‘OPPENHEIMER’: Superb cast carries mesmerizing film

Given that he always knows best, Oppenheimer tut-tuts when Berkeley colleague Ernest Lawrence — played with gregarious generosity by Josh Hartnett — warns that involvement in social reforms, and raising funds for the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War, could be politically damaging.

Worse yet, Oppenheimer begins a torrid affair with Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh), a Stanford-educated psychiatrist who writes for a Communist Party newspaper. Pugh makes this young woman sensuous and taunting; she’s one of few people who can get under Oppenheimer’s skin.

Her hold on him continues — he’s a moth to her flame — even after he marries Katherine “Kitty” Harrison (Emily Blunt), a fragile soul who nonetheless stands by Oppenheimer’s side during the rest of their lives. Blunt’s performance is raw, tortured and hard to watch. Her pinched and often shattered gaze is heartbreaking, as Kitty succumbs to the demons of alcohol, and yet — this is important — she also is the rock on which her husband can lean during moments of crisis.

All of this is preamble — a fastpaced first act — to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s response to rumors that Nazi Germany is developing a “super bomb.” The result is the Manhattan Project, to be chaperoned by Leslie Groves Jr. (Matt Damon), the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers officer who has just overseen construction of the Pentagon.

To the surprise of many, Groves chooses Oppenheimer to lead what quickly becomes the project’s secret weapons laboratory. The latter’s mad, pie-in-the-sky scheme: to build a full-blown community in barren Los Alamos — the middle of nowhere, New Mexico — where scientists can work hard while living with their families.

This initial meeting is a highlight. Damon’s Groves systematically catalogues Oppenheimer’s personality flaws and political liabilities, any one of which should make him unsuitable for this assignment, while Murphy delivers the scientist’s best mocking expression, knowing full well that he will get it.

Which Groves also realizes, to his dismay.

(Their second choice exchange comes when Oppenheimer admits that one member of his team has theorized that an atomic blast could ignite a chain reaction that would destroy all of Earth’s atmosphere … although the chances are “near zero.” “Near zero?” Groves replies, Damon’s expression aghast.)

Their prickly first encounter notwithstanding, the two become friends and allies, during what becomes the craziest, most accelerated research project in American history. Worse yet, Groves’ job has blossomed into herding cats: The dozens of newly arrived scientists may not be as intransigent as Oppenheimer, but they’re all proud, willful and — in many cases — unwilling to play well with others.

By this point Oppenheimer also has met Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.), and their relationship becomes … wary. Both are stubborn, wildly ambitious and, in radically different ways, earnestly patriotic. Downey, his line deliveries electrifying, establishes Strauss as a crafty man who keeps close counsel: his eye on a distant prize, and willing to play a long game to get it.

Additional key individuals includes Edward Teller (Benny Safdie), Hans Bethe (Gustaf Skarsgård), Isidor Rabi (David Krumholtz) and — in a delightful cameo — Tom Conti, as Albert Einstein. Rami Malek pops up briefly as an apparently innocuous advisor, whose presence later proves quite consequential during the third act; Gary Oldman also has a fleeting but crucial role toward the end.

Other supporting players are far too numerous to list, although

Jason Clarke is particularly malevolent, during Oppenheimer’s 1954 security clearance hearing, as AEC attack dog Roger Robb (shades of Joseph McCarthy!).

Although the overly loud score and sound effects continue to be intrusive, Nolan reserves silence for his film’s most dramatic scene, which makes it even more powerful.

I will confess, going in, that the notion that a scientist’s biopic could hold one’s attention for 180 minutes seemed unlikely … particularly when one recalls that Nolan’s previous film, 2020’s “Tenet,” is an incomprehensible, self-indulgent mess.

But he definitely pulls it off this time. “Oppenheimer” is by turns fascinating, mesmerizing, horrifying and even suspenseful: if not quite perfect, darn close.

— Read more of Derrick Bang’s film criticism at http://derrick bang.blogspot.com. Comment on this review at www.davisenter prise.com.