![]() ![]() As Hill, he was largely a nonentity in Oppenheimer’s crew. It’s made more effective by the fact that his presence was felt before, albeit for the opposite reason. To tout Malek as a surprise witness at the film’s turning point feels like the film showing all of its cards in the eleventh hour. Sitting before Congress, Malek’s Hill offers a searing indictment of Strauss, the character we have come to learn is Oppenheimer’s villain, all in a scant two minutes. Malek’s typically measured cadence lends his performance a rousing gravitas, especially from a character who had up to this point been a distracting piece of wallpaper. As the then-chairman of the Federation of American Scientists, his word held clout-so when he said that Strauss’ unfair damnation of Oppenheimer stoked the ire of the entire scientific community, it meant something. Hill shows up to quietly, confidently, clearly call out Strauss for his wrongdoing. ![]() Hill is brought in to testify at the hearing. But he’s a charmer, and public opinion has long soured on Oppenheimer Strauss’ confirmation for the Cabinet seems all but assured-until Dr. Strauss himself admits to his aide, played by Alden Ehrenreich, that his great dislike for Oppenheimer encouraged him to help get the scientist’s government clearance revoked and effectively end his career. We know that much of what he’s being accused of is neither relevant to his scientific achievements nor accurate the assertion that Oppenheimer opposed the hydrogen bomb so as to set the Soviets up for a win against the States was a clear falsity. The film establishes this as a thrilling courtroom drama, in which we root for the beleaguered “father of the atom bomb”-something that, at that point, is otherwise hard to do. Being that this was the mid-’50s, such a claim was among the worst possible accusations a government employee could face. The film builds up to revealing why Strauss is such a meaningful figure in Oppenheimer’s life: Strauss conspired to have Oppenheimer named as a communist, based on his petty dislike for the man. He was up for a Cabinet position in Eisenhower’s White House, a long-held dream of his that he’s been masterminding for years. Oppenheimer’s structure includes two parallel timelines: one following the journey of the physicist’s horrible creation, the other following the events surrounding Lewis Strauss’s (Robert Downey, Jr.) congressional confirmation hearing. Malek holds his tongue for much of the film, only to let it rip as the film reaches its denouement-set years after he was but a petition-holding no-name in Oppenheimer’s periphery. Unpopular Best Actor winners stay losing, I guess.Įxcept that in Oppenheimer, this oft-mocked Best Actor honoree reminds us how he managed to collect all those awards in the first place. By the second time he showed up and said nothing, I openly laughed. Yes, he could be in one of the guaranteed biggest movies of the year, but only if he agreed to keep his mouth shut the entire time. It’s a humbling role for Malek, as he is seen primarily as a minor annoyance in his scant appearances.įor much of the runtime, Malek’s Oppenheimer performance was so small as to almost appear like the result of a Faustian bargain. The two times that this occurs, however, Oppenheimer knocks Hill’s hand away in frustration. Instead, he mostly appears alongside Fermi, trying to offer Oppenheimer a petition to look at: the Szilárd petition, which 70 scientists signed and sent to President Truman in protest of bombing the Japanese. While Fermi’s team create the nuclear reactor, both Fermi and Hill remain steadfast about the atomic bomb not being used directly on cities.ĭespite holding this belief, Malek’s Dr. Enrico Fermi (Danny Deferrari) at a lab in Chicago. Hill.Īs Hill, Malek plays one of the scientists working on the Manhattan project, albeit not with Oppenheimer directly. ![]() Robert Oppenheimer ( Cillian Murphy) had his own unqualified win, all thanks to Malek’s Dr. (By 2019, he’d already won an Emmy, a Golden Globe, and an Oscar.) That Malek ends up starring in one of the film’s most searing, powerful moments came as a gigantic surprise. When he silently popped up an hour or so into Oppenheimer, then, it seemed like the latest meager appearance from a once-buzzy actor. But subsequent roles in films like Bond entry No Time to Die and last year’s box-office flop Amsterdam were either similarly criticized or, in the case of the latter, far from substantial to start with. Perhaps it’s because he received that honor for the much-maligned Bohemian Rhapsody, a film whose accolades astounded and annoyed critics aplenty. Since winning the Best Actor Oscar in 2019, Rami Malek’s career has taken a turn for the… less Oscar-winning. ![]()
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