Oppenheimer: Nolan’s nihilistic account of the creation of the atomic bomb
As I walked inside the cinema hall to watch the latest creation of celebrated director Christopher Nolan, I’ll admit, I wasn’t too excited.
Oppenheimer, Nolan’s latest flick, is a biographical thriller on the life of American physicist Robert J Oppenheimer, who is also known as the father of the atomic bomb.
The movie had a star-studded cast, it was helmed by one of my favourite directors and it had raving reviews from critics and fans.
Still, I was hesitant to watch the movie.
My main fear was that in the guise of a gripping tale about the creation of the most destructive weapon known to mankind, I would be fed an US apologist rhetoric, which would try to convince me that America choosing to drop two atomic bombs in Japan after the Nazis had already surrendered was somehow justified.
This fear was not unfounded. A few years back, I remember flipping through channels on the television and stumbling upon a Bradley Cooper movie titled ‘American Sniper’. In that movie, Cooper played the role of Chris Kyle, a sniper in the US Navy Seal, who was fighting in the Iraq war.
Through Cooper’s portrayal of Kyle, the movie depicted the psychological toll the Iraq war had on members of the US Army.
The more I watched that movie the more frustrated I felt. The movie was trying to shed light on the sensitive issue of the mental health of soldiers who have been in combat, which was admirable. But at the same time, they were constantly glorifying the American soldiers and portraying the Arabs as the quintessential villains who deserved to be gunned down.
The nuances of the conflict were not explored, the grey areas were removed and a war, which over 60 per cent of US citizens deemed not worth fighting in 2019, was portrayed as completely justified.
Despite the reservations, I went to a cinema hall and bought a ticket for Oppenheimer.
Why? Because it is a Christopher Nolan movie, that’s why.
As I took my seat at the theatre and began munching my popcorn, I said to myself, “Nolan won’t resort to biased commentary,” with cautious optimism.
The movie, understandably, started off slow. The focus early on was more on Oppenheimer’s personal life, how he started teaching quantum mechanics, his loose connections with the communist party and how he became the head of the Manhattan Project.
The majority of the movie was divided into three timelines. The first was during the Second World War, when Oppenheimer and his team were in a race against the Nazi scientists to build the atomic bomb.
The second was in 1954, when Oppenheimer was in a hearing to maintain his security clearance, which the authority wanted to revoke for allegedly leaking information regarding the atomic bomb to the Soviets.
The third was in 1958, when former chairman of the Atomic Commission Lewis Strauss, who was played by Robert Downey Jr., was sitting in a hearing after getting recommended as secretary of commerce by president Dwight Eisenhower.
The movie kicked into high gear in the third hour when several unexpected revelations were made. Nolan’s depiction of the first ever nuclear explosion, the Trinity Test, was creative and impactful. The conclusion of one of the hearings was disappointing and the other one equally satisfying.
Once the movie ended and I made my way out of the hall, the one emotion that was sweeping over me was melancholy.
Now, was the movie an unbiased depiction of the events surrounding the creation of the atomic bomb, I don’t think so.
In the movie, it was shown that one of the biggest worries of Oppenheimer and the US forces was what would happen if the Nazis developed an atomic bomb before the Allied forces. This fear justified Oppenheimer and other scientists’ decision to join the Manhattan Project.
However, even before the Trinity test took place, the Nazis were already defeated. The threat of Hitler having an atomic bomb at his disposal was neutralised. The war against Germany was already won. So, there was no reason to use the atomic bomb now, right?
But the defeat of the Germans didn’t stop the US. They had spent around $2.2 billion on the project and were determined to test if the bomb worked, which it did.
After the US was sure that it had a working atomic bomb at its disposal, it announced the Manhattan Project to the world. That’s where it all should’ve stopped. There is no reason to actually use the bomb, right?
Although the Germans had surrendered, the Japanese hadn’t. Their defeat was inevitable, but the Japanese were willing to continue fighting as long as they could.
So, the US president Harry Truman decided to give one last demonstration of strength, which would end the war and save thousands of American soldiers from losing their lives in combat.
The US had decided, it would drop the atomic bomb.
The movie showed that many scientists were against the use of the bomb. But Oppenheimer, as the head of the project, didn’t oppose it. In fact, he chose the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to drop the bomb.
On 6 August 1945, the atomic bomb ‘Little Boy’ was dropped on Hiroshima, and the devastation that followed can’t be expressed in words.
Perhaps Nolan also thought that it would be too difficult to depict the devastation caused by the bomb and maybe that’s why he chose not to show it.
Or perhaps, he didn’t want to hurt the sentiments of Americans, who are his primary audience, by giving them a visual reminder that it was their country that was responsible for the most inhuman act in the history of humanity.
Nolan also showed how Oppenheimer was against the creation of the hydrogen bomb and how the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki mentally affected him.
The bias, to me, was obvious. Nolan was kind to his titular character, trying to make him seem like a person who tried to do the right thing but in the end, was helpless against people more powerful than him.
Despite the apparent bias, I believe that Nolan’s Oppenheimer will survive the test of time and will be regarded as one of his best films.
Nolan’s main purpose behind ‘Oppenheimer’ wasn’t to justify the actions of the US or Oppenheimer, but to remind everyone of the numbing reality that the use of the atomic bomb has set off a chain reaction, which will most likely end with the end of mankind.
And if you think I’m trying to put my words into Nolan’s mouth, here is a quote for you from Nolan from an interview he gave to US magazine Variety.
“There’s an inescapable nihilism that creeps in with the underlying reality that he (Oppenheimer) changed the world in a way that can never be changed back. There’s no real catharsis there.”