Oppenheimer: What You Probably Missed When You Watched The Movie
Disclaimer: Please ignore the grammatical mistakes, I will be editing it later.
If you love foreshadowing, you will have a deep appreciation for the storytelling in this movie. I believe it is not about the atomic bomb as much as it is about what the bomb reveals about humanity. The beginning sets the tone of the entire movie. The movie starts when the lead explains how stars die to his first and only student who comes to attend his class on Quantum Physics. First, he asks, “Does light exist as particles or waves?” The answer of Quantum Physics gives is both. It is paradoxical, he concludes. So does, the very existence of a star, where it is pushing against gravity, yet it needs it to exist. The moment gravity overpowers, the star ceases to exist. This is projected in the decisions made by Oppie throughout his life. He is a star who is constantly collapsing on himself.
Time and feelings of a person not being linear is demonstrated through the cinematographic choice of putting past in colour and present in black and white then once again in colour when he is older. This is present throughout the movie, where you cannot really keep up with the fast-paced nature of the movie, where characters changed perceptions are represented in their interactions with Oppie in the past and the interactions they have with the board in charge of his security clearance. The moment you see it merge in Oppie's life is when delivers a speech stating he was proud of what happened to Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the auditorium, but the background shakes, everything is in colour until he walks out. The flashes of cameras transform the screen into a black and white scene.
He used communist means to reach a capitalist end. He housed the employees, he provided the janitor and the scientist, the same infrastructure, medical care and other resources. Furthermore, he used his learnings from his network that educated him about much required policy changes to create a town that could serve his capitalist goal of building a bomb and destroying the competition, which in this case is Japan. Sidenote: War is capitalist and if you disagree, just pay attention to how America, a capitalist country, built its nation on selling weapons. War has always been a way to destroy the competition.
Nolan transforms the ideologies affecting world politics as stages. 1. Socialism (the government funds the town of La Almos) 2. Communism (everybody has access to basic resources, there is collective ownership) 3. Capitalism (the dropping of the bomb)
Of course, every stage is incomplete as it abandons itself before moving onto the next stage. It also represents how Oppie had the capability to have these opposing ideologies exist in his mind, creating conflict and affecting his ability to make decisions based on what he perceives to be the gravity of the situation.
There is an ongoing dark joke throughout the movie, where other characters think the very demonstration of the negative impact of the atomic bomb will instill fear and stop war. This is proven wrong as soon as Oppie tries to use this as a justification for his action of supporting the bombings where his colleague points out, “Until someone builds a bigger bomb.” This then becomes the real threat in the movie where he constantly tries to soothe himself claiming the Hydrogen Bomb Project is just a theory. He mocks the possibility of it happening by claiming that the ideas of the colleague researching about this on his team if implemented, would result in delivering the bomb in an ox cart and not a plane. He knew it to be possible, but he refused to accept it. Not only that, but he has internalized the idea, “How far can theory go?” And he underestimates the impact of it. Just because he was proven wrong by his colleagues in the first half of the movie where mathematically it is not possible to split the atom but in reality it had already been achieved. Despite his mockery, he continues working with theory, hoping for impact. Such dissonance must paralyze a human, but it is not Oppie's dissonance, it is those who are studying him and trying to appeal to their audience's views that Nolan weaponised and presented to the watcher.
The regret he had in real life came later after seeing the impact of his actions, but the movie tries to show that it happened right after the bomb being dropped itself. In fact, it tries to imply it when he quoted Bhagwad Gita during the trial run of the bomb on indigenous people's land they had occupied and built their town on... He later requests the President that the town to be returned to the Indians but we do not know if it actually happens. It is observed when he is walking out after his speech at La Amos and he hallucinates people's faces burning, stepping in a body of a child burnt to crisp, his colleague puking and a happy couple that was making out initially immediately mourning the death of their love/child cowering in a corner. Everybody makes eye contact with him and that is what makes it dreadful.
Paraphrasing the dialogue, “You cannot commit a sin, then expect us to feel sorry for you that it had consequences,” is the moral lesson repetitive throughout the movie. Kitty, his wife, said this when she discovered Oppie's affair resulted in Jean, the communist he was having an affair with, committing suicide. It is also implied she may have been killed where you can see a hand pushing her down in the bathtub but we do not know if it is because she was a communist and the people watching Oppie were watching her and killed her, or it is Oppie manifesting the guilt he felt where he believes he killed her because she asked him to stay, and he chose his wife and children.
Nolan does something different in this movie, where he does not punish Kitty for breaking down. Instead the only few women who appeared, seemed to have been right about everything. The colleague who starts a petition against the bombing, where she tried to bring attention to the possibility of it affecting the reproductive system of women. She gets angry at the male scientists for not taking her seriously, and she exclaims, “Your reproductive systems are more exposed than mine.” While the bomb is being taken away, she is seen delivering a speech where she points our how pointless it is to drop a bomb on Japan after Hitler is dead.
She is once again not taken seriously. When Kitty points out how, Strauss is behind the whole fiasco of Oppie's security clearance being threatened because he mocked him publicly, she is ignored as a woman having a breakdown.
She does not break down when she is a witness to the board of inquiry set up by Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.) trying to frame her husband for being a spy on the grounds of him having attending communist parties meeting and having his family and friends part of the party. Plus his contribution towards the refugees in Spain. Before her testimony, everybody seemed to breakdown under pressure, but she handled it well.
The chain reaction ignored by men was noticed by women. This is what is subtly suggested.
Strauss when he concluded that his trial is a trial about a trial, we know both the instances whether it be the inquiry to take Oppie down or the inquiry about Strauss's unjust scrapping of security clearance, did not follow the rules of a trial and were solely in place to punish the accused. Strauss's opinion about Oppie in his monologue where he concluded that he gave Oppie exactly what he wanted, martyrdom. He wanted the guilt that comes with being a self-important man, but it is him projecting, just like Oppie was...
The movie ends with the conversation between Einstein and Oppenheimer where Einstein draws a parallel between himself getting an award and Oppie being rewarded for his achievements after his punishment is over. He will get a medal, he will be celebrated but that dance will be more for people who betrayed him than himself.
Oppie is not satisfied, he tells Einstein, how the possibility that the world's atmosphere could be burnt due to a chain of reactions and the entire world could be destroyed, has happened.
Just like a star, he gave the world a means to fight itself and keeping surviving against the gravity of situations, but he also created a series of chain reactions that will eventually lead to the demise of humanity.