As the title suggests, this is a film about Oppenheimer’s life that follows three different storylines in a non-linear way: his years at Los Alamos on the Manhattan Project starting in 1939, his 1954 security hearing, and Strauss’s 1959 parliamentary hearing, this last part in black and white. It highlights the genius of Oppenheimer and his colleagues, the political pressure during the war and then when Oppenheimer’s loyalty to America is questioned, the decision to use the bomb at the end of the war when Hitler was already dead and the moral dilemma endured by Oppenheimer. I suppose the rendering of this historical period is a point of view, as always in history, but I learned quite a lot. I would have liked to see it on a bigger screen, but it is an amazing film, with clever dialogues and fantastic images. Brilliant.
“You can(‘t) lift the stone without being ready for the snake that’s revealed.”