July 25, 2023 – To describe Julius Robert Oppenheimer, the father of atomic weapons, as a complicated man, is a gross understatement. In this film about the rise and fall of Oppenheimer (played by Cillian Murphy) writer-director Christopher Nolan (“Interstellar”) highlights the academic, professional, government project director, and personal life of Oppenheimer, and those connected with him. Nolan's (largely historically accurate) first-person screenplay is based on the biography, “American Prometheus,” by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin.

Oppenheimer's complicated life is made more complex in this film, because of the way it is structured. It begins with a flash-forward to a devastating postwar, month-long investigation into Oppenheimer's government security clearance. This is followed by frequent flashbacks, some decades earlier in Europe to his early academic studies. While his academic and political life was complex, his love life, particularly with Jean Tatlock (played by Florence Pugh of “Black Widow”) was equally so. Katherine “Kitty” Puening (Emily Blunt of “A Quiet Place”) became Oppenheimver's wife. Jean and Kitty were both members of the American Communist Party at one time, and this fact was a longstanding political problem for Oppenheimer.

Anyone who has read “No High Ground,” (1968 by Fletcher Knebel & Charles W. Bailey II) watched “Fat Man and Little Boy” (1989) and watched “The Day After Trinity” (1981) will already know as much or more about the development of the atom bomb than what is shown in this movie, but not about the corrosive, long-running feud between Oppenheimer and Lewis Strauss (played by Robert Downey Jr.).

Strauss, a member of the Atomic Energy Commission, used his extensive government connections to help strip Oppenheimer of his security clearance. His hatred of Oppenheimer is seemingly based on a number of minor sleights suffered by Strauss at the hands of Oppenheimer, as well as major policy disagreements between them. While Oppenheimer thought little of it, Strauss held a grudge against him for years, and this ended up costing both men dearly. This feud plays a major role in this film.

Nolan uses a number of visual clues in the film to signify different aspects of the story, including the use of black and white documentary-like scenes, contrasting with the the more subjective point-of-view color scenes in most of the film. In one striking fantasy scene during Oppenheimer's security clearance hearing, he, and his lover, Tatlock, are shown nude, having sex, while Oppenheimer's wife, Kitty, seethes with anger over this part of his testimony.

Stunning, imaginative images representing Oppenheimer's understanding of the quantum realm, punctuate Oppenheimer's studies of quantum mechanics, a field of subatomic theoretical physics not popular in America at the time, but which is now considered extremely important. Oppenheimer was one of the early university lecturers to give classes in quantum mechanics in the United States.

Equally stunning are the performances from a huge and talented cast, led by Murphy, Downey, Blunt, Pugh and Matt Damon, who plays General Leslie Groves, head of the Manhattan Project. Also of note is Benny Safdie (“Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret”) who plays Edward Teller, father of the hydrogen bomb.

I was happy to see a couple of my favorite underrated actors in this film, along with a plethora of A-listers and Oscar-winners. They are Matthew Modine (“Sicario: Day of the Soldado”) who plays Vannevar Bush, head of the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development, and Josh Hartnett (“Wrath of Man”) who plays Manhattan Project physicist Ernest Lawrence. These two guys have given great performances in a couple of underrated films, Modine in the stunning sailing film, “Wind” (1992) and Hartnett in “O” (2001 adaptation of Shakespeare's Othello).

Also good in the movie is another of my favorite actors, David Krumholtz, who plays a good friend of Oppenheimer, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Isidor Isaac Rabi. Krumholtz has a significant role in this movie, his best since starring in a TV show called “Numbers.” He has some of the best lines in the movie, including, “I don’t want the culmination of three centuries of physics to be a weapon of mass destruction.”

It is easy enough to think of all this in the past, but the past never really stays in the past. It is with us right now. The nuclear arms race that Oppenheimer feared, happened, but treaties to limit the spread of nuclear weapons he championed also happened. Those treaties are breaking down now, and the threat of global atomic war has not gone away.

Some scientists, including Teller, feared that the first atom bomb, detonated July, 16, 1945 in New Mexico would cause a chain reaction in the atmosphere which would destroy most of the life on earth. It did not, of course, but Oppenheimer tells Albert Einstein (played by Tom Conti) years later that he fears that the bomb nonetheless opened the door to a future global annihilation.

If it does nothing else, this movie reminds us that the world still sits on the brink of global thermonuclear war, and international political and military leaders have repeatedly demonstrated they are no wiser today than world leaders were 78 years ago.

While this film is visually stunning and it features great acting talent, its fractured structure makes it hard to follow because it just keeps jumping all over the world, in different time periods. That, and the film's long running time, three hours, makes it a bit of challenge to sit through. This film rates a B.

There is a thin connection between Wyoming and Oppenheimer in this film. At one point in the film, Wyoming Senator Gale McGee (played by Harry Groener of “A Cure For Wellness”) is heard during a contested hearing on Lewis Strauss' appointment as Secretary of Commerce. McGee, who served from 1959 to 1977 is the last Democrat from Wyoming to serve in the U.S. Senate. It turns out that McGee played a key role in the Strauss confirmation battle, along with friends of Oppenheimer, particularly nuclear physicist David Hill (Rami Malek of “Bohemian Rhapsody”).

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