‘Oppenheimer,’ The Dying Star
It’s no coincidence that the best metaphor for understanding ‘Oppenheimer’ is based in Quantum Physics.
Up until the Trinity Test scene, the scene that everyone in the theater has undoubtedly been waiting for, ‘Oppenheimer’ moves as fast and idealistically as J. Robert Oppenheimer’s (Cillian Murphy) mind did during his younger years. It is during these first two hours that the film lays the groundwork, both intellectually and tonally, to provide the true achievement of the film: depicting the inevitability of change, destruction, and contradiction in all aspects of our world.
This is not to take away from the first two hours of the film. In fact, the first act of the film is required to make the last act stand out in such a powerful fashion. During the first act, as Oppenheimer works his way through Europe meeting the scientists that he would later recruit with General Groves (Matt Damon) to the Manhattan Project, Oppenheimer’s mind and ideas (as well as his social circle) expands and flourishes.
This idealism peaks when Groves initially meets Oppenheimer, where Oppenheimer, at his most confident and charismatic moment in the film, effectively hires himself as the leader of the Manhattan Project. From this moment to the Trinity Test, the dread that will mark the rest of the film is slowly introduced, first touched upon by Isidor Rabi (David Krumholtz) when confessing his reservations about the bomb to a determined Oppenheimer, in military attire.
After Trinity, all of the expansionism and romanticism (of Oppenheimer’s lovers, friends, and quantum physics alike) quickly turns after the initial celebration of the successful test at Los Alamos. The world is forever changed by this event, and the film reflects this in increasing clarity after the Trinity Test scene.
Yet, this can also be explained in scientific terms, with an explanation conveniently placed by Christopher Nolan earlier in the film.
Earlier on in the film, Oppenheimer gives a lecture to the newly-intrigued students about the creation of black holes: when a sun’s fires begin to falter, and the energy it puts out begins to become less than the force of its own gravity, the star is set upon a path in which it starts to be increasingly compressed by its own gravity; so much so that it will eventually implode into a black hole.
If this phenomenon is applied to Oppenheimer himself, it could be said that the forces that caused the expansion of Oppenheimer’s life to become the Father of the Atomic Bomb begin to falter at the moment of his greatest achievement, and forces much stronger than himself begin to push back against him; pushing him inward, like the dying sun being compressed by its own gravity. In Oppenheimer’s case, these forces include both his own feelings about what he’s done, and also the actions of the US government taken against him during the events surrounding the removal of his security clearance.
During the last hour of the movie, Nolan balances these forces in a way which doesn’t give either side more attention, and shouldn’t. The immensity of Oppenheimer’s achievement and guilt causes Oppenheimer to implode to a point to which he is no longer definable, in a similar sense to how black holes also continually evade a complete definition. In reaction to this indefinability, everyone around Oppenheimer attributes their own definition to him. Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.) sees him as a traitor, Einstein (Tom Conti) sees him as a necessary martyr, but how does Oppenheimer see himself? The answer can be argued in a multitude of directions, but Nolan keeps his nature a mystery, as was also the verdict from many that actually knew Oppenheimer. The mystery is only dispelled, to a certain degree, when Oppenheimer stands over the pond at the Institute of Advanced Study in the last scene of the film.
At the end of the film, we have what has been lurking over the course of the entire film defined to us. The film begins with the birth of a star, expanding energy into the universe, until by its nature, its own gravity begins to enclose on itself; a process that continues until there is nothing left but a Black Hole, the ultimate destroyer of worlds. The beauty of ‘Oppenheimer’ is that it doesn’t depict the end, it shows us the point in history when our destruction became irreversible, which for some, is the end.