Let me begin by saying that I worship at the altar of Christopher Nolan. From The Prestige to The Dark Knight, Inception to Dunkirk, I can never resist his particular brand of steely, high-concept blockbusters—their knotty plots, epic cinematography, thundering scores, sleek interiors, and mysterious and tortured protagonists. However, these thrills are almost always accompanied by what I consider to be the auteur’s Achilles heel: namely, a penchant for populating his films with severely under-developed female characters.
There are arguably a couple of exceptions—perhaps Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain’s NASA scientists in Interstellar, though they, too, are largely defined by their relationships with the men in the film. Beyond that, however, it’s a veritable wasteland of dead wives who serve to motivate the male leads (Jorja Fox in Memento, Piper Perabo and Rebecca Hall in The Prestige, Marion Cotillard in Inception, Matthew McConaughey’s character’s wife in Interstellar); dead love interests (Lucy Russell in Following, Maggie Gyllenhaal in The Dark Knight); murdered teenage girls (Crystal Lowe in Insomnia); women desperately in need of rescuing (Katie Holmes in Batman Begins, Elizabeth Debicki in Tenet); dead villains (Marion Cotillard in The Dark Knight Rises, Dimple Kapadia in Tenet); and peppy sidekicks (Hilary Swank in Insomnia, Scarlett Johansson in The Prestige, Elliot Page in Inception, Anne Hathaway in The Dark Knight Rises). And then there’s Dunkirk which, of course, has no named female characters at all.
So, when the news came that Nolan’s next eye-popping extravaganza, Oppenheimer, a barnstorming biopic of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the inventor of the atomic bomb, would feature two prominent and meaty parts for women—his wife, the biologist and botanist Kitty, as played by Emily Blunt, and Florence Pugh as his former lover, the psychiatrist Jean Tatlock—it was certainly heartening. The spotlight would, naturally, remain on the titular theoretical physicist (the formidable Cillian Murphy) as he grappled with the legacy of his era-defining creation, alongside a bevy of scientists, generals and political operatives embodied by the likes of Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Josh Hartnett, Casey Affleck, Rami Malek, Kenneth Branagh, and Gary Oldman. But my hope was that these two revered British stalwarts, new to the Nolan universe, would get a chance to make their mark on it, too.
Sadly, they’re not given quite enough room to do this—relegated to the peripheries in every sense. Firstly, there’s Blunt’s Kitty, who, when she’s seen on screen for the first time, is literally nothing more than an impeccably dressed, red-lipsticked blur that lurks in the corner over the shoulder of Murphy’s Oppenheimer as he’s grilled during his 1954 security hearing. Even though she was, by all accounts, a highly intelligent and fascinating woman, we’re then introduced to her in a flashback as a drunken, somewhat ditzy flirt who’s viewed in relation to two men—Oppenheimer, to whom she’s obviously attracted, and her husband at the time. When she later delivers a monologue to him that condenses her biography to date, its focus is on her three previous marriages, including that with Joseph Dallet, through whom she became affiliated with the Communist Party—an association which later negatively impacts Oppenheimer.
Once they’re married and have a child, Kitty quickly becomes disillusioned, but we’re only shown glimpses of what appears to be postnatal depression and a descent into alcoholism—Oppenheimer comes home to find her drinking at the kitchen table while his son bawls in the next room, and quickly takes charge of the situation, taking him to live at a friend’s house. (He is later picked up, just as unceremoniously.) What has brought Kitty to this point? When did her alcohol dependency begin? Does she regret marrying Oppenheimer? These are not questions Nolan seems concerned with—we’re simply shown that she’s a drunk, neglectful mother in the crudest way possible. Perhaps this is better than her being portrayed as a domestic saint, but imbuing a character with flaws isn’t enough to make them feel real if those flaws are never explored or interrogated.
