view, it gives us one last insight into Oppenheimer’s mind that helps us to understand
both the true outcome of the first timeline, of everything that happened before the Trinity
test, as well as the motivation that has been the true driving force of everything that came after.
Well, we all know, what happened later. So, what exactly do we learn here? Well,
again, there is the most obvious layer in which Oppenheimer expresses his belief that he has set
in motion a chain reaction that will eventually destroy the entire world, which does seem like the
logical outcome of his reckoning with the actual consequences of having made the atomic bomb, and
which also serves as a valid character motivation for his actions in the chronologically second
half of the story in which he seems to almost willingly submit himself to his Promethean
torture in a somewhat ambiguous plea for some kind of redemption or reconciliation. But I think
we can dig a little deeper than this, because besides giving us character motivation, I believe
the real reason why this ending is so impactful is because it also captures a fundamental turning
point for Oppenheimer’s entire worldview, and I think it’s this revelation that truly
contains the troubling reverberations that Nolan spoke of; that deeper sense of dread
that pierced right through the audience, and that struck so many, including myself, on
what felt like an unsettlingly intimate level. We imagine a future, and
our imaginings horrify us. But first; some important contextual
understanding. As film critic Darren Mooney wrote in his review of Oppenheimer; “Before
the atomic age, the universe was understood through Newtonian physics.” In this paradigm,
as he explains, there were clear causalities, certainties. It suggested that our universe
was logical and deterministic, and therefore, that it was knowable, understandable. But then
quantum physics came around and basically replaced these certainties with the concept of probability,
with the idea that there are aspects of our world that are not knowable, that cannot be quantified.
It was a time of radical reinvention of the way in which we describe the universe around us,
the way in which we understand the universe. As Oppenheimer shows us, it’s a transition that
scared off the old guard, including Einstein, but it excited a new generation, including
Oppenheimer. Before his eyes were filled with that hollow anguish, they were hungry;
entranced by visions of a hidden world, and by the idea of unknown driving forces beneath
our reality and even our own consciousness. For the quantum revolution wasn’t limited to physics,
it was a reflection, as Mooney writes, “of a much larger shift in human understanding, playing out
in art, culture, music, politics, and psychology.” I didn’t want to try to explain that
to the audience, but the idea is; we want to see how radical this thinking was.
Indeed, this was the age where Freud and Jung were mapping out the subconscious, the
unknown, hidden world within our own psyche that shapes our identity through
forces we cannot directly perceive, which of course is another subject that Nolan has
always been deeply fascinated by. Needless to say, for a scientist like Oppenheimer, it was a time
of excitement, and of promise, the promise of pioneering into a new world, and domesticating
it under the dominion of human civilization. And this is the dominant perspective in the
first half of the story, again; that is the chronological first half of the story; it’s the
tale of a young scientist on the rise, becoming one of the leading experts in his field, and
then getting to combine his two great passions; physics and New Mexico, into the greatest
project of his time; one that was going to create a devastating weapon of mass destruction,
yes, but also one that, in Oppenheimer’s mind, would bring about a lasting peace unlike any we
had seen before, one that would in many ways unite the world in a global scientific endeavor,
and usher in a new era of human progress. Our work here will ensure a
peace mankind has never seen. It is easy to point out Oppenheimer’s naivety
on this matter, but at the same time, it is also understandable given how everything leading
up to the Trinity test had made him increasingly confident, consciously as well as unconsciously,
that the quantum world was not just controllable, but that it was his to control, that he was
the great man, the father of not just the bomb, but of the nuclear age in its entirety. But
then the test happens, and everything changes. That’s such an incredible turn in the movie.
up until that point he’s in full control of everything. He’s in charge, he’s in demand, he’s
telling people what to do. And then as soon as they make the bomb they take it away from him
and he realizes there’s no need for me anymore. By now, it's become a common trope for Nolan’s
characters, that inevitable reckoning between grandiosity and reality. The realization
that the forces they thought they understood, that they thought they could control,
are actually controlling them, leaving them imprisoned in self-made contraptions. It’s
Nolan’s oldest fear, author Tom Shone remarks, “that of being locked in – specifically, of
locking yourself in, willingly submitting to structures designed to protect you that
turn out, instead, to entrap you.” Security turns into anarchy, ambition becomes obsession,
order breaks down into an all-devouring chaos. Hasn't good come of your obsessions?
