The Best Movies of the Year: Selective Processing Is Oppenheimer’s Secret Weapon

Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, or “How to Start Worrying That You Love the Bomb,” operates on a multitude of emotional frequencies—many of them a constant scream—for the entirety of its 3-hour runtime. In the vast majority of its scenes, Cillian Murphy’s Robert J. Oppenheimer stands with uncertain eyes and fixed expression, surveying with a mix of pride and anxiety how suddenly his authority has expanded over a world-changing project. But when his authority over how he’s perceived by his peers—and by extension, history—is challenged, he reacts like any out-of-his-depth narcissist would. Oppenheimer starts avoiding reality.

When subjected to composer Ludwig Göransson’s tremoring strings and editor Jennifer Lame’s disorientating cuts, Oppenheimer’s footing becomes increasingly unsteady; after the power of the atom has first exploded outward, it immediately turns inward on its architect. Nolan’s film, adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography “American Prometheus,” posits that Oppenheimer knew of his status as America’s Prometheus, a self-aware mythological symbol who tries to rewrite his place in history in real time. The only way to do this is to revise your own reality on the fly.

It’s called “selective processing” and all the kids are doing it. The phrase has largely been used around the study of anxiety, about how people with the condition process information that affirms or emboldens pre-existing anxieties. But more broadly, it can apply to anyone who, consciously or not, prioritizes information that affirms a pre-set belief system or narrative. With its first-person screenplay and IMAX-shot extreme close-ups, Oppenheimer is, more than anything else, a film concerned with perspective. What is a film but a selective information processing machine?

The character Oppenheimer seems able to wield control over what’s shown to the audience (at least in the color sequences—the black-and-white “objective” scenes signal we have left his subjective viewpoint). More accurately, Oppenheimer very carefully ingests information that protects how he’s perceived, and as Nolan fuses the film’s technique to Oppenheimer’s emotional world, we see these attempts to pick and choose life’s hard truths reflected in cinematic language.

After the Trinity test, while the scientists are still congregated at Los Alamos, Oppenheimer sits among his colleagues for a presentation on the biological damage and fallout suffered by the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. When an image of severe radiation poisoning appears in front of Oppenheimer, he looks away. We can’t react the same way; the image is never shown to us. In some sense, Oppenheimer is aware that spectators seeing the gruesome consequences of his work would sour their opinion on him; in order to not consider how he will be judged, Oppenheimer contorts his perspective to ignore what he knows will haunt him.

Writing on Nolan’s choice not to depict Japan before or after the bombings for the L.A. Times, Justin Chang too zones in on the radiation poisoning presentation, highlighting the policy of “compartmentalization” spearheaded by General Groves (Matt Damon) at Los Alamos, where the Manhattan Project was split into many small units working independently to avoid security leaks. As Chang notes, much of Oppenheimer takes place “in the theater of Oppenheimer’s mind.” The physicist has chosen to compartmentalize his own conscience, as if these graphic images are for another Oppenheimer to process, unpack and reveal to onlookers. It is “the act of setting aside, or even tucking away, whatever we find morally troubling.” It’s a clear moment of self-awareness from a man who, before the Trinity test, was primarily self-centered, and yet the fear of his work’s implications pushes Oppenheimer deeper into his own interior world.

Nolan demonstrates how centrally Oppenheimer positions his ego in how he absorbs information. Despite his protestations, Oppenheimer clearly thinks very highly of himself; his introverted demeanor may not give it away, but the venom he holds for people who undermine or criticize him reveals all. Forget Strauss—the guy tries to poison his professor for making fun of his academic ability.

Watch how people describe Oppenheimer to Oppenheimer, see how he reacts. Whenever someone strokes his ego—like when Lawrence (Josh Hartnett) tells him, “You’re not just self-important, you’re actually important”—Oppenheimer takes it plainly with no opposition. But whenever someone calls out his hypocrisy or mistreatment, he deflects. When his mistress Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh) complains about her lack of agency in her relationship with one of the most powerful military scientists in the country (“You drop in and out of my life and don’t have to tell me why. That’s power.”), Oppenheimer protests that it’s not within his control.

Both comments have truth to them. They’re not contradictory quantum realities, but rather symptoms of one another. Because he’s so important, Oppenheimer is able to use others as if they are disposable. But he clearly resists accepting the nuanced, objective assessment of his life, preferring to stick close to a projected, constructed idea where his agency and control is always in flux depending on whether it flatters him for it to be so.

It’s easy to understand why Oppenheimer’s relationship with his own perspective is so complicated. His visions of seeing the world on a subatomic level—where he cannot identify any person, geography or emotion—date back to adolescence, and have given him a complex about controlling his own mind. It’s an insight into how Oppenheimer visualizes science on a level that transcends the petty bureaucracies and overt politicizing that would later damn his career, but unlike the Japanese victim presentation, it’s not a calculated choice.

These intrusions are outside of Oppenheimer’s control, an unavoidable interruption of the perspective we are bonded to. Instead of feeling like a deliberate diversion, it gives us a sense of the man’s psychology: He is unable to avoid processing images like this, so he needs to maintain a stricter sense of control on how he’s seen in the real world. This is someone whose own mind has been intruded by visions of another world—no wonder his attempts to impose order onto his direct surroundings are so aggressive and loaded with intent. 

The problem with trying to make the world around you adhere to a personal, strictly biased perspective is that the world does, in fact, exist outside the confines of our own head. Nolan’s masterful, big-scale experiment in subjectivity doesn’t just show the inner mechanics of a mind trying to selectively construct a version of itself in real time, it shows the inevitable mental collapse.

When Oppenheimer stands in front of Los Alamos’ workers after the success of the Trinity Test, and reality starts to melt in front of him, we witness a man already at war with himself realizing the consequences of selectively processing what he sees and hears. From that moment on, he vows to alter the perspective of how history will judge him. But even when his mind is unwillingly flooded with images of horror, the sly irony flavoring Nolan’s mastery of perspective is clear—Oppenheimer couldn’t comprehend the destruction he engineered without him being at the epicenter of the blast.

Rory Doherty is a screenwriter, playwright and culture writer based in Edinburgh, Scotland. You can follow his thoughts about all things stories @roryhasopinions.