Later, when the family relocate to Los Alamos once Oppenheimer is appointed director of the Manhattan Project, she is visibly more stable and supportive (demonstrated by the fact that she’s frequently hanging up or taking down laundry), acting as his sounding board as he ponders the ethics of what he’s about to do. She’s even shown tolerating his affair with Pugh’s Tatlock—most viscerally in a surreal and queasy scene, during the security hearing, when Oppenheimer imagines himself naked, with Tatlock’s nude body draped over him, as his wife watches on, disgusted. She does later hurry out of the room at least, and we know she’s hurting because she drops her handbag, out of which pops a hip flask. Sigh.
It’s in the film’s final act, though, that Blunt gets some space to shine. Yes, there are more erratic sequences of her shouting and smashing glass, but also one in which she testifies at Oppenheimer’s hearing, running circles around the men who seek to trap her. Blunt is dazzling as ever and, for a second, you forget that Kitty has been entirely sidelined for the past two and a half hours. But then again, even in this virtuosic scene, her value lies wholly in the fact that she’s an asset to Oppenheimer; someone who serves him effectively in this moment; and someone we still know so little about.
However, this is much more than what Pugh is afforded. The critically acclaimed actor, who’s delivered unforgettable performances in everything from Lady Macbeth to Midsommar, and has been on the verge of an Oscar win ever since her scene-stealing turn in Little Women, is here given her most inconsequential role in years. As the sultry and mysteriously troubled Tatlock, she shimmies into view at a party, making eyes at Oppenheimer and purring about communism. Within seconds, they’re having sex.
Who is this reportedly brilliant psychoanalyst and physician who introduced Oppenheimer to radical politics? All we’re told about her is that she’s lovestruck and emotionally turbulent, confounding him with a flurry of mixed messages—she calls him, but asks him not to answer; and tells him she hates flowers, but accepts the bouquets he brings her before binning them. This becomes a running joke and her defining feature until the point when, during his marriage to Kitty, Oppenheimer pays her another clandestine visit, after which Tatlock—spoiler alert—drowns herself in her bathtub. In classic Nolan fashion, her death torments Oppenheimer as he gears up for the most important moment of his career: the Trinity nuclear test.
It’s worth adding that Pugh does all she can to bring depth and nuance to the character, but she’s so underserved by the writing that it’s basically impossible. The same can be said of the few other women that crop up in the course of the story: Emma Dumont’s Jackie Oppenheimer, the communist-leaning wife of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s younger brother Frank, who herself is merely a walking punchline; Louise Lombard’s simpering Ruth Sherman Tolman, whom Oppenheimer has an affair with; and Olivia Thirlby’s Lilli Hornig, the pioneering scientist and feminist activist who just has a throwaway line about having gone to Harvard.
I’m not asking for a rewriting of history in which these women are placed at the center of this seismic event, but could a three-hour-long film not have dedicated a few minutes to giving these figures even a minimal level of believability, when it lavishes so much time and attention on Oppenheimer, Robert Downey Jr.’s Lewis Strauss, Matt Damon’s Leslie Groves, and Josh Hartnett’s Ernest Lawrence? After all, much has been written about the incredible achievements of the forgotten women scientists of the Manhattan Project, and it’s universally accepted that both Kitty and Tatlock had rich, complicated lives independent of Oppenheimer, but you wouldn’t know that from the film.
It’s understandable why these women, both the Hollywood heavyweights and the less established players, took on these undercooked roles—who could possibly pass up the opportunity to work with Nolan? But it’s now up to the director to begin crafting more complex parts for all the female actors who are queuing up to work with him. So much of Oppenheimer is so impressive—the shots of raindrops on a puddle, creating rings like the radius of an atomic bomb; the electrifying visions of fizzing particles; the unbearably tense countdown to the Trinity test—that you find yourself imagining and yearning for the even more spectacular film that could have emerged had these fiery women been given their due. So, to paraphrase the ending of The Dark Knight, I’m pulling Nolan up on this because I know he can take it—and hopefully, next time around, do just a little bit better.
