Oppenheimer Movie Review

Robert Oppenheimer, at a young age,  enrolls in classes at Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory to learn under Patrick Blackett. Because Blackett is so demanding, Oppenheimer leaves him a poisoned apple, which visiting scientist Niels Bohr almost consumes by mistake. Oppenheimer encounters Werner Heisenberg while pursuing his doctorate in physics at Germany’s University of Göttingen. He moves back to the States with the hopes of fostering further research in quantum physics and takes a teaching position at both Berkeley and Caltech. Katherine Puening, a scientist and former communist, becomes his future wife.

After assuring U.S. Army General Leslie Groves that he has no communist affiliations, Oppenheimer is recruited to command the Manhattan Project to produce an atomic weapon. Jewish Oppenheimer is especially motivated by the prospect that the Nazis, led by Heisenberg, have a nuclear weapons program. In Los Alamos, New Mexico, Oppenheimer gathers a group of scientists to work on the bomb in secrecy. Among them are Edward Teller, Isidor Isaac Rabi, and David L. Hill. Oppenheimer and Albert Einstein debate the potential for a nuclear explosion to cause a global catastrophe. Oppenheimer finds out that information from the Manhattan Project may have been leaked to the Soviet Union by a Soviet spy.

Some of the project’s experts begin to question the bomb’s relevance after Germany’s capitulation in World War II. The bomb is finished and the Trinity test is performed successfully shortly before the Potsdam Conference. Oppenheimer becomes famous as the “father of the atomic bomb” when President Harry S. Truman authorizes the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which ultimately leads to Japan’s surrender. Oppenheimer, haunted by the death and devastation, warns Truman against creating more potent weapons. As president, Truman sees himself as exempt from blame for the bomb’s deployment and takes offense at Oppenheimer’s sorrow. Oppenheimer opposes expanding nuclear technology and is Teller’s main opponent when it comes to the hydrogen bomb. During the height of tension with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, his position becomes controversial. U.S. Atomic Energy Commission chairman Lewis Strauss is angry with Oppenheimer for openly ignoring his worries about the export of radioisotopes. He also thinks Oppenheimer said something negative about him to Einstein.

Oppenheimer is misled by Teller and others during a hearing when his political power was supposed to be stripped away. Strauss uses Oppenheimer’s ties to communists both past and present, including Tatlock and Oppenheimer’s brother Frank, to his advantage. Oppenheimer’s reputation takes a hit and his policy clout is nullified despite the testimony of Rabi and other friends on his behalf. Hill reveals Strauss’s ulterior reasons for orchestrating Oppenheimer’s demise during his nomination hearing for Secretary of Commerce in the Senate. Massachusetts Representative John F. Kennedy casts the deciding vote against Strauss’s confirmation. As a kind of political rehabilitation, President Lyndon B. Johnson awards Oppenheimer the Enrico Fermi Award in 1963. Earlier, Oppenheimer and Einstein discussed the far-reaching ramifications of nuclear weapons, not Strauss. Oppenheimer claims that his and Einstein’s worst nightmare of setting off a chain reaction with global consequences has come true.