Around two-thirds of the way through Oppenheimer, the movie depicts the infamous Trinity test, the first detonation of an atomic bomb. Traditionally, depictions of nuclear detonations fixate on the idea of “the button” — the notion that some individual somewhere is going to have to press a button in order to deploy this weapon of mass destruction. The implication is that a decision will ultimately be made by the person whose finger or hand hovers over that button.
This is not how it works in Oppenheimer. There is a big red button, as one expects from any movie about nuclear bombs. Writer and director Christopher Nolan and editor Jennifer Lame keep cutting to it, reminding the audience of its existence. However, that button does not cause the detonation, which is on countdown. Instead, J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) instructs that it should be pressed to abort the test if voltage drops below a specific level. In Oppenheimer, the button is not pressed, but the bomb still detonates.
There is a long-standing theory that history is shaped by exceptional individuals. Philosopher Thomas Carlyle famously argued that “the history of the world is but the biography of great men.” There is an understandable appeal to this idea, the notion that the arc of history can be guided by human beings with unique vision or insight. This is also the default mode of the classic hagiological Hollywood biopic, from Gandhi to Schindler’s List, telling stories of a world shaped by exceptional people.
Oppenheimer is a deconstruction of this idea. Christopher Nolan has crafted a film that ostensibly functions as a classic biopic, adapted from American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of the man known as “the father of the atomic bomb.” The film is remarkably faithful to the specifics of Oppenheimer’s life, with Bird describing it as “a stunning artistic achievement.”
Oppenheimer presents its protagonist as a truly exceptional individual, one capable of giving a lecture on quantum mechanics in Dutch after just six weeks with the language. He is smart, erudite, and insightful. He is intellectually curious without being naïve. Oppenheimer makes a convincing argument that the eponymous physicist was really the only scientist who could have overseen the development of the atomic bomb in the time available.
The movie’s second act is a largely straightforward story about Oppenheimer leading the race against the Nazis to develop the weapon of mass destruction, using his unique problem-solving abilities to accomplish a seemingly impossible task. It’s easy to imagine a much shorter and more conventional version of Oppenheimer, solely about the planning and testing of the bomb at Los Alamos that was overseen by a truly great man.
Oppenheimer is a phenomenal piece of work because it stretches beyond that simplistic narrative to tell a more complicated story. Indeed, Oppenheimer is largely told through flashbacks. More than that, it is a story explored through two competing sets of flashbacks that offer somewhat different understandings of key events. The film alternates between the color flashbacks of J. Robert Oppenheimer and the black-and-white memories of Admiral Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.). There is no one true history, no single narrative.
Oppenheimer is at the forefront of what Niels Bohr (Kenneth Branagh) describes as “a new science,” one that extends beyond the theory of relativity advanced by Albert Einstein (Tom Conti). This is not a science of absolute certainty, but of probability. In this science, light can be both a wave and a particle, the universe held together by invisible strings. It’s a worldview that Einstein rejected because he believed that “God does not play dice” with the universe.
Oppenheimer weds this understanding of physics to a broader revolution in culture and politics. Oppenheimer studies Picasso, reads The Waste Land, and meditates on Das Kapital, understanding that they are all perhaps expressions of the same shifting understanding of the universe. The film itself makes a similar contention, arguing that history can be understood in the same way as these scientific, cultural, and political movements.
Rejecting the traditional formulation of traditional biopics, Oppenheimer contends that history is not the biography of great men, but is instead competing and contradictory narratives that often exist beyond the control of individuals. Greatness and intention have little to do with how events unfold. The world is chaotic, arbitrary, and random. Any attempt to believe otherwise is vanity and ego, an attempt to assert one’s importance in the face of some vast cosmic force.
Oppenheimer meditates on the question of the title character’s responsibility for the use of the weapon that he developed. After all, he always understood that the weapon would have to be used. Discussing the politicians and military officials who will control the bomb, Oppenheimer explains to his fellow scientists that Hitler’s death will not stop them from deploying it. “They won’t fear it until they understand it,” he advises his colleagues. “And they won’t understand it until they use it.” However, he is still horrified at the reality of the bomb.
Repeatedly throughout the film, Oppenheimer basks in the glory of public adulation. President Truman (Gary Oldman) describes him as “the most famous person on the planet” as his portrait adorns the cover of Time. Strauss talks about how Oppenheimer sees himself as “the most important person in the world.” Repeatedly throughout the film, Oppenheimer’s wife, Kitty (Emily Blunt), chastises his self-important attempts at self-pitying martyrdom.
