the oppenheimer movie review

the oppenheimer movie review

Analyzing the Portrayal of J. Robert Oppenheimer in Film: A Critical Review

1. Introduction to J. Robert Oppenheimer and his Significance

The analysis of the films that depict the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer is a relatively unexplored area in the literature. Since 1947, there have been eight Hollywood movie releases that incorporate fictional or documentary elements about the physicist, and two further independent films more recently. There have also been documentaries produced for the radio, which have not been included in this study. The most famous non-Hollywood adaptations of Oppenheimer are The Day After Trinity (1980) and The Trials of J. Robert Oppenheimer (2008); neither of which are full-length feature films. Given the physicist’s level of influence and his importance to American and international history, his appearance in these film avenues is relatively unexpected. Nonetheless, Oppenheimer has been portrayed many times in Hollywood films, with the biggest names and titles of American cinema.

Dr. Julius Robert Oppenheimer was a physicist, philosopher, and first Director of the Los Alamos Laboratory, where he played an integral role in the Manhattan Project. He worked incessantly as an advisor on atomic affairs in the years immediately following the war and used his influence to lobby vehemently against the arms race and for atomic control. In 1953, following allegations that he was a security risk, he was stripped of his security clearance and ostracized from the scientific and public community, leading him to paper the walls of his house with fish to prevent the government from wiretapping his conversations. Following the opening up of Soviet archives in the 1990s, it was discovered that Oppenheimer had been instrumental in his efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation and had also thwarted Soviet espionage. He remains a significant historical and cultural figure to this day, as evidenced by the continued public and academic reproduction of his life.

2. The Evolution of Oppenheimer’s Portrayal in Cinema

The first feature-length film in which Oppenheimer appears was MGM’s “The Beginning or the End,” released in early 1947, around the time that the Bikini tests were shown in newsreels. This film is revealing, both for what it tells us about the politics of its time and for its peculiar treatment of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Another interesting “first” to note is Robert Lopert’s “The Shadow,” which was released in 1954 after the patent on the Bikini test footage had expired and thus included it along with other stock shots from earlier tests sitting on the shelf. It should not come as a surprise to learn that 1950, the fifth year of the American nuclear monopoly, was also the year a play about Julius Robert Oppenheimer by Dorothy and Benjamin Karp called “Inquest” was on the stage in New York City, starring Eli Wallach as Oppenheimer.

Oppenheimer was almost immediately transformed into a cinematic character, beginning with his candid exchanges on making “The Decision to Drop the Bomb” with his colleague William L. Laurence, which were filmed by the War Department in 1945 and aired as an 8-minute newsreel. Later documentary materials about the bomb were used in the CBS production “The Atom and the Bomb” and in his interviews for “The Decision to Drop the Bomb” and “The Day After Trinity.” These short documentary clips that starred themselves appeared as remote events reaching their own era, four, fourteen, twenty-five, and forty years after they were made, respectively. This extended on-screen résumé as a newsreel-ready character in an unfolding American tragedy set the stage for his portrayal as a fictional persona in dramatic film.

3. Key Films Depicting Oppenheimer and their Impact

Oppenheimer has also been depicted at least a dozen times in film: as a public intellectual, as a public sage, as a comic strip all-American hero, as a national scapegoat, and as a narrowly specialized physicist. He serves as an archetypal figure readily adapted to the contemporary political consensus while role-playing the American dramatist’s favorite black belief: the loss of self-control because of unconsciousness. Cruelty, promiscuity, and multiformity tend to be compressed into a time-ordered conduct disorder leading to self-destruction and national betrayal. Oppenheimer’s great stature as a classic American tragic hero is thus assured by reference to the tragic pattern Lawrence Lee discovered in the abstract limitations of his personal life. No wonder no adult who has actually worked very long or hard with Robert Oppenheimer has ever acknowledged the accuracy of a theory about him reportedly based on a creative leap, without notice or citation, from a popular book by J. Robert Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer’s life does not indeed fit the naïve pattern of a tragic formula. J. Robert Oppenheimer has been, and continues to serve as, an exemplary counterhemeneut for the creators of the American archetype about The Scientist and his Community.

After the immense destruction caused by the atomic bomb at the end of World War II, Robert Oppenheimer became known as the “father of the atomic bomb.” In 1947, he argued for a policy of openness, and in 1954, he lost his security clearance for disagreeing with U.S. atomic weapons testing. Unfortunately, American film appears to preserve and propagate a view of Robert Oppenheimer derived from William L. Laurence’s dramatic 1946 publicity biography. Portrayals of him are often inappropriately moralistic or melodramatic and hence dramatically corrupt. Perhaps as a result, many are largely negative; the sole exceptions are mutually contradictory advocates who valorize his bipolar extremes without recognizing the underlying theme of his repetitive pattern.

4. Analyzing Accuracy and Ethical Considerations in Oppenheimer’s Portrayal

Why have filmmakers not used such rich source material? Are they simply being cautious? Do they wish to present a palatable interpretation of Oppenheimer, one that they believe their audience will find acceptable and/or sympathetic? In portraying Oppenheimer, what are the, if any, ethical considerations for presenting a fairly accurate portrayal of the historical person? In particular, how can a fictional account of a historically significant figure influence popular understanding of that person’s legacy? Although filmic portrayals of Oppenheimer mythologize him, is it possible to convey at least something significant about his enigmatic personality or his place in history?

Scholars, authors, and Oppenheimer’s peers all debate how accurately Oppenheimer has been portrayed in books, films, and on stage. Indeed, the director of the 2005 documentary told me during an interview that “there is not a satisfactory film” of Oppenheimer yet. Nor, in fact, have filmmakers even used the exclusive rights that were obtained to the most widely now available biography, Bird and Sherwin’s American Prometheus. A television movie by that name is reportedly under development but has not been released as of this writing.

5. Conclusions and Future Directions in Representing Oppenheimer on Screen

In three works, the task of bringing Oppenheimer’s personal and scientific multi-dimensionality into film has fallen on renowned directors—David L. Wolper, Roland Joffé and Barak Goodman—edging out contemporaries like Anthony Mann, David Lean, and Terry Gilliam, who had planned to film scenes of one of Oppenheimer’s personal admired works: the Bhagavad Gita. Out of curiosity, and to fulfill our objective, it is feasible to figure out a common point in time in which all fictional references of different Oppenheimer’s appeared in the market.

The portrayal of J. Robert Oppenheimer in fiction films cannot be understood without considering a few external factors which shaped their stories: the period in which they were produced and released, the film industry, and, somehow connected to the latter, the market and target audiences. A common place to start thinking about it is to wonder why Oppenheimer has not been one of the most prolific historical figures of the 20th and 21st film industry, especially considering that in doing so, filmmakers would be telling a core and well-known story: the development, use, and ends of atomic bomb in World War II (WWII), its socio-political, scientific, philosophical, and ethical consequences, and the human greatness and misery they engendered. Neuralgic points—should I say cul-de-sacs?—in Oppenheimer’s character, personal history, work, and its outcomes in a context of needing someone to be portrayed as a key figure of a monumental event and to become an easy object of moral judgment and guilt—a subject structured historically as good and bad—with immediate historical and contemporary explanations.