by Benjamin Thernstrom

Christopher Nolan is one of my favorite film directors. He made two of my all-time favorites ("The Prestige" and "Memento") and others that I love a great deal ("Interstellar," "Inception," and "The Dark Knight").

In fact, there’s not a single one of his films I dislike, so I was eagerly looking forward to his latest, "Oppenheimer," as soon as it was announced.

While it didn’t quite live up to my sky-high expectations, "Oppenheimer" continues to show Nolan's ability to blend an engaging thrill-ride of a narrative with complex ethical questions and character development.

As you might expect, the movie tells the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer (played by Cillian Murphy), the visionary physicist who led the Manhattan Project to create the atomic bomb that would be used against Japan in the final days of World War II.

However, as with most of his films, Nolan tells the story in an order you wouldn't expect. The first we see of Oppenheimer is at a 1954 security hearing, where he defends his loyalty to the United States against members of the government who are accusing him of communist sympathies. We jump back and forth between the hearing and the story of his life, through which he tries to explain his actions.

In addition to this, we have black-and-white flash-forwards that focus on Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.) attempting to become Secretary of Commerce in 1959. Strauss, who was head of the Atomic Energy Commission when it deposed Oppenheimer, has his actions during the security hearing criticized by Congress, putting his appointment in jeopardy.

The greatest advantage of the nonlinear structure is that it helps us contrast Oppenheimer before the war with Oppenheimer after, by cutting continually between them.

Murphy's performance is flawless — the younger Oppenheimer's wide eyes glow with hunger and curiosity, while the older Oppenheimer's weary demeanor shows how much he's been ground down and put through the wringer of the military-industrial complex. He's no longer the leader of his field, he's ended up using his work for goals he regrets, and he doesn't even feel like he's being valued for it anymore.

Murphy makes sure that Oppenheimer is always fascinating as a character, and if the film's themes aren't as consistently gripping, they still have plenty of bite to them. Even as someone who's already read a great deal about this period (if you want to, you could check out books like "American Prometheus" or "The Making of the Atomic Bomb") and was hoping for a fresher perspective from Nolan, I was fascinated by the questions the film raises about the value of technology.

Oppenheimer and the scientists working with him were building the bombs to try and save lives by ending the war earlier, but the same bombs would give rise to a nuclear arms race that would put even more lives in danger for future generations — including the generation we live in today.

Since Oppenheimer had created his technology for the government, he ultimately lacked the power to control it. He ended up as an advocate against buildup of nuclear armaments with the hydrogen bomb, and he looked like a hypocrite after he had helped begin the nuclear arms race.

It's as perfect an example of failing to put the genie back in the bottle as anything in history.

One small drawback, Nolan zips through the early part of Oppenheimer's life without developing them sufficiently. However, things get more engaging when we reach Los Alamos, the site in New Mexico where the bomb was developed.

One scene that stands out is the fluid cross-cutting between a hostile military intelligence officer grilling Oppenheimer about potential communist spies, and future occasions when Oppenheimer is forced to revisit that conversation (and defend his less than candid responses).

Oppenheimer had friends who were associated with communism that he covers for, which leads Strauss and other military officials to deem him a security risk. In that back-and-forth is one of the central questions of the film that resonates today, with polarizing ideology putting close personal relationships at risk.

Overall, while "Oppenheimer" has enough small writing issues to not rank among Nolan's best, that speaks to the quality of his filmography. I doubt any other blockbuster this year (at least with a price tag of a hundred million dollars) will set out to tell a valuable historical story to the audience, or to analyze important ethical questions. And if they do, I doubt it will be half as gripping as this.

Benjamin Thernstrom, a senior at Washington-Liberty High School in Arlington, Virginia, is an intern with PBS NewsHour Classroom. You can read more movie reviews by Thernstrom on LetterBoxd.