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Over the weekend, at my local public library, I found a DVD of the 2023 movie Oppenheimer, so naturally, I scooped it up.

Spoiler Alert!!! If you haven’t seen the movie yet and want to be surprised, stop reading now.

The film is three hours long (Oy!) and somewhere in the first quarter, I thought about turning it off. The beginning of the movie is disorienting, not only hopping back and forward in time, but the visual depictions of how Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) conceptualized quantum mechanics. It was a pain in the ass until I figured out what was going on.

The first of the two main sequences is Oppenheimer being grilled by a small committee on whether or not his security clearance (and thus his career) should be renewed. The other was the Senate hearings on whether or not to appoint Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.) to a cabinet post. Both function like trials without having to follow the rules of a court of law but the outcomes of both will determine the futures of each of these men.

Strauss and Oppenheimer had a relationship which, at the start, seems like Strauss authentically admired and liked “Oppy.” However, there was a moment when Oppenheimer very publicly embarrassed Strauss and we find out the latter took that very seriously.

I should say that toggling back and forth between B&W and color was also a tad confusing. For a lot of these cinematic puzzles, I had to go to the trivia section for the film at IMDb to find out why Christopher Nolan did what he did.

We also follow Oppenheimer’s career from a student in the 1930s through (though very briefly) the 1960s when he’s honored by then-President Lyndon Johnson.

Oppenheimer (the man, not the movie) had some serious flaws including trying to poison one of his instructors when he was younger. This action is disputed by his heirs and is not a firmly established fact, but it was included in the film.

He’s also a womanizer and cheats on his wife Kitty (Emily Blunt) with his lover Jean (Florence Pugh), has a somewhat intellectual flirtation with the American Communist Party in the early 1940s, is a chain smoker, and sometimes an emotional mess.

Meanwhile, Kitty is an alcoholic and a terrible mother and Jean is mentally unstable and can’t figure out if she hates Oppenheimer or desperately needs him.

I do have to credit Nolan for making mathematics seem incredibly interesting and even exciting. My favorite parts of the movie were when “the bomb” was being developed. For the most part, these scenes were straightforward and thoroughly satisfying.

I didn’t recall anything about the concern that setting off a nuclear explosion might start a runaway chain reaction that would ignite the atmosphere and destroy the Earth. It seems silly to think of that now, but at the time, a few select scientists and the Manhattan Project military director General Leslie Groves (Matt Damon) were deeply concerned. After all, no one had ever detonated a nuclear bomb before. What if they really did end all life on our planet?

The sex scenes between Oppenheimer and Jean were a little surprising. I mean, technically, you didn’t have to show her nude, but I guess that was part of describing the emotional impact of their relationship (we never see Oppenheimer in bed with Kitty). There’s one scene when Oppenheimer’s being grilled by the committee that Kitty, who is sitting behind him, imagines Jean in the nude, on his lap having intercourse with him.

There were other surreal scenes, such as during the “victory speech” once the first bomb is test detonated, that Oppenheimer visualizes people in the audience being vaporized, or their skin peeling off, or them vomiting from radiation sickness.

Jason Clarke did a terrific job as Roger Robb, the man assigned to prosecute Oppenheimer relative to his security clearance. I almost didn’t recognize Matt Damon as General Groves. In real life, Groves was very overweight. While Damon didn’t try to pack on the pounds, he didn’t make any effort to lose weight either. By contrast, Murphy, who is slender anyway, restricted himself to one almond a day to maintain Oppenheimer’s gaunt appearance.

Downey earned his Oscar for this one. His portrayal of Strauss as a mean, vindictive, opportunist who could don the mask of respectability, kindness, and friendship was absolutely first rate.

The film comes to a climax with the decision of both men’s trials. They both lose, but in Strauss’ case, the loss is catastrophic. For Oppenheimer, it’s just a change of direction, one that his conversation with Einstein (Tom Conti) years before puts into perspective.

Gary Oldman only has a few minutes of time on the screen, but I loved his portrayal of President Harry Truman. Until I saw the cast list, I didn’t even know it was Oldman.

Kudos also go to Rami Malek as Dr. David Hill, Benny Safdie as Edward Tellar, Aiden Ehrenreich as the Senate Aide at the Strauss hearing, and David Dastmalchian as William Borden. This isn’t to say that I wasn’t impressed with the rest of the actors. The casting was great across the board.

However, like Nolan’s Interstellar (2014) it’s a movie I’ll watch only once. The film is very densely packed and operates on multiple layers. This isn’t a movie you watch casually just because you’ve got three hours to waste.

In the case of “Interstellar,” the pacing was too slow for me and for much of the film, I was waiting for something to happen. “Oppenheimer” had better pacing but there’s a lot to keep track of. It is a movie I believe you MUST see once in your life, but after that, what you do with it is up to you.

I should say that some weeks ago, I saw a DVD of the movie Barbie (2023) at the library. For a cold second, I considered checking it out, but then decided against it. I would have watched it only to review it and to satisfy some small remaining curiosity about the movie.

I say this because the two films debuted in theaters pretty much at the same time and the “barbenheimer” meme was popular for a while. Given a choice between seeing “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” I’d still choose the latter every time. After all, why would a man my age (or a man) watch the cotton candy colored “Barbie” anyway?