At first, but I have followed them too long. I am their slave. And one
day, they will choose to destroy me. And so too it goes for Oppenheimer. As he finds
himself increasingly excluded from his own work, increasingly struggling to make sense of
the suddenly unfamiliar world around him, as well as of the suddenly unfamiliar world
within. Where once everything was, like the structure of the Manhattan project, neatly
compartmentalized; work, family, affairs. Where once theory could be separated from application,
noble intentions from actual outcomes, now, all boundaries are breaking down, engulfing
everything in an unstoppable fire. Instead of mastering the quantum world, Oppenheimer has
unleashed it, unto the world, and unto himself, and in that process, he has doomed both. As
Bilge Ebiri points out; the wonderous visions of secret worlds hidden in the raindrops have been
completely replaced by apocalyptic nightmares of horror and devastation. Instead of envisioning
the astonishing connections between all matter and even all human relations, Oppenheimer now only
sees total annihilation. “In his mind at least, he has destroyed the world: He has destroyed
his world, his very conception of reality.” “Fission and Fusion,” film critic David Ehrlich
adds, “Nolan has never come up with a cleaner way of framing the chemical reaction that
galvanizes so many of his films.” Indeed, Nolan’s frequent employment of non-linear
storytelling doesn’t merely bend time or play around with its causal direction, it often
serves to break it entirely. His stories fragment themselves like atoms splitting apart and
spiraling out of control until the disparate pieces start slamming into each other again in
destructive combustions and symphonic revelations that let us experience all at once; past,
present and future. It makes, as Ehrlich puts it, “discovery inextricable from devastation,
creation inextricable from destruction, and the innocent joy of theory inextricable
from the unfathomable horror of practice.” This, perhaps, is the true source of Oppenheimer’s
ruin; he shattered his reality, and in doing so, he cast himself adrift, unstuck in time, without
any hope of reclaiming the blissful certainties he once enjoyed. For as he recounts his days of
youthful exuberance, the year is actually 1954, and he already knows exactly where his
ambition will lead him. Though at the time, he didn’t see it, his fate had already been
written in the raindrops, Ehrlich continues, leaving Oppenheimer skipping along the surface
with a dispassionate remove that can’t help but recall the similarly detached Dr. Manhattan.
I tell her I still want her, and that I always will. As I lie to her, it is September 4th, 1970,
I’m in a room full of people wearing disguises. There is a particular tragedy to this
disconnection from the linear flow of time, one that was also there in Memento. Because
as Leonard willfully sets himself on the self-destructive path that we’ve already seen
him go down, we realize that even though the ending offers a revelation, it doesn’t give us a
resolution. Instead, a loop is created that sends us right back to the beginning, where Leonard
will once again embark on the exact same journey. But whereas Leonard’s memory condition left him
oblivious to the cruel fate he trapped himself in, Oppenheimer knows full well that he is stuck
in an endless cycle. He can see clearly the chain reaction he set into motion, the inescapable
prison that he built around himself, and that he is now reliving over and over. Every time, he
will rebuild his world, experience his youth, his passion, his hope. And every time, he will
burn it all down again, and despair in the ashes. Prometheus chained to a rock
and tortured for eternity. Moving deeper into the subtext, there is an
unsettling relatability here that goes beyond the terror of nuclear annihilation. Remember,
Nolan wanted to invoke troubling reverberations that would land differently with each individual
watching the film, meaning that while Oppenheimer certainly isn’t a direct allegory for other
issues, it does have symbolical applicability that allowed its ending to pierce right into
some broader existential fears that have been haunting our collective psyche. Because again,
the quantum revolution in physics was but one part of a greater transition in our modern society
that, as we have now come to realize, have opened us up to new dangers and vulnerabilities. For
besides having meddled with the fabric of reality, we’ve also been altering the chemistry of our
