Oppenheimer is played by Cillian Murphy, who catches the quiet inquietude of the man, and his tobacco-softened speech.
(Though named for his father, Julius, he insisted, with Prufrockian nicety, that the “J” stood for nothing at all.) Lean, sticklike, skullish in his gauntness, and too clever for comfort-his own or anyone else’s-he has gone down in history as the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory, in New Mexico, where the bomb was built, and it is from history that Nolan seeks to pluck him. The antidote to this circularity is J. Robert Oppenheimer. This obsession with scale is well served by “Oppenheimer,” in which the amassing of refined uranium, for the construction of an atomic bomb, is indicated by marbles piling up inside a goldfish bowl. Nolan is always entranced by the vast and the tiny “Inception” (2010), wherein city streets fold like paper under the pressure of dreams, concludes with a spinning top. Three hours later, we get a vision of Earth beginning to burn, as nuclear explosions bloom across the globe. In the opening shot, ripples expand in puddles as raindrops fall. The new film from Christopher Nolan, “Oppenheimer,” starts and ends in the round.
