Nuclear physicists did change the world forever
It’s a movie that’s immerses. On the walk to Reigate’s small cinema, the thought of sitting in the front row for over 3-hours was making me wonder if I should follow the recommendations coming my way. Locally, having a “must see” film showing hasn’t happened for a while. Views of friends were almost universal about the film[1]. All positive.
It’s intense. Even in the 3-hour run there’s no wasted time. No spinning the wheels. The story is two or three films in one. Given that this movie is about a life, what we see is a compressed drama against a backdrop of world events.
It’s serious. Not much room for everyday humour. Just a sprinkling of irony. Nuclear physicists did change the world forever. Would the change have happened anyway? Yes, most probably, but the world would now be a different place if the bomb had been realised in the Europe of the 1940s rather than the US.
When big science meets national and global politics the results are disturbing. Robert Oppenheimer acted as a nexus. Events pulled him like a powerful magnet from one impossible situation to another. At the same time, he made choices based on strong convictions and a single-minded assurance.
His faith in a “liberal” America was tested to the limit as the devils of political intrigue and ambition kicked against him. The human choices of the head and the heart were stirred into conflict. The sharp tension between right-wing politicos and left-wing intellectuals killed any middle way to bring the globe together to manage the new threat of nuclear confrontation.
Sub-stories ranged over challenges I recognised. The whole art and practice of managing experts, in his case on a large scale, of the Manhattan project, were on display. How do you create urgency and unity around a controversial project? The military couldn’t do it by compulsion alone. The ethical and moral case had to be made for pursuing an aim that would transform the world, or even destroy the world. Once made, the atomic bomb could not be un-invented.
The war to end all wars became nothing of the sort. One bomb led to another and the dangerous stalemate of the Cold War. The later shaped my life as much as anyone who’s over 60-years.
On the technical front, what is fascinating to an engineer, like me, is the vexed question of – what if? What if the massive technical risks of the Manhattan project had not paid off[2]? Or it had taken years more to make a viable bomb? We will never know.
This film, part biography, written and directed by Christopher Nolan was so much in his style. However, on the screen there was no doubt who was dominant. The Irish actor Cillian Murphy is stunning. His Robert Oppenheimer burns into the eyes. What an incredible role.
The temptation is to use a wide range of adjectives that reach a crescendo. There’s a pile of reviews that do. So, I’ll turn to the parts that were not so coherent. Strangely Kenneth Branagh as Niels Bohr worked. However, the portrayal of Einstein was less convincing. The use of black and white pictures to demark different times worked well but was annoying. And sometime the thunderous noises and dramatic flashes were a bit OTT.
Overall, it’s a “must see” film for 2023 and best on the big screen. But don’t sit in the front row.
[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15398776/
[2] Early morning of 16 July 1945, in New Mexico, work at Los Alamos led to a test of the first nuclear weapon.
John Vincent 