The Big Picture
The film
Oppenheimer
focuses on critical periods of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s life, including his tenure at Los Alamos and the Trinity nuclear test.
After the war, Oppenheimer advocated for international cooperation in atomic policy, but the US rejected his advice.
Oppenheimer’s life after his security clearance was revoked is covered in the book “A Life in Twilight,” and he remained a public figure until his death in 1967.
Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, a front-runner for multiple awards heading into Oscar season, dramatizes the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy), the physicist who oversaw America’s development of the atomic bomb at Los Alamos. While many recent biopics, such as Selma and Lincoln, have focused on a discreet, intense period of their subject’s lives, Oppenheimer has a more traditionally epic sweep, carrying its story from Oppenheimer’s graduate studies through most of his life (though, as this is a Christopher Nolan movie, not in entirely chronological order). Still, there are some blind spots, notably at the end. The movie leaves Oppenheimer in a state of tragic uncertainty about the violence he may have unleashed on the world. But how did he live his life after this moment? What happened to Oppenheimer after the events of Oppenheimer?
Oppenheimer
The story of American scientist, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and his role in the development of the atomic bomb.
Release Date July 21, 2023
Runtime 180 minutes
The primary source material for Christopher Nolan’s film is the biography American Prometheus, by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin. The book was a bestseller and won the Pulitzer Prize. Though published in 2005, the research for the book was begun in 1979, when many of the relevant figures were still alive and able to be interviewed. If you loved the movie, you’ll probably love the book. While the book covers the entirety of Oppenheimer’s life thoroughly, the film focuses on a few critical periods of his biography. First among these is his tenure during World War Two as director of Los Alamos laboratories, overseeing the Manhattan Project – the top secret United States research project that led to the design and use of the world’s first atomic weapons. This portion of the film climaxes with the Trinity nuclear test, the first successful detonation of a nuclear bomb.
But the film really pivots into the next era of Oppenheimer’s life when the bomb is taken away from Oppenheimer’s labs by the military, for use. Now that he has successfully delivered the bomb, as asked, he has lost all of his power to determine its use. Oppenheimer stepped down as director of Los Alamos in 1946, shortly after two atomic weapons were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
What Happened to Oppenheimer After the War?
Image via Universal Pictures
After the war was over, Oppenheimer consulted with the government on atomic policy. He believed that, with atomic energy and atomic weapons drastically raising the stakes of conflict, the international community would need to become more cooperative, out of necessity. Only the United States had an atomic bomb, but the world would inevitably be turning towards atomic energy as a fuel source.
It would be trivially easy for any nation to mask an atomic weapons program in their atomic energy development. For this reason, Oppenheimer advocated for the creation of an international entity, which he proposed calling the Atomic Development Authority, that would control all aspects of atomic energy across the globe, even owning all the world’s uranium mines. It would involve every nation in the world giving up some authority, but Oppenheimer believed it was a necessity, arguing that “without world government, there could be no permanent peace… without peace there would be atomic warfare.” This was the overwhelming view across the scientific community. (Einstein himself was advocating that only a full pivot to socialism could prevent nuclear war.)
Related ‘Oppenheimer’ Review: Christopher Nolan Delivers His Most Colossal and Mature Film Yet Cillian Murphy is remarkable in a film that feels like what Nolan’s entire career has been building towards.
Despite Oppenheimer’s prestige as the man who had overseen the Manhattan Project, the administration of Harry S. Truman (played in the film by Gary Oldman) didn’t take his advice, instead pushing for United States dominance over atomic energy and the preservation of the country’s monopoly over scientific knowledge. This period of Oppenheimer’s life is briefly covered in the film, in an extended montage. As Oppenheimer repeatedly advocated for more international cooperation in atomic policy, he came under the suspicion of J. Edgar Hoover, the maniacally anti-communist director of the FBI. This period in American history is referred to as the Red Scare when the nation was so caught up in anti-communist panic that it persecuted its citizens for their beliefs. Though Oppenheimer was protected from the worst of this by his status as a national hero, as well as his genuine non-alignment with any communist party, he was the subject of relentless surveillance by Hoover and the FBI.
What Happened During the Oppenheimer Security Hearing?