Oppenheimer struggles to understand how powerless he is in the grand scheme of things, even when it comes to his own invention. He is rebuffed when he offers the Air Force advice about the ideal height for detonation. He stays up all night before the bomb is dropped, expecting a phone call that never comes to let him know that it is going ahead. There is a sense of suffocating self-importance about this. In their conversation, Truman dismisses Oppenheimer’s self-pity, “Hiroshima is not about you.”
Nolan draws from the iconography of the western, more heavily than any of his films since Memento or Insomnia. Oppenheimer owns a ranch in New Mexico. He rides horses, wears a big hat, and goes camping in the wilderness. He oversees the construction of a frontier town on a Native American burial ground, becoming the “founder, mayor, sheriff” of a community connected to the rest of the country by rail. At one point, Truman asks what they should do with Los Alamos after the war. “Give it back to the Indians,” Oppenheimer earnestly suggests. His request is ignored.
This western iconography makes sense. Oppenheimer is tied in the myth of American exceptionalism, the romantic notion of rugged individualists who shape history through sheer force of will. “Do you know when the Russians will have a bomb?” Truman rhetorically asks Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer stutters halfway through an answer, before Truman cuts him off: “Never.” Of course, this is a fallacy. It was inevitable that Russia would develop an atomic bomb. America was never so special as to maintain a monopoly.
Oppenheimer’s self-importance is reflected in other characters. Truman dismisses his feeling of responsibility for the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by arguing that the Japanese only care about who gave the order to drop the bomb. “I did that,” Truman states. This feels like a boast from the man who asserted, “The buck stops here,” and who dismisses Oppenheimer as a “crybaby.” The irony is that Truman is himself seen as a passenger in history, only making that choice because of the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
When key decisions are made by people within the world of Oppenheimer, they are often arbitrary and solipsistic. These men might shape history in their own way, but they are certainly not great men. Henry Stimson (James Remar) ostensibly removes Kyoto from the list of potential targets because of its “cultural significance to the Japanese people,” but then confesses, “My wife and I honeymooned there. Beautiful city.” That is ultimately what spares Kyoto from atomic horror. It’s so petty. Similarly, the Nazi atomic program suffers because of Hitler’s personal prejudice against “the Jewish science” of quantum physics.
After the dropping of the atomic bomb, Oppenheimer is a victim of the Red Scare. However, the film makes the point that this attack on his reputation has nothing to do with politics or security. It is instead driven by personal animus from individuals like Lewis Strauss and Edward Teller (Benny Safdie). The hearings into Oppenheimer’s communist past are ultimately just an attempt by Strauss to control the narrative of history, to the point that he leaks quotes directly to Time, placing himself on the cover.
Strauss’ animus isn’t rooted in any greater ideology. It’s anchored in an amalgamation of minor social sleights, some real and some imagined. He bristles at Oppenheimer describing his past as “a lowly shoe salesman.” He is publicly humiliated when Oppenheimer dismisses his arguments over exporting isotopes for medical use. Strauss is also haunted by a conversation between Oppenheimer and Einstein at Princeton, after which Einstein failed to meet his eyes. It’s staggeringly pathetic, but it works. It’s enough to destroy Oppenheimer.
The irony of this is that the cornerstone of Strauss’ resentment of Oppenheimer — the conversation with Einstein — had nothing to do with him. As an anonymous senate aide (Alden Ehrenreich) asks, “Did you ever think maybe they weren’t even talking about you? Maybe they were talking about something more important?” It turns out that they were: the fear that nuclear annihilation was inevitable. However, Strauss lacks the awareness and understanding to see beyond himself, to consider anything but his own self-importance.
In Oppenheimer, ambition and plans are often derailed by pettiness and chance. Oppenheimer builds the bomb to be used against the Nazis, but Germany is defeated without it. He imagines a global atomic order built around Roosevelt’s plans for the United Nations, but Roosevelt’s death puts Truman in charge. Strauss is recommended for a cabinet position by Eisenhower, but he is blocked by Senator John F. Kennedy. As president, Kennedy makes the decision to award Oppenheimer the Fermi Prize, but his assassination means it’s awarded by Lyndon B. Johnson (Hap Lawrence).
In the film’s closing scenes, Einstein muses on the idea that history marches on past individuals. After all, history left Einstein behind. He suggests that the same will eventually be true of Oppenheimer, something the film confirms. Oppenheimer is a rejection of the myth of the great man, suggesting that history is a much more complicated force.
