"Oppenheimer" Review: He's a Fire God and a Fall Guy

In Christopher Nolan's epic blockbuster, Oppenheimer, the enigmatic creator of the atomic bomb goes under the microscope.

"Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to man. For this, he was chained to a rock and tortured for eternity." - Opening credits of the film Oppenheimer

Source: Men’s Health / Cillian Murphy as Oppenheimer in the film “Oppenheimer” and the real J. Robert Oppenheimer

Restraint is a hard quality to come by, as is patience, willpower and perseverance which is why very few can wield it effectively. As Former United States Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger once said, “Diplomacy is the the art of restraining power.”

In the film Oppenheimer, now out in theaters and based on the book “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer,” we get an American hero, who realizing the moral weight of his atomic bomb creation tries to move on from his “Bomb Maker” legacy for which he’s lauded, to champion for peaceful atomic diplomatic cooperation between the U.S. and other nations, chiefly Russia, who the U.S was in an arms race with throughout the Cold War.

Sounds like Oppenheimer was a sound voice of reason right?

Well, the present rarely favors the wise. History tends be kinder to those who challenge the status quo though which bodes well for this film’s interpretation of events.

The Part Where Truth Really is Stranger than Fiction

It was a complex time in U.S. international relations. President Truman, here played with particular sinister pluck by Gary Oldman, openly calls Oppenheimer a “crybaby scientist” (true life happening as well) after Oppenheimer pleads with him to scale back on the Hydrogen bomb. This occurred after Truman dropped Oppenheimer’s atomic bomb on Nagasaki and Hiroshima in August of 1945 which resulted in death tolls over 200,000, not to mention other catastrophic long-term health implications. Let’s just say Give 'Em Hell Harry was not open to any talk of peace, even following the Japanese surrendering.

As a scientist, Oppenheimer is able to separate the science from the moral qualms he has regarding the product he’s created. He can thus view Trinity (the code name for the Los Alamos experiment) and its aftermath in Japan as a technical success but also see it paradoxically as a moral disaster, especially as he becomes increasingly disillusioned by the U.S. government.

This is exacerbated as the bomb victory is used as a catalyst to generate talk of greater atomic dominance in the war against Russia. Add this to the fact that there was treason happening in the form of a German spy, Klaus Fuchs - a physicist on Oppenheimer’s Los Alamos team, passing information to the Soviets and you have a recipe for war mongering.

The world is made up of waves. And also particles. But how can this be? It’s a paradox. It’s both things. A particle and a wave at the same time. It all exists together. - Oppenheimer

Oppenheimer and many of the other physicists who were the brainpower behind the atomic bomb, the primary offensive against the Nazis, were Jewish. This is an important fact to consider in the context of the war. Hitler viewed Quantum Physics as a Jewish science and abhorred any study of quantum mechanics, even going as far as to expel visionary physicist Max Born, a German Jew who had converted to Lutheranism and winner of the 1954 Nobel Prize, from his post at Göttingen University. This add color to the undisputed fact that while Germany had some of the most advanced Quantum Physicists in the world at the time and despite the fact that they were 2 years ahead of the U.S. in the tech to build an atomic bomb, they would never actually get support to do so under Hitler.

Understanding why Oppenheimer, a Theoretical Physicist, would choose to take on a mission as Director of a “Gadget” (code for “nuclear bomb”) sponsored by an army general (Matt Damon here playing Matt Damon) in warfare against the Nazis isn’t difficult. He was watching his European jewish colleagues get ousted from important work at prestigious universities and people he cared about get murdered by Hitler and the Nazis. He had skin in the game.

The important thing is not that you can read the sheet music but that you can hear the music. - Niels Bohr to Oppenheimer

The XX Chromosomal Factors

If there’s a weak link in the film it’s the storyline involving the women. Oppenheimer’s love affair with Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh), who may have been his one true love IRL, is rushed and edited in almost a gimmicky way. One sex scene has Tatlock interrupting in medias coitus with Oppenheimer, getting off of him while naked to stroll over to his bookshelf whereupon she takes a book written in Sanskrit and then orders Oppy to recite it in the native language. She’s seemingly turned on by this and resumes coitus. Pugh makes the most of her role, almost as a challenge to those who underestimate her and a wink to Nolan in a very meta way, but when she takes her own life, as Tatlock (not Pugh) and Oppenheimer is shown to be irrevocably distraught over this, unable to move forward, it makes zero sense. Their love story isn’t developed enough.

Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh) and “Oppy” Oppenheimer in one of their brief encounters

Emily Blunt, whose Kitty, the tortured wife of Oppy, is there to humanize and breathe some life into Oppy does the very opposite here, playing a bad stereotype of the “angry, tortured, protective, drunk” wife, if this is an actual thing. Reading between the lines, it appears that the marriage stole all her light or maybe just the fact that she was trained to be a biologist and the reality is she puts out laundry all day on the clothing line in Los Alamos, holding down the fort while her husband goes on to do important work, and it’s slowly killing her. Either way, her onscreen presence is not additive. It didn’t help me know Oppenheimer in a way I needed to and at a movie that’s 3 hours long, some tough decisions could have been made on the editing room floor. There’s only one scene in particular, where Kitty is being interrogated near the end of the film, and we see the trademark Blunt savviness, charisma and grit return for a fleeting moment and we all smile hoping for more of this, and then it’s gone.

The Holy Mission Turns Sour

The first hour of the film is choppy and could have been easily cut down to 20 minutes.

The memo: Early days of Oppenheimer. He’s brilliant and unconventional, slept around a little, attended meetings of the Communist Party Berkeley intellectuals in the late 1930s and was the one responsible for bringing Quantum Physics to the U.S.

The crux of the movie or at least the more memorable back half of it has to do with the after effects of making the bomb and putting it out there in the world. There are committees and allegations of Oppenheimer being a Communist (this was the McCarthy era) and questioning his loyalties to the U.S. based on his affiliations. His character is called to question and he flaunts his arrogance around a little and pisses off the wrong man. His unpopular ideas of peaceful atomic cooperation are laughed at. And all the while we witness the calm, cool and collected Cillian Murphy do his best Thomas Shelby Peaky Blinders thing and try and maintain a guise of control and integrity.

Source: Esquire / Is this Thomas Shelby or Oppenheimer?

Spoiler Alert: There’s a LOT of Robert Downey Jr. in this film. The trailers don’t necessarily lead you to think this, but it’s true. I’m not complaining. RDJ is perfect in the role of former shoe salesman, turned successful businessman and sponsor of an intellectual institute for free thinking, Lewis Strauss. Strauss is also in a bid to become United States Secretary of Commerce. In fact, the movie’s best scene involves him, Tim Conti’s Einstein and Murphy’s Oppenheimer and we only find out at the end of the film, what actually transpired. It’s well worth finding out though. It’s humbling and serves as a good life lesson. I won’t spoil it for you. An honorable mention in the acting department is Alden Ehrenreich as a Senate aide for Strauss. Like Pugh, he makes the most of every scene he passes through as if to say, “I’m not taking any second for granted.” I’m biased though as I also cast him as Derek, one of the main characters in my book, Clicking + Waiting.

Modern Talking Addendum (Cutting Room Floor Filler)

As I’m currently redefining how I want to make my living after many years of doing it a certain way, I’ve been immersing myself in all forms of thought leadership when it comes to work, career, and living authentically. I have 5 jobs right now and the only thing I’d change is the pay.

In my reflections, I’ve done a fair share of thinking about how work is rarely about the job you are hired to do. It’s the “bonus” you and the hidden super powers you have that make the difference and sometimes it’s things you don’t even realize about yourself until someone else voices it out loud: “She’s a gifted storyteller and people always listen so intently,” or “He can really sell an idea and influence anyone to do anything.”

As I was watching this film, I noted how the physics fall to the background. Physics were what gave Oppenheimer the in and opened the door to influential people but it’s not what got him the job to head up the Manhattan Project’s Los Alamos experiment. He couldn’t go off references here. Colleagues didn’t generally like him. He was ornery and aloof, but he could also bring people together when it mattered.

Oppenheimer was a skilled orator, a teacher and marketer, a project manager and architect of one of the world’s greatest atomic feats in history. He’s also someone that the more he leaned into his values as he got older, was exposed to the world’s derision for disappointed hopes (Jane Austen). Couldn’t resist a Pride & Prejudice quote.

We can choose to see Oppenheimer as the winner or the loser but this is not a DC comic book hero or an Avenger film. He’s not an AI, nor could this movie be scripted by ChatGPT.

This is the story of a frontman who, along with several thousand skilled and brilliant minds involved in the Trinity project, achieved great things and he had to pay a heavy price. It’s also a story about how history is written by its victors.

Sure, Oppenheimer is easily compared to Prometheus, God of Fire, but if you’re really hearing his story, it shares a lesson from another tragic Greek figure - that of Icarus, compelled to act without heeding the warnings of what was to come, or more to the point, helpless to stop those atomic human forces.