FCN Movie Club - Oppenheimer

Perhaps many were expecting the movie to focus more on the atomic bomb, but no, it dealt more with the story of Oppenheimer and his psychological struggle after his deadly invention and the story of his betrayal later. The story is devoid of action and there are few scenes of explosions. The dialogues take up a very large part of the story, which sometimes leads to boredom for some viewers.

Any Nolan movie must contain manipulations with time, which was the same case here. There are two timelines in the movie, and the scenes move from one timeline to another, and sometimes events accelerate in both timelines at the same time, which draws the viewer in.

In this film, the most dangerous enemy in the film and the event was not Oppenheimer nor the scientists, or the politicians, but rather it was time.

Let's remember a little about what the conflict was...

The Second World War, after the assassination of Mussolini (Hitler's most important ally in Europe) and the loss of the Nazis in stalingrad, this is where the nuclear race started, Hitler needed it more than his opponents because he seemed to be the weaker party in the war and his cards fell, so what remained was the nuclear hope that perhaps He turns the tables.

In the movie, we see events and matters through Oppenheimer's eyes. The important historical events that the film did not review are because Oppenheimer had no perspective on them. Oppenheimer was not his enemy. He was a scientist. He knew very well what would happen if Hitler possessed the nuclear bomb, and he knew that the nuclear bomb would not survive. In fact, most of the information was taken secretly from the Nazis, so it was a matter of time before the Nazis made the bomb

And here we come to the biggest enemy facing the world and Oppenheimer. We all know that the nuclear bomb is something that would have been discovered anyway, whether by Oppenheimer or anyone else, but the danger facing Robert’s eyes is that Hitler possessed the bomb before them.

Therefore, the real danger of the movie was not the nuclear bomb, but rather time.  Nolan wanted us to fear time with him by narrating the events in a reverse way and going through what the hero goes through. Therefore, Oppenheimer was afraid of time because of his insight. If the Nazis were armed with the bomb before them, we would all be under the rule of them.

Another thing that I was very surprised by was the moral dilemma that Oppenheimer experienced.

Oppenheimer is a person obsessed with sciences such as chemistry and physics, and one of the most famous scientists at that time. All hopes was on him to complete the manufacture of the bomb. His country is facing a war in the middle of a world war. The Nazis want to rule the world. Oppenheimer was faced with a dilemma: Is making this bomb wrong because it is a weapon of mass destruction? Thousands will die. And it will end the war, bring down the Nazis, and make America victorious. Or is it right because the weapon of mass destruction will preserve peace on the basis that if everyone possesses it, countries will be afraid to declare war because of the enormous powers they possess, and every country will be afraid of harm. This is what Oppenheimer thought. We do not certainly know how true Oppenheimer's ideas or thinking were, but this is his perspective, and what may reinforce this view is what he did later.

This psychological conflict was not the only one, but there was another one,  which is that after hearing about the retreat of Germany and Japan, the analysts decided that there was no need for the bomb, but he came to the scene and said :

"They won't fear it until they understand it. And they won't understand it until they've used it"

Here you can understand Oppenheimer's motives from the perspective of whether he really wanted to detonate the bomb in order for the world to see how powerful it was to achieve the idea of keeping peace, or was he just overcome by selfishness and greatness and wanted the world to see his achievement?

These conflicts and many others created one of the most real characters in biographical movies that aroused my interest. The amount of ups and downs and psychological conflicts that he experienced were very interesting. I now understand why Nolan said that he may be the most important man in our history.

The question is: Was Oppenheimer innocent or did the movie exonerate him?

We can discuss  in comments .

Thanks for reading