“Oppenheimer” is an amazing achievement; Christopher Nolan is the best living director.
There is no question about this. How do you turn a three-hour biopic about a nuclear physicist into a blockbuster movie with essentially one big explosion?
The movie is a masterclass. The filmmaking is beautiful to watch. It’s the best biopic about science ever made — and no others are even close. The performances are universally fantastic. There are many cameos of people who you will recognize in addition to lead actor Cillian Murphy, who turns in a great performance.
What’s fascinating about the film from a historical point of view is the pro-Oppenheimer angle. The basic thrust of the Oppenheimer story is that he was granted security clearance in order to help produce the atomic bomb.
There is good evidence that the Soviets were using J. Robert Oppenheimer in the early 1940s, even during the Manhattan Project, in order to facilitate the transfer of information. The man was deeply embedded in and surrounded by tons of communists. Many actual acting Soviet spies were present at Los Alamos during this period.
Everyone was worried about Oppenheimer’s communist ties. But they had no choice because most of the best nuclear scientists had sympathy with communists. Albert Einstein himself said of Vladimir Lenin, “I honor Lenin as a man who completely sacrificed himself and devoted all his energy to the realization of social justice. I do not consider his methods practical, but one thing is certain: men of his type are the guardians and restorers of humanity.”
One reason for the sympathy for communists was that most of Europe at this point was divided between fascists and communists. A lot of people who opposed the Nazis fell into the communist camp because the communists very often would promise equality of man and brotherhood. For a lot of Jewish expatriates who had been victimized by Nazis on the basis of race, they looked at communism, which suggested equality, and were sympathetic.
So Oppenheimer was brought to Los Alamos; despite serious suspicions about his security, he was given security clearance.
After the war, he became an ardent opponent of the development of the hydrogen bomb, saying it would lead to an arms race and perhaps the United States should share technology with the Russians. Then everyone would put down their weapons.
There are two ways to read that. Oppenheimer’s fans would suggest he was so stunned by the power of the bomb that he turned against the use of nuclear weapons and their possibility, with him saying, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” The other perspective is that he was perfectly fine using the bomb on Japan when the Soviets wanted the bomb to be used on Japan. But then as soon as the war was over, he didn’t want the United States leaping far ahead of the Russians in terms of nuclear technology, so he wanted to stop the development of the hydrogen bomb.
These suspicions led Lewis Strauss to organize a removal of Oppenheimer’s security clearance. In the movie, this is played as a McCarthyite scare, as if everyone was overwrought. But there is good evidence suggesting that Oppenheimer probably should not have had a security clearance in the aftermath of the war because he had been given it simply as an emergency measure. Every woman he ever slept with was a communist. All of his friends were communists. He gave money to communist causes.
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The biggest problem with the movie is the time in which the movie has been made. Here’s why: The entire premise of the movie is that Oppenheimer has created the means for the world to destroy itself, and he can’t deal with it. That’s the entire plotline of the movie. All of the counterarguments to him — mutually assured destruction, we have to bomb Japan because a million men will die on the beaches of Japan if we don’t, we have to beat the Soviets — are treated as bad concerns.
History proves all of Oppenheimer’s critics basically correct. The reality is that nuclear power has been one of the greatest achievements in the history of science, maybe the greatest achievement in the history of science. Why? Not only because of the development of nuclear energy, which is essentially endless and clean, but also because the development of the nuclear bomb itself has made wartime death extraordinarily less of a mathematical issue.
The number of American soldiers who were killed in World War II was 405,000; 116,000 Americans died in World War I.
Then the nuclear bomb was developed.
There were 36,000 American deaths in the Korean War, which is less than one-third the total of World War I and less than one-tenth the total of World War II; 58,000 Americans died in the Vietnam War. These are bloody, long wars. The Persian Gulf War totaled 382 deaths; the Iraq operation, 4,600; and the Afghanistan operation, 2,400.
The number of wartime deaths on planet Earth went down dramatically in the aftermath of the development of the bomb. Why? Because if you’re going to fight a proxy war, it better not escalate into anything that approaches a nuclear exchange.
There’s a scene in the movie where Oppenheimer visits President Truman. In it, he tells Truman he doesn’t want to help create the hydrogen bomb and he’s very concerned about the casualties. He says that he is disturbed because he’s the person who created the bomb. Truman looks at him and says, “You didn’t drop it. I dropped it. Nobody’s gonna remember you for dropping it. They’re gonna remember you for the science and remember me for dropping the bomb.” Then he says, “Get this crybaby out of my office.” Truman was right. Nobody remembers Oppenheimer for being the guy who dropped the bomb because he didn’t drop the bomb.
The movie seems to suggest the scientists had some sort of special viewpoint into humanity because they developed the science while the politicians were venal and corrupt and had worldly concerns — but the scientists operate on a spiritual plane.
The cult of scientific expertise probably went out of fashion with Oppenheimer. It’s a good thing it did, because the reality is that just because a scientist is great at science does not mean they know anything about politics or about human nature. Take Anthony Fauci, for example, who does not know about human nature. Fauci does not know what decisions should be made to balance all the interests of human beings. This is why we elect politicians. This is why we don’t have scientific god-kings.
There are a couple messages from the film that conflict. One message: It’s bad scientists don’t get to run things because politicians are venal. Second message: Scientists can be screwed up because they’re just like all other human beings. They’re not a class apart. They are not wiser or more brilliant, except in the fields in which they’re wiser and more brilliant, which includes nuclear physics but does not include politics.
But the fact that the movie takes on all of these issues — politics, science, the interplay of the two, communism versus freedom of speech — in a three-hour blockbuster that will make hundreds of millions of dollars?
All of this is a testament to what Christopher Nolan is capable of.
It’s so good I will watch it twice. That’s saying a lot because it’s three hours long.
And it’s worth every minute.