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MESSAGE IN THE MOVIES

Christopher Nolen is an enigmatic director, creating popular films that demand repeat viewings to tease out a myriad of interpretations. Nolen is fascinated with the concept of time and is not shy about making shifting chronology a key player in his movies.

This film is based on American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, a 700-page biography of the physicist who supervised the development of the first atomic bomb (the prototype for the weapons America used to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki).

While there is a traditional biopic included in this three-hour film, much time is given to two investigative hearings that took place in the early 1950s, when the country’s attention became focused on communism following the first atomic test by the Soviet Union in 1949. Oppenheimer was the head of the General Advisory Committee of the Atomic Energy Commission and his opposition to the hydrogen bomb ran counter to the wishes of scientists and politicians who wished to raise the bar on weaponry as a nuclear deterrent. Consequently, Oppenheimer was investigated as a security risk while Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.), the head of the AEC (and a colleague of Oppenheimer), was being considered for a cabinet position under President Harry S. Truman (Gary Oldman).

The film moves away from these interrogations to tell Oppenheimer’s story including his days as a precocious student, his doctoral work in physics in Germany, his hiring as a full professor of physics at the University of California in Berkeley in 1936, and his position as head scientist in 1942 of The Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, New Mexico, accompanied by his recently married pregnant wife Kitty (Emily Blunt). A temporary village was built for this top-secret project, overseen by General Leslie Groves (Matt Damon).

Oppenheimer’s treatment of women was complicated. While he could struggle with the ethics of a just war, he was unable to offer compassion and consideration to the women in his life, including Kitty and Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh), a former lover. Like Oppenheimer the man, Oppenheimer the film is more interested in science than in messy relationships. However, the script doesn’t shy away from showing the collateral damage of Oppenheimer’s disregard of women.

Beyond the historical reenactments (including the bomb’s detonation), the film evokes deep thoughts about humanity’s potential to obliterate ourselves, how distrust and anxiety can create their own shockwaves of harm, and the need to revisit the past regularly in order to reevaluate our previous perceptions.

Oppenheimer himself shared that when he experienced the terrible results of the atomic bomb test at Trinity, he remembered a line from the Hindu scripture the Bhagavad Gita: “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one ... Now I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds.”

This film (like Oppenheimer) is complicated but it is ultimately an appeal to consider the price of war and to work for what the apostle Paul once called “making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” (Ephesians 4:3 NRSV)

Halo and Pitchfork Rating:

Four halos: An intelligent film about science, morality, integrity, and the invention of the atomic bomb, among other things.
Four pitchforks: For all of the other things: infidelity, a couple of sex scenes, betrayal, much smoking and drinking, occasional strong profanity, attempted poisoning, suicide, oppressive fascism and communism, and the atomic bomb.

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