Oppenheimer’s security clearance hearing is the other major period of his life covered in the film. It stemmed from his petty dispute with Lewis Strauss, the American entrepreneur who served as chairperson of the United States Atomic Energy Commission. Strauss, played by Robert Downey Jr, is Oppenheimer’s primary antagonist. His relationship arc with Oppenheimer, both in the movie and in life, began when he recruited him to run the Institute for Advanced Study at New Jersey’s Princeton University.
Strauss’ attempt to persuade Oppenheimer to take this position is one of the first – and last – scenes in the movie. We see Oppenheimer tell Strauss that he’ll merely “consider” the job. In reality, while it’s true that Oppenheimer annoyed Strauss by taking a while to decide, he did end up taking the position. The film takes creative license in allowing the audience to feel that Strauss’s petty resentment of Oppenheimer was based on only a few scattered interactions, but in fact, the two men interacted regularly at Princeton for the rest of Oppenheimer’s life after the war.
Eventually, Strauss was able to engineer a humiliating security hearing for Oppenheimer, resulting in his security clearance being revoked. Later on, the scientific community is considered to have gotten revenge on Oppenheimer’s behalf, by derailing Strauss’ appointment as Secretary of Commerce. The conflict between the two men ended up ending both of their careers in government.
What Was Oppenheimer’s Life Like After the Security Hearing?
Image via Universal Pictures
Oppenheimer’s life after his security clearance was revoked is the subject of its own book, A Life in Twilight: The Final Years of J. Robert Oppenheimer, by Mark Wolverton. The title should give you some idea of how things went for Oppenheimer. He never recovered the influence he had during the war or in its aftermath.
Nevertheless, he remained a celebrity, as well as the head of a prestigious institution. He appeared on television as an ambassador of science (somewhat similar to Neil DeGrasse Tyson). The nation lived in fear of a nuclear holocaust, and Oppenheimer was frequently asked about it. In an interview with Edward R. Murrow, when asked if humans had invented a way of destroying humanity, he answered “Not quite… you can certainly destroy enough of humanity that only the greatest act of faith will persuade you that what’s left is human.”
He remained an intermittent advocate for the international control of atomic weapons. Whether he went far enough, considering his responsibility as an architect of the atomic age, is a subject of some debate. As Strauss puts it in the film, “he wanted the glorious insincere guilt to wear like a fucking crown,” noting that he never expressed regret over the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The film doesn’t side with Strauss’ belief that Oppenheimer’s guilt was performative, depicting him as a man who lives with regret for the rest of his life. However, it should be known that during Oppenheimer’s life, a play was put on that depicted him as wracked with remorse, and he objected to this portrayal. He may not have agreed with the way he is depicted in the film.
Oppenheimer’s Public Redemption Came at the End of His Life
Image via Universal Pictures
Technically, the latest event portrayed in the film is Oppenheimer’s reception of the Enrico Fermi Prize in 1963. The award was given to him by the Kennedy Administration and is considered to be the government’s atonement for Oppenheimer’s public humiliation. The award was controversial with conservatives at the time, who still considered Oppenheimer an enemy of the state.
The presentation of the award is depicted in the film as a flash forward, an illustration of Einstein’s prediction. It’s even slightly ambiguous if the scene is actually a real part of history or an imagined projection of the future. But, it happened. President Kennedy was assassinated before the award could be given out, and it was instead presented by Kennedy’s predecessor, President Lyndon Johnson. If you watch knowing this, you see that President Johnson is prominently featured in these scenes.
Oppenheimer was diagnosed with cancer soon after and died in 1967 at the age of 62. (Though the film provides no hint of this, his wife Kitty (Emily Blunt) afterward lived for a time with Bob Serber, Oppenheimer’s student, who is played in the film by Michael Angarano.) After his death, Oppenheimer faded from memory somewhat. For a while, it seemed like the only thing widely known about him, other than that he ran the Manhattan Project, was the mistaken belief that he had delivered the famous quote “Now I have become death, the destroyer of worlds” after the first successful detonation. He actually said it years later in an interview.
American Prometheus reminded the world of Oppenheimer’s role not only in the development of the bomb but in the history of the Cold War that followed. The film, a faithful recapturing of events, will likely solidify that public historical knowledge for years to come.
Oppenheimer is now available to stream on Peacock in the U.S.
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