In retrospect, Christopher Nolan was always the obvious choice to make a movie about Robert Oppenheimer.  As a director, Nolan has spent most of his career making movies with puzzle narratives.  I can think of no other director who could better relate to the man who solved the biggest puzzle of physics: how to harness atomic energy, the underlying power of the universe?  Given how simpatico Nolan is with his subject, it seems that it was only a matter of time when Nolan would make a movie about the father of the atomic bomb.

That Nolan would follow-up Tenet with Oppenheimer makes logical sense.  The former told a story where the future was trying to avert an ecological disaster by deploying a weapon of mass destruction in the past, which is our present.  While I enjoyed many aspects of Tenet, following the plot was as challenging as solving a graduate-level physics equation.  Perhaps Nolan felt that after Tenet, he had taken his mental gymnastics as far as they could go.  (And where else can you go after you’ve introduced the concept of “temporal pincer movements”?)  Regardless of the reasons for his approach to the subject at hand, Oppenheimer represents a significant shift in storytelling direction for Nolan.  He set aside his propensity for mind-mending plots and has created the most accessible movie of his career that did not involve Batman.

Some may argue that Oppenheimer is the best movie Nolan has made.  I believe it is one of the best movies he’s made.  I’d be hard-pressed to rank it above the brutal fatalism of Memento, the diabolical mischief of Inception or the grand anarchy of The Dark Knight.  Oppenheimer is a departure for Nolan in that it is his first movie that focuses on actual historical figures.  (Dunkirk placed fictional characters inside of actual events during WWII.)  However, just because Nolan has decided to make a biopic doesn’t mean that he would deliver something predictable and familiar.

On many levels, Oppenheimer is a straight-forward biopic.  By this I mean that the movie has all of the trappings you’d expect from a movie based on a significant historical figure.  The movie touches on all of the key events of Oppenheimer’s life from 1926 through 1954.  It begins with Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) as a troubled doctoral student at Cambridge and effectively ends with the conclusion of the hearing on the renewal of his US security clearance.  (Spoilers–it was not renewed.)  In between those events Oppenheimer introduces many people who impacted the man’s life personally, professionally and sometimes both.  

The story features various work colleagues–scientists and engineers, from his stays at Berkeley and at different government research facilities.  The movie examines Oppenheimer’s cursory involvement with teachers unions and Communism, the latter being the one that would play a role in his undoing.  The movie spends a fair amount of time on two women of consequence:  his lover Jean Tatlage (Florence Pugh) and his wife Kitty (Emily Blunt).  It also gives the spotlight to the man who orchestrated Oppenheimer’s fall from grace, Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.).

In addition to covering substantial historical ground, Oppenheimer features that familiar staple of biopics: a large cast of well-known actors in supporting roles.  If you haven’t seen the cast list, you may be surprised to see that it includes none other than Josh Hartnett, Matt Damon, Alden Ehrenreich, Scott Grimes, Jason Clarke, Kenneth Branagh and several others so surprising that revealing them is the equivalent of spoilers.  Like all great biopics, Oppenheimer has an outsized performance at the center by Cillian Murphy.  He’s been great in many other roles, but this one is certain to bring him critical recognition and put him in the conversation for Best Actor.  There’s also Downey Jr.’s diabolical turn as Strauss, which could net him his third nomination for acting.  It’s a shame the two don’t share the screen that often, because their acting is riveting.

The arc of Oppenheimer’s life is one that has been the basis for many biopics.  He was a genius who, after years of hard work, achieved extraordinary greatness, only to be brought back down to Earth because of hubris and naivete.  The movie goes to great lengths to show us why he was a genius in physics but a fool in other critical aspects of his career.  (He unwisely thought he could outwit the military.)  He also made enemies where there needn’t be, another source of his downfall.

Everything I’ve mentioned so far about Oppenheimer is par for the course for a biopic.  What does Nolan do to differentiate his movie from other biopics?  Nolan wants his movie to be more than a convincing performance of someone as a historical figure.  He also steadfastly avoids resorting to the cinematic equivalent of shaking a punitive finger at his subject, as many biopics do.  In sidestepping those traps, he tells Oppenheimer’s story from Oppenheimer’s point of view.  (Call it “decisive subjectivity”.)  Nolan wants to give the audience more than a history lesson.  Instead, he frames Oppenheimer as a man of incredible accomplishment who was also frustratingly blind to his flaws and rationalizations.  This does not mean that Nolan absolves Oppenheimer of his sins.  Nolan never excuses the evil of Oppenheimer’s achievement in any way.  Instead, Nolan shows that Oppenheimer’s downfall was of his own making every step of the way.