entire atmosphere, affecting macroprocesses that take place within spatial and temporal
dimensions so vast that we can hardly perceive them. We’ve been interconnecting ourselves over
the entire globe, physically as well as digitally, embedding ourselves within increasingly complex
and fragile systems. And just as Oppenheimer, we too are now increasingly facing the
consequences of these achievements. I think it is fair to say that everyone,
in some way or another, is aware of this, that everyone has felt the uncertainty of
what all these developments really mean, the dread of where they might be taking us, and
the frustration of trying to figure out our own relation to them? Because are we not, at the end
of the day, allowing all this to happen? Are we not part of the same all-devouring machine as
the scientists at Los Alamos were? Are we not also just playing along pretending everything
will be fine while deep down we’ve long since come to realize that it won’t? But then again,
what can we do? Was Oppenheimer ever really in a position to change things? Wouldn’t the bomb have
been created with or without him? What becomes of individual agency when we realize we have fallen
into a giant machine that is not ours to control, and that now makes us question if it ever was,
if we ever had any real agency to begin with. Because can the powers that shaped the course of
our history truly be traced back to deliberate intentions and human ingenuity, to great men and
great deeds, and the active engagement with human progress. Or has the real power been hiding
in the shadows? Secretly directing our fate through an escalating chain reaction of silly
coincidences, petty motivations and dumb luck? A man goes on a honeymoon, and years later, he saves
an entire city from annihilation, while destroying two others. Another man sparks a decade-long
vendetta, all based on a simple misinterpretation. Do we actively write our history, or
does it just happen to us? And if so, what becomes of us then? If we cannot meaningfully
alter the system we’re so intrinsically a part of, can we carve our an island for ourselves? Can
we find scapegoats to take away our own inner turmoil, other individuals who we can blame
so that we can imagine ourselves unburdened, unconflicted? Or do we become martyrs ourselves?
Do we cast ourselves on the rock to allow our own torture? After all, punishment is followed by
redemption, right? A pat on the back, and all is forgiven. Is this how we justify our lives?
As Oppenheimer so painfully emphasizes, by having stolen fire from the Gods, by having
meddled with forces far greater than ourselves, it feels like we have broken our fundamental
concept of reality, and in doing so, we have found ourselves increasingly
displaced, struggling for understanding, for certainty, for some kind of reconciliation or
absolution. And this, as Darren Mooney concludes, is the bleak and lingering question hanging over
Oppenheimer: how can humanity be expected to understand the existential dangers threatening its
survival, when it cannot even understand itself. Nolan is far from the only filmmaker to have
dabbled with themes of apocalyptic dread and existential despair. A while back, I made a video
titled the apocalyptic filmmaker that haunts my soul, which is about Béla Tarr, one of my
favorite directors of all time. His magnus opus, the almost 7,5 hour long Satantango, stands among
the greatest achievements in cinematic history. As a movie, it’s a bleak yet beautiful odyssey into a
desolate world defined by Nietzschean philosophy, false prophets, and the struggle for meaning.
As an experience, however, especially if you watch it, as I did, entirely in one sitting,
it is quite simply indescribable. It’s truly one of those movie you just have to have seen at
least once, and it is now available on MUBI. MUBI is a curated online cinema streaming handpicked
exceptional films from around the globe. They have an amazing library and offer really useful
tools to help you navigate it. There are plenty of curated series that categorize films based on for
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seasoned veteran, there really is no better way to explore the riches of cinema. You can try MUBI for
free for thirty days by using my personal link, that’s mubi.com/likestoriesold, which you
can also find in the description below. So be sure to claim your extended free trial, to
start your free month of great cinema today.
