Oppenheimer, Written and Directed by Christopher Nolan

Starring Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, and Emily Blunt
Distributed by Universal Pictures
Running time: 180 minutes
Rated R for disturbing images, and adult language and behavior

The U.S. military dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki is one of the most significant and controversial acts in American history. How did Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the “father of the atomic bomb,” judge that action and his pivotal role in enabling it? This question runs throughout Christopher Nolan’s recent biopic, Oppenheimer, hailed by some as “the most epic WWII film yet.”¹

The film is based on a detailed, extensively researched biography called American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. In the film, that moniker is given to Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) by Niels Bohr (Kenneth Branagh), but I’ve found no evidence of anyone using it in reference to Oppenheimer during his lifetime. The inspiration for the title seems to have come from a 1945 article in Scientific Monthly, which described the development of the weapon: “Modern Prometheans have raided Mount Olympus again and have brought back for man the very thunderbolts of Zeus.”²

Oppenheimer depicts the story of the physicist’s rise from a mentally troubled graduate student at Cambridge, to a talented teacher forming the new theoretical physics program at the University of California-Berkeley, to director of the Manhattan Project. Later, he became director of the Institute for Advanced Studies and a representative of fellow scientists in the newspapers and to those in Washington, thereby influencing U.S. nuclear policy—before his eventual fall from grace. The film does not show his incredible story in a linear fashion; rather, it interweaves scenes from the 1930s and 1940s with two parallel “trials”: the National Security Board’s interrogation of Oppenheimer in 1954 about his political activity in the 1930s and the 1959 Senate confirmation hearing for his one-time colleague, Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.). The questions and answers of both trials form a kind of narration that connects the dots and moves the story along.

The various timelines might be confusing if not for the film’s creative use of color. Strauss’s hearing and memories are shown entirely in black and white, keeping them separate from Oppenheimer’s perspective. Oppenheimer’s interrogation and memories are in color, but a rather muted and dark color palette, even during scenes in the New Mexico desert where he sets up and runs the central division of the Manhattan Project. This darker palette sets an appropriate tone for the memories of the troubled, sometimes depressed physicist. Only scenes regarding the atomic bomb have bright colors: the yellows, oranges, and reds of the shocking fireball and a bright white light when Oppenheimer is imagining the effects of the bomb.

The film portrays several facets of Oppenheimer’s personality in a way that is both engaging and substantially accurate (albeit with a few artistic liberties). . . .

About Angelica Walker-Werth

Angelica Walker-Werth is an assistant editor of The Objective Standard and a fellow and programs manager at Objective Standard Institute. She is an Ayn Rand Fellow with Foundation for Economic Education's Hazlitt Project. To see more of her work, visit www.walker-werth.com.

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