Another daring choice Nolan makes with his movie is to tell Oppenheimer’s life from another perspective, that of Lewis Strauss.  By intertwining the two, Nolan paints a portrait of two men who are so consumed with the pursuit of power and glory that they fail to see how they are giving ammunition to their enemies.  Oppenheimer unwisely chose to make an enemy of Strauss, a benefactor and admirer, leading Strauss to destroy Oppenheimer’s credibility in his quest to be nominated as President Truman’s Commerce Secretary.  If this brings echoes of Amadeus, the similarities weren’t lost on Nolan.  Oppenheimer is the disrespectful yet brilliant creative soul, with Strauss in the role of the embittered, talentless hack intent on revenge.  If Nolan had another hour, I would have loved to see parts of Oppenheimer’s life told from the perspective of Kitty, General Leslie Groves (Damon) or lifelong friend Isidor Rabi (David Krumholtz).  Even though it’s three hours long, the movie could have included so much more.  As it stands, Oppenheimer is a thoroughly engrossing, incredibly intimate portrait of a man who not only was a giant in his field, but also forever altered the course of human history.  Highly Recommended.

Analysis

Analyzing a movie like Oppenheimer is intimidating.  I could easily write 3,000+ words about it and feel like I hadn’t even scratched the surface of everything that’s going on.  Calling the movie a multifaceted portrait of a complex man is both correct and trite.  Looking back on the movie, I’m reminded by the fictional Lydia Tár’s description of her musical relationship with Beethoven:

I’m not too sure about old Ludwig, but then I face him, and I find myself nose-to-nose with his magnitude and inevitability.

There is so much to Oppenheimer that attempting to describe it, let alone analyze it, is a Herculean task.  Over the course of the movie, Nolan delves into as many aspects of the eponymous figure at the heart of the story as he could in three hours.  Given how Oppenheimer is such an extraordinary and consequential figure, I believe Nolan could easily have devoted another three hours on him without much trouble.  To keep the movie’s run time from sprawling, Nolan wisely tells Oppenheimer’s story mostly from Oppenheimer’s point of view.  A portion of the movie is told from Oppenheimer’s one-time friend turned nemesis Lewis Strauss, but for the most part the movie is singularly focused on Oppenheimer.  

This deliberate framing on behalf of Nolan, telling Oppenheimer’s story almost exclusively from Oppenheimer’s point of view, will undoubtedly frustrate those who had (unfounded) expectations going in.  Several key moments of Oppenheimer’s life and the consequences of his work are either depicted in a very unexpected way or not at all.  (I’ll delve into several of those below.)  As to these complaints I would needlessly remind everyone that this movie is not a documentary.  Also, to state the obvious, the movie is titled Oppenheimer, not The Atomic Bomb.  Oppenheimer is a biopic like few others, an engrossing, overwhelming, fascinating, humorous, sad, tragic, insightful and intensely personal look at a man who changed the course of human history forever.

In the spirit of Nolan’s work, my analysis below jumps around quite a bit.

The Trinity Test Scene

One of Nolan’s most daring artistic choices in the movie is how he depicts the Trinity test. Nolan doesn’t bother to include a shot of the huge, orange mushroom cloud, an image that many people are already familiar with.  Instead, the camera focuses tightly on Oppenheimer’s eyes  while the bright glare from the explosion turns his face white.  The soundtrack is empty but for the sounds of Oppenheimer’s breathing.  This moment is the culmination of his life’s work, and Nolan avoids the explosion itself and instead shows us how it took Oppenheimer’s breath away.  Oppenheimer clearly was in awe of the power he had unleashed to a degree that mankind had never seen.  In those brief moments, Oppenheimer probably believed he was seeing the face of God, and maybe that he had become a god himself.

