Oscar Award to Oppenheimer: What is special about the film?

On Monday morning, ‘Oppenheimer’ won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Not only this, the film bagged seven awards including Best Actor (Cillian Murphy), Best Supporting Actor (Robert Downey Jr.), Best Director (Christopher Nolin), Best Music.

What was so special about this film that it received such recognition from the most famous and influential film organization in the world?

To answer this question, we have to see that great stories, whether in the form of a film, a novel or any other art form, are generally about great dilemmas, that is, their characters. Big problems are faced and there are no easy solutions, now it is up to the character which path he chooses.

The movie ‘Oppenheimer’ is great because it presents not one, but several great dilemmas and the characters, especially the protagonist Cillian Murphy, struggle to deal with them.

Apart from the rest of the dilemmas (which will be mentioned below), the central issue of this film is huge, as big as any movie can be, namely the future of the entire world is at stake. Obviously, there can be no greater issue than this.

After the release of Martin Scorsese’s ‘Colors of the Flower Moon’, many film experts felt that no other film could win the 2024 Oscars, but seeing ‘Oppenheimer’ left emotional sympathies, why? That ‘Flower Moon,’ however important a film it is, is nevertheless limited in scope compared to ‘Oppenheimer.’

There is no doubt that ‘Oppenheimer’ is a big film on a big canvas, not only longer than usual (a full three hours!), but also packed with characters, stories and events. Contrary to the common practice of the day, Christopher Nolin shot it on film rather than digital, and it uses actual special effects rather than computer graphics.

This film shows the part of the Second World War in which the race between America and Germany to develop atomic bomb is going on. Both countries fear that if the other develops the atomic bomb first, it will immediately win the war.

Germany put the famous physicist Heisenberg in charge of the atomic bomb team, while the United States appointed Robert J. Oppenheimer, a student of Heisenberg, as the head of a large team and opened the mouths of the treasury. At any cost, the atomic bomb should be developed as soon as possible, otherwise, if Hitler builds the bomb first, Germany will win the war.

The US project was named the ‘Manhattan Project’ and is considered one of the largest projects in human history, alongside projects such as the Great Pyramids of Egypt and the Great Wall of China. Nowlin, doing justice to his subject, made ‘Oppenheimer’ a major project in the world of film so that he could call it the glory of the Manhattan Project.

The story of the film mostly focuses on the American part where Oppenheimer (played by Cillian Murphy) and his team are trying to develop the atomic bomb as soon as possible.

But at the same time, American scientists are also facing a great dilemma. Some of the scientists in the team began to fear that if the atomic bomb explodes, it will ignite the oxygen in the atmosphere, which is likely to incinerate the entire world.

But on the other hand, if the atomic bomb is not built immediately, Germany will take the initiative, and will use it without hesitation against Great Britain and America. It seems to be a case of ‘well ahead, ditch behind’.

The main characters of the film are shown suffering from the same great contradiction which has prevented them from sleeping at night. Then the bombs are made (atmospheric oxygen did not catch fire, thank God), and when they are dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Oppenheimer’s peace is shattered, and he is haunted by the terrible consequences of his creation.

But on the other hand, there is another big dilemma in ‘Oppenheimer’ and that is that Oppenheimer’s sympathies were with communism during his youth, so many people in America looked at him with suspicion that he was America and America. are not sincere with the capitalist system.

When the Soviet Union also developed an atomic bomb within a few years of the Manhattan Project, Oppenheimer and his colleagues were accused of having passed the secret of the bomb to their communist colleagues. It was also the case that some members of the team wanted to build a more powerful hydrogen bomb, but Oppenheimer vetoed them and settled for the atomic bomb.

Here too, there was the dilemma that the hydrogen bomb was more lethal but more difficult and complicated to build, and Oppenheimer was racing against the clock. Or is it not that they deliberately did not want to give this destructive weapon in the hands of the United States?

It is for this reason that Oppenheimer, who became a hero by making the bomb, was prosecuted by Levi Strauss, the Minister of Commerce of the time, who wanted to demolish Oppenheimer’s idol at all costs. His role in the film is played by ‘Iron Man’ Robert Downey Jr. and he also won the Best Supporting Actor Award for it.

The trial is shown in black-and-white, interspersed repeatedly with color sequences of the struggle to build the bomb, and in Christopher Nolin’s famous time-travelling style, the film repeatedly travels back and forth between the past and the present. .

So, one of the wonders of the film is the big moral dilemmas shown in it, on the other hand, there is also a strong criticism of the American government system and decisions.

Cillian Murphy’s performance in the film is amazing, which is why she won not only the Oscars, but almost all the major acting awards this year, including the British Academy Film Awards, Golden Globes, Screen Actors Guild Awards, etc. .

Apart from this, the film is also technically brilliant. Contrasting elements such as past and present, black and white and color, hope and fear, friendship and enmity are masterfully woven into one.

One aspect of the film grabbed me immediately. Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman also appears in the film, although he is not identified by name and only appears for a few seconds. But as soon as I saw a Manhattan Project scientist playing a bongo, I immediately knew it was Feynman.

Feynman is the only scientist who did not wear protective goggles during the nuclear explosion. Feynman mentions this in his Aap Beiti.

It shows Christopher Nolin’s meticulousness in how accurately a nameless character, who appears on screen for a few seconds, is portrayed, how much effort must have gone into the rest of the film.

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