Movie Review: Oppenheimer

Thoughts from one who studied Physics in the 1980s

Last weekend, my wife and I rented Oppenheimer. We had heard that it was a really good movie, and as someone who studied physics in college, I already knew of J. Robert Oppenheimer, and in the 1990’s I even read a biography.

But the movie was based on a more recent work, American Prometheus, that I hadn’t read (and don’t intend to read).

The Good

Historically, it is pretty accurate. I have read much about the making of the Atomic bomb¹, so the personalities, the key players, and even a few different points of view. When I was in college studying Physics, one of the professors had worked on the Manhattan Program.

The settings, the mathematics on white boards, and the mien and manner of the scientists was pretty close.

I will add that some of the characters were well cast. Edward Teller was always a fucking thorn in the side of Oppenheimer, and later did help to torpedo his reputation.

His wife (Kitty) was a complicated and contorted person. Well cast.

The details were quite accurate. The RadLab in Berkeley, the reactor folks in Chicago, the metallurgy operations in Hanford (Plutonium) and Oak Ridge (Uranium). The test site, the little city erected in the high deserts of New Mexico.

All this is great.

And the handling of the early political activism where Oppenheimer flirted with the communists.

Indeed the opening of the movie, showing the young Oppenheimer in a lab while studying in Cambridge made me chuckle. There are two sorts of physicists, experimentalists, and theorists. You are one or the other, and clearly Oppenheimer is the latter.

While we are well aware of the main characters, for those of us in the know, there are some hidden gems.

In the aftermath of the test, when you see someone waving bongo drums in the air, that is almost certainly a nod to one of the most iconic physicists of the 20th century, Richard Feynman.

Post war, the scientists really felt dejected. Yes, they built this, and the government unleashed it on Japan, but the scientists were rightly worried that the genie was out of the bottle, and in the intervening decades, it was clear that they were right. But the political persecution, harassment and just ruined lives were collateral damage of the security state. Truly a tragedy.

The bad

Look, I get that a 3 hour movie that is really a hearing with lengthy cut scenes, and that can be, uh, boring. So, the early scenes of his tempestuous relationship with the avowed communist Jean are somewhat excusable, but it felt germane to the story line.

Later in the movie, there is a vignette of him in the witness seat, naked with her grinding on him, and that is just superfluous, and gratuitous.

Then towards the end, it turns out that the hearing with Oppenheimer over his Q clearance was really part of a meta background with the congressional hearing for Lewis Strauss for a cabinet position, and it all turns out that Strauss was the catalyst for all the woes that befell Oppenheimer.

While there is some truth to that, my read is that was a bit overblown. Frankly the paranoia of the 50’s and the red-scare was enough to drive the deep investigation of Oppenheimer’s allegiances and background.

Fact is scientists are by nature open and sharing, and weapons of war are classified, restricted, and kept in the dark. The secrecy vs. openness is a struggle that many in the defense world struggle with (although the $$$ helps them justify betraying their natural inclinations to share information)

Final Thoughts

It was a good movie. Not going to lie, I knew most of what was shown, there have been many books and biographies in the past 40 years that allows a motivated person to assemble an understanding of this time in our history.

But for someone who wasn’t steeped in physics in college like I, it is an engrossing movie, and it probably deserves a good look at best picture.

It got the physics right “enough” to satisfy this geek, so that is a plus.

The acting is great, and Robert Downey Jr. is superlative as the conniving Lewis Strauss. Matt Damon brought his rough edges that we saw from his portrayal of Caroll Shelby in Ford v. Ferrari to be the perfect General Leslie Groves, an engineer’s engineer.

Entertaining, accurate, engaging. But a little long at 3 hours.

Worth the watch

1. I highly recommend reading Richard Rhode’s “The Making of the Atomic Bomb” for a historical read that is very accurate.

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