The Post Bombing Scenes

Nolan never shows the bombs being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Instead, he focuses on how their use affected Oppenheimer.  The first is during a scene where he gives a speech to everyone at Los Alamos.  He enters an auditorium where people are stomping their feet and cheering.  At one point he tells the crowd, “I bet Japan didn’t like it!”  Oppenheimer looks physically ill after that pronouncement, a reflection of how he actually felt about the jingoism that was engulfing him.

Soon after, while everyone cheers wildly, the soundtrack goes quiet and a woman’s scream is heard.  The scream isn’t from anyone in the room, though.  Everyone is in a frenzy over Oppenheimer’s words and the undeniable success of the bomb.  Suddenly, Oppenheimer has a vision of the room being flooded with white light and the skin peeling off of everyone’s faces.  Nolan is making a point of how Oppenheimer and his fellow physicists intentionally wrapped themselves in patriotism to disguise the fact that they knew what they were doing.  Beating the Germans was a handy excuse they told themselves while they created a device they knew would kill tens of thousands of people in an instant.  And when their work was used as intended, they tried to convince themselves that what they did was for the good of their country, but couldn’t deny the blood on their hands.

Nolan further drives home Oppenheimer’s willful blindness about his crowning achievement when he shows Oppenheimer watching a newsreel filled with images of the bomb’s destruction.  Oppenheimer can’t bear to look at the screen and instead averts his eyes, unable to admit to himself that what he created was evil.

The Pursuit of Greatness

Nolan seems drawn to characters who achieve greatness at the expense of their personal lives.  The dueling magicians in The Prestige were more interested in devising the ultimate illusion  than their wives.  In Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, Batman repeatedly chose saving Gotham at the expense of having close personal relationships.  Leonardo DiCaprio in Inception was so intent on proving to his wife that inception was possible that it resulted in her suicide.  Then there is Interstellar, where Matthew McConaughey’s Cooper travels across time and space to save humanity while his family dies on Earth.  All of Nolan’s heroes succeed, their celebrations are muted.

When viewed in the light as those movies, Oppenheimer is another prototypical Nolan hero.  Oppenheimer’s pursuit of personal glory was always first and foremost in his life, and everything else was secondary.  He supported his colleagues, so long as they agreed with his agenda.  He dabbled in Communism and organized labor but abandoned both when they could impact on his ambitions.  He viewed women primarily as sexual conquests.  He focused on his work and left Kitty alone to raise their children.  He ignored the warnings of Einstein and Bohr and became known as the man who gave humanity the means to destroy itself.

Nolan’s oeuvre is remarkably similar to his contemporary Darren Aranofsky.  The main difference between them is that Aranofsky never allows his protagonists to achieve glory, instead depicting the pursuit of greatness as a self-destructive act.  Nolan, however, at least  allows his protagonists to achieve greatness before revealing the consequences.

The Lense of Subjectivity

Oppenheimer isn’t a typical biopic about a man who achieved greatness and was not a nice person.  The movie refuses to present the subject matter in an objective or impartial way.  Instead, Nolan tells Oppenheimer’s story almost exclusively from Oppenheimer’s point of view.  The narrative is cleverly constructed to visualize how Oppenheimer viewed the people around him.  Those who he admired or could help him realize his ambitions are depicted much differently than those who couldn’t or wouldn’t.

First there are Einstein and Bohr, who Oppenheimer treated with God-like reverence.  Nolan captures every second of Oppenheimer’s interactions with his idols, showing how respectfully he listened to them.  That Oppenheimer heard every word they said but ultimately ignored their warnings adds a layer of irony of these scenes.

Next are Oppenheimer’s colleagues, the physicists and engineers he interacted with as a professor, a research scientist and project leader.  Nolan shows how friendly and supportive Oppenheimer was to everyone around him, fostering a fraternal atmosphere while thriving in the world of physics.  The bulk of the movie shows Oppenheimer in these professional settings because that was where he was happiest and fulfilled.  Conversely, the movie shows how little time (and attention) he gave to those people who he didn’t agree with or take seriously, like Edward Teller, Lewis Strauss and members of the military.  Unsurprisingly, those people grew to resent Oppenheimer and became enemies.

Even though Oppenheimer’s association with Communists and his sympathies for left-leaning causes dogged his career, those aspects of his life are given minimal screen time.  Nolan wants us to understand how little these causes mattered to Oppenheimer in comparison to his work.  In fact, Nolan makes a point of showing us how quickly Oppenheimer abandoned causes when  they could derail his career.

