I almost let the length of this movie dissuade me from going, despite the hype and the obvious connection to our New Mexico home. In the end, the movie did not seem like a three hour movie at all. Not once did I find myself thinking “how much longer will this thing last”.
The movie is based upon the 2005 novel, American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin.
While I was certainly aware of Robert Oppenheimer’s pivotal role in the development of the atomic bomb, this movie really brings home the very understandable conflicting emotions he dealt with regarding the creation of such an ultimately horrible device.
A revelation for me was how he was vilified in some political circles after the war and that he was not simply just considered the man who was integral to the ending of World War II. Apparently, another scientist and also a would-be politician, Lewis Strauss, believed he had been slighted by Oppenheimer and held a lifelong grudge.
The movie spends a lot of the time going back and forth between the kangaroo investigation into his supposed communist and socialist ties that happened in 1954, and the events that took place in his personal and academic life leading up to the testing of the first atomic bomb in 1945.
What I really learned was that Oppenheimer understood that what he was helping create would change world history, but that the alternative of allowing Hitler to beat us to it, would be completely unacceptable.
Oppenheimer believed, albeit naively so, that once the world realized the devastating potential for destruction that the atomic bomb represented, it would motivate the world to do everything possible to avoid a nuclear confrontation. He even believed that sharing the technology would help ensure that no one would ever risk using it as a weapon.
He went so far as to recommend that the Truman administration not continue development of the even newer and more destructive hydrogen bomb. That led to even more suspicion among some that he was an agent of the Russians since they were believed to be developing a hydrogen bomb of their own.
The movie stars Cillian Murphy as Oppenheimer. You may recognize Murphy from his roles in a few of the Marvel Comics movies, The Dark Knight and Batman Begins.
It also stars Matt Damon as the General put in charge of the top secret Manhattan Project. Emily Blunt plays Oppenheimer’s third and last wife who was with him at Los Alamos. Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man) plays the aforementioned Oppenheimer nemesis, Lewis Strauss.
So besides being a movie that held my interest, even for the long length, you may likely find it very educational about a historic figure that perhaps you, as I, did not fully understand or appreciate.
Update : 8/13/23
A very good and scientifically astute friend of mine commented on Facebook about my movie review of Oppenheimer. He was interested to know if in fact the distinction was made in the movie between the types of the two atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan.
I was a bit embarrassed to say that even though I have now just watched the movie, and have even personally seen replicas of both of the two atomic bombs which are housed here in the Albuquerque New Mexico Nuclear Museum, that I was not aware that the two bombs were different types. One was plutonium based and the other uranium based.
He also asked whether the movie made clear why the second bomb was never tested. Since I incorrectly assumed that the bombs were the same type, I just thought that there was no need to test a second time unless the first test failed. I do however now remember them saying something about that they could not do another test because they didn’t have enough nuclear materials.
I thought that the first bomb they tested at the Trinity site, and which they then dropped on Nagasaki, was the uranium based bomb. My friend informed me that the first bomb and the one that was tested was actually plutonium based. The second bomb which was dropped on Hiroshima, was uranium based. In fact, no other uranium based bomb was ever built. Almost all atomic bombs now are made from a combination of plutonium and hydrogen.
It now makes sense that the two bombs were of different types because they could not gather enough nuclear materials to make more than two plutonium and one uranium bombs.
That also explains on one hand the strategy behind, and on the other hand the horror of, dropping that second bomb on Hiroshima. That was intended to impress upon the Japanese that we had more than one bomb that we could drop. Little did they know, that we only had those two!
The first plutonium based bomb was much more problematic in development. In fact, one of the more famous lines from the movie is when the general in charge, played by Matt Damon, asks Oppenheimer about the test because there had been concern that a non-stop nuclear reaction might be created which in turn might destroy the entire atmosphere of the Earth.
Oppenheimer tells the general that the chances of that happening are “almost” zero. The general then says, “Almost zero? You mean to tell me there’s a chance that we might destroy the world?” To which Oppenheimer replies, “Hey, it’s science. Nothing is ever absolute.”
If you go to see the movie, pay attention when Oppenheimer puts the two glass jars of very different sizes on his desk in front of the scientists. Over the course of the building of the bombs those two beakers are slowly filled with marbles. Apparently those beakers represent the two different types of bombs they were making and the different types of nuclear material that they were trying to accumulate in order to build each bomb.
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