Women figured prominently in Oppenheimer’s life.  However, Oppenheimer had little use for them outside of seduction and sex, and Nolan devotes limited time to those relationships accordingly.  Oppenheimer’s relationship with Jean Tatlock is examined primarily through their intimate encounters.  Nolan devotes time to Oppenheimer’s courtship of Kitty, but much less  after the birth of their first child.

Nolan devotes almost no screen time to Oppenheimer’s children because Oppenheimer barely acknowledged them.  When Kitty struggles to raise their son by herself, Oppenheimer matter-of-factly asks his friend Chevalier to take care of him because he can’t be bothered with being a father.

Nolan does an excellent job recreating Oppenheimer’s interactions with the military as brief and tense.  Aside from his friendship with Leslie Groves (Matt Damon), he only dealt with the military when necessary.  Oppenheimer thought so little of the military he naively thought he could outsmart them with a cock and bull story.  The time he never spent building trust with the military would eventually come back to haunt him.

Nolan never shows the bombs being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki nor devastation they caused.  Nolan intentionally omits these aspects of the story to reflect how myopic Oppenheimer and his colleagues were in creating the bomb.  With rare exception, they focused exclusively on scientific glory and ignored the obviously horrifying aftermath their achievement would bring.

Jean’s suicide

In the scene when Oppenheimer tells Kitty about Jean’s suicide, Nolan inserts shots of Jean preparing to kill herself.  Oppenheimer recreates her last moments in his mind, with Jean cutting her hair, taking pills and putting her head underwater.  The idea that he was responsible is unbearable for Oppenheimer, so Nolan shows the same final shot of Jean again, this time with a gloved hand holding her head down.  Nolan used a similar “visual stutter” in Memento to reveal the possibility that the man Leonhard Shelby (Guy Pearce) refers to as Sammy Jankis is actually himself.  In both instances, the visual stutter represents how our minds actively rewire our memories as a defense mechanism to protect us.

About Those Sex Scenes

Oppenheimer is the first movie Nolan directed that includes sex scenes.  I don’t believe he purposely avoided them, but that he had no reason to include them in his previous movies.  When he decided to write and direct a movie about Oppenheimer, however, he believed it was necessary to represent the true nature of his relationship with Jean Tatlock.

The first sex scene takes place while Oppenheimer was a professor at Berkeley, at the beginning of his relationship with Jean.  She’s an avowed Communist but Oppenheimer was only slightly interested in the party and its platform.  She interrupts their lovemaking to inspect the books.  She’s impressed that he can read sanskrit and has him read from the Bhagavad Gita during sex.  The scene reveals how Jean tried to build a connection with Oppenheimer beyond their physical couplings.

The second sex scene actually isn’t a sex scene at all.  The two have already had sex and are sitting naked in opposite chairs speaking to each other.  Nolan reveals a lot of information in this scene through a masterful use of cinematic vocabulary.  First, by not showing their coupling, Nolan states that the physical nature of their relationship is not as interesting as their subsequent conversation.  Second, Nolan symbolizes the level of honesty between the two by having both actors in the nude.  Third, Nolay represents the lack of an emotional bond between Oppenheimer and Jean by having both actors sitting in separate chairs instead of lying in bed together.  Finally, Nolan’s dialog gets to the point of contention between the two in an incredibly economical way.  Jean will always be second in his life because he loves someone else.   Oppenheimer will always be willing to meet her for sex, but has no interest in her beyond that.

The last sex scene between Oppenheimer and Jean never actually happened.  During his security clearance hearings, Oppenheimer is grilled over his affair with Jean during his marriage, something that Kitty may not have known about beforehand.  First, Oppenheimer is shown answering questions without any clothes.  Then, as the invasive questioning continues, Jean is shown straddling Oppenheimer and looking at Kitty.  This imagery is provocative on two levels.  First, Nolan is representing how exposed Oppenheimer feels about having his personal life dissected in front of his wife and recorded in a permanent record.  Second, when Kitty makes eye contact with the phantasmagorical Jean, it is the only instance in the movie when Nolan allows another character to share Oppenheimer’s perspective.  In that moment Kitty feels as exposed and mortified as her husband, and like him is helpless to stop it.  The two are forced to endure the embarrassment together.

Color v. Black and White

Another striking artistic Nolan made was to film all of the scenes from Oppenheimer’s point-of-view in color, and those of Lewis Strauss in black and white.  Some have interpreted this choice as Nolan’s by stating that the former are “subjective” while the latter are “objective”.  This very simplistic interpretation that ignores the content of the scenes themselves.

As I mentioned above, the scenes with Oppenheimer at the center are definitely told from his perspective.  The same is equally true of the scenes with Strauss.  He is the center of attention in every black and white scene, during which he gives his version of events to the Senator aide played by Alden Ehrenreich.  As such, the black and white scenes are also subjective.

By alternating film stock, Nolan is economically conveying his feelings about the two men at the heart of the story.  Nolan films Oppenheimer’s scenes in color because Nolan is sympathetic towards him.  He probably relates to Oppenheimer as a man driven by intellect with a passion for science.  Over the course of his career, Nolan has created some of the most complex puzzle narratives put on film (Memento, The Prestige, Inception, Tenet, etc.)  Given that physics is devoted to explaining how the universe works (a.k.a. solving puzzles), Nolan perhaps considers Oppenheimer as a kindred soul.  With that in mind, it makes sense that Nolan would depict Oppenheimer’s story in color because he sees his life as vibrant and full of energy.

On the other hand, Nolan cannot relate to a man like Strauss who devote their lives to obtaining power.  He also is contemptuous of those who would wield their power only to benefit themselves.  In Nolan’s eyes, the life of Strauss is cold and joyless, where the ends justify the means no matter the cost or who ultimately pays it.  Strauss effectively ended the career of a person he once considered a friend over minor slights, one that is revealed he completely  imagined.  Strauss may not be evil, but he is undeniably the villain of this story.  For Nolan it’s as clear as black and white.

Haunting Images

Nolan has never struck me as a filmmaker who was comfortable with using symbolism in his movies.  While the imagery he incorporated into movies like Inception, Interstellar and Tenet was by turns incredible and awesome, they never implied a meaning beyond what was happening in the story at the time.  With Oppenheimer, however, Nolan has allowed himself to indulge in a bit of symbolism for a change.  Both examples involve Oppenheimer’s relationship to quantum mechanics.

In the beginning of the movie, Oppenheimer is so consumed with his studies he can’t sleep.  His mind is consumed with images of what he thinks the underlying forces of the universe look like.  Nolan represents these forces as beautiful waves of light.  At this point in Oppenheimer’s life, he was interested in understanding these forces and not harnessing their power.  This changes when Oppenheimer is recruited to first research atomic energy and then is chosen to lead the project to develop the atomic bomb.  As the project progresses and the reality of the atomic bomb grows closer, Nolan interjects images of rolling plumes of orange fire in the action.  These images symbolize Oppenheimer’s shift from being an inquisitive scientist to someone who is shepherding the ultimate weapon into existence.  Oppenheimer’s view of physics has changed from trying to understand quantum mechanics to turning it into something evil.

Shifting Time

Oppenheimer wouldn’t be a Nolan movie if he didn’t include some form of time manipulation.  Similar to Dunkirk, Nolan has two timelines in play.  The main one is told from Oppenheimer’s perspective and spans almost thirty years.  The secondary timeline is told from Strauss’ perspective, and spans several days of Senate nomination hearings.  Both timelines include events where Strauss directly interacted with Oppenheimer.  The one time when the two timelines intersect is when Strauss tells Oppenheimer that his security clearance has been suspended.  That event is significant because it is the moment when Oppenheimer realizes that Strauss is killing his career to serve Strauss’ own interests.  Additionally, it is when Strauss reveals to his Senate staff aide that he was behind the machinations that led to Oppenheimer’s downfall.  In that moment, the former professional colleagues have become adversaries.

This movie reminds me of…

Folks have pointed out the similarity of the dueling narratives in Oppenheimer with that of Amadeus.  Nolan himself noted the similarities in the relationship of Mozart and Salieri with Oppenheimer and Strauss.  Like the fictional Salieri, Strauss actively worked to destroy Oppenheimer’s reputation and career over being publicly humiliated by him.  And like Mozart, Oppenheimer naively believed that his genius would protect him from the forces who had become allied against him.  This comparison ignores the fact that Oppenheimer and Strauss were never peers.  Strauss admits that he once studied physics but couldn’t make a go of it.  Strauss was more like a business acquaintance, someone who helped Oppenheimer with the expectation that he would return the favor in the future.

I would argue that Oppenheimer’s relationship with Edward Teller was much closer to the Mozart/Salieri relationship.  In the movie, Oppenheimer questions Teller’s scientific analysis several times and actively stymies his research into the hydrogen bomb.  As such, Teller was one of the few scientists who testified on behalf of Strauss during the latter’s congressional hearings.  The movie doesn’t delve into this, but according to Wikipedia Teller’s testimony outraged the scientific community, and he was virtually ostracized from academic science.

Another movie people have compared Oppenheimer to is Oliver Stone’s JFK.  This is mainly due to several aspects both movies have in common.  Both feature a large cast of recognizable actors, have threads of government-fueled paranoia and use different kinds of film stock.  Aside from those superficial similarities, the two movies couldn’t be more different in tone, artistry and their underlying messages.

Amazing Performances

RDJ’s acerbic bitchiness has served him well in roles where he is an unlikely hero or antihero.  But as a snarling villain?  A whole new world of opportunities just opened up for him with this turn.

I never in a million years would have expected to see Casey Affleck or Dane DeHaan in roles where they are convincingly threatening.

Dane DeHaan has a career waiting for him as the thin-lipped, sneering Major or General who despises everyone and everything.  If M.A.S.H. is ever rebooted, he’s a lock to play Major Burns.

Nolan always gets an interesting performance from Branagh.  First in Tenet as a Russian arms dealer and now as Niels Bohr.  Nolan including him in his repertoire of players is a good thing for both parties.

Josh Hartnett as a hunky engineer?  Believe it!  (Well, believe it in this movie at least.)

Between his performance in Air and Oppenheimer, Matt Damon has had a solid year of roles that showcase his presence, sense of humor and average guy-ness.

Ok, Alden Emmerich.  I forgive you for Solo: A Star Wars Story.  Not that it was your fault.  You can come back from the wilderness.

Benny Safdie was touching in Licorice Pizza as the aide in love with the congressional nominee he works for, but his performance as Edward Teller was an eccentric masterpiece.  Maybe directors make the perfect actors.

Florence Pugh deserves an Academy Award nomination.  She’s the most emotionally vulnerable character in the movie.  She gives the movie its passion.  As Jean, she tries and tries to engage Oppenheimer’s heart, only to be crushed when she realizes that he only wanted her for sex.  Pugh’s performance is the most naked one in the movie, not because she appears in the nude several times but because she represents the human connection that Oppenheimer compartmentalizes and/or dismisses.

Emily Blunt is the movie’s soul and conscience.  She makes Kitty’s redemption of Oppenheimer so real and heartfelt.  Kitty didn’t have to do what she did, but she knew she had to because her husband’s voice and reputation were important.  She couldn’t prevent him from starting the atomic age, but she could support him while he did his best to limit the damage.

If Blunt and Pugh are both nominated for supporting I hope they tie.  That would be the perfect way to reward two actresses at the top of their game.

This the best Jason Clarke has been since Zero Dark Thirty.

Jack Quaid as bongo-playing Richard Feynman?  Scott Grimes as Oppenheimer’s counsel?  Nolan is toying with us.

Before seeing this movie, social media was buzzing about David Krumholtz’s performance.  I didn’t recognize his name, which is incredible given that he’s had over 120 credited roles before this movie.  People have compared his performance as Isidor Rabi to Wayne Knight.  Apologies to Knight, but Krumhotz’s performance is warmer and touching in ways that Knight never showed.

I shamelessly admit that I thought Tom Conti had passed away.  I haven’t heard his name in ages.  I thought I hadn’t seen him in a movie since Ruben, Ruben (1983) but lo and behold, he was a prisoner in The Dark Knight Rises.

A biopic wouldn’t be a biopic without some stunt casting.  How about Gary Oldman as Harry Truman?  No more of a stunt than Brannagh as Bohr, or Conti as Einstein.  Amazingly, I thought they were all excellent in what were cameos.

At first I thought Matthew Modine wandered in from the set of Stranger Things, but then I remembered that he’s another Dark Knight alumnus.

Nolan should let David Dastmalchian play a nice guy someday.