Oppenheimer's Tragic Fate

 From First Things:

In line with the book, Nolan gives us a cosmopolitan, polyglot, literary, Picasso-viewing Oppenheimer, who quotes Donne, reads The Wasteland at night, rides horses through the New Mexican desert, teaches himself Sanskrit, talks international politics, and reads Marx in the original. Bird and Sherwin also provide a judicious portrait of a psychologically complicated man, one whom Cillian Murphy captures well. With his wide-open, vacant blue eyes but wistful mouth, he captures the man of paradox: at times ambitious, vain, brilliant, moody, affectionate, modest, bold, winning, off-putting, and timid. Oppenheimer was a dynamic leader, but he was also emotionally absent. He could seduce a woman by presenting himself as bold and confident, but was, at the same time, unstable. He needed his friends to remind him to eat, to keep his wiry frame alive, and he needed strong women to tell him what to do. Bird and Sherwin quote Oppenheimer's friend Isidor Rabi: “God knows I'm not the simplest person, but compared to Oppenheimer, I'm very, very simple.”

In addition to this complicated psychological portrait, Nolan employs a Terrence Malick–inspired cinematography to great effect. Just after the opening frames of the swirling fire of the explosion from the Trinity test in 1945, the first detonation of a nuclear bomb, we have scenes of rainwater falling on puddles—a recurring image throughout the film. There are wide-angle views of the New Mexican desert; sudden cuts to naturalistic close-ups; imagery of stars melting or dying. Visual techniques that evoke Malick's Tree of Life allow us to go “inside” the mind of Oppenheimer, where we “see” the inner life of the atom, and “feel” the pulse of the quantum fields that make up material reality at the most fundamental level. This is one of the great accomplishments of Nolan: All the ingredients are in Bird and Sherwin’s work, but only Nolan allows us to view the inner essence of the world through Oppenheimer's visionary eyes and feel what it would be like to be a genius for 180 minutes. (Read more.)

From The Beacon:

Every conscientious adult must see Christopher Nolan’s film Oppenheimer. Nolan deserves our deepest gratitude for using his enormous talent and notoriety to raise awareness of humanity’s nuclear weapons problem. Many critics have justly praised the film’s entertainment and artistic value. This review aims to provide historical context that might deepen the viewer’s appreciation of this timeless film, Oppenheimer.

There are two crucial aspects of Oppenheimer, the man, that were not fully revealed in the film: (1) his antipathy to human beings and (2) his unbridled arrogance. These aspects of the man might be lost on viewers since Nolan did not cover Oppenheimer’s formative years. Still, these features of the man are critical, for they help explain his susceptibility to developing weapons of mass destruction.

J. Robert Oppenheimer was born in 1904 to a wealthy family. He had an extremely overprotective, germaphobic mother, and she deprived him of a normal childhood. She did not allow him to do ordinary things like eat junk food or visit the barbershop. Sadly, the young Oppenheimer had very little interaction with other children. The child’s sheltered and isolated environment permanently stunted his social development.

Oppenheimer acknowledged that he was a terribly obnoxious child. He constantly lorded his intellect in grade school over other children to make them feel stupid. Since other children did not like this know-it-all, the young loner spent almost all his time studying. This issue persisted when he was an undergraduate at Harvard. Unfortunately, Oppenheimer had few friends and never went on a single date. He admitted, “I had very little sensitiveness to human beings.”

This brings us to the seminal “poisoned apple” incident during his graduate days at Cambridge. In the movie, Oppenheimer poisons an apple with potassium cyanide and leaves it for Patrick Blackett. At the last moment, he returns to save Blackett from eating the apple. This scene is probably enough to raise serious questions about Oppenheimer’s appreciation for human life. However, there is much more to this problematic story.

In reality, Oppenheimer never went back to save Blackett. Fortunately, Blackett learned that Oppenheimer tried to poison him and discarded the deadly apple. The incident was reported to Cambridge officials, and Oppenheimer was busted.

Why wasn’t he charged with attempted murder? It is uncertain if Oppenheimer’s wealthy father bribed Cambridge officials. But he got involved and somehow managed to bail out his son. The history of the twentieth century might have been different if Oppenheimer had been properly punished in late 1925 for his attempted murder of Blackett.

Oppenheimer was put on probation at Cambridge and forced to see a psychiatrist. Although he did not know about the poisoned apple, the psychiatrist diagnosed Oppenheimer with schizophrenia (dementia praecox). Rather than admitting the severity of his mental problems, the spoiled, unremorseful, and arrogant young miscreant claimed that his psychiatrist was too stupid to comprehend him.

The poisoned apple incident was a pivotal turning point for Oppenheimer. The incident triggered his move to Göttingen, Germany, in the summer of 1926. And this is where Oppenheimer transitioned to the study of theoretical physics. In short, the illicit poisoned apple incident was the watershed event that put Oppenheimer on the path to building the atomic bomb.

In Germany, he developed a reputation for insufferable arrogance. He had a terrible habit of interrupting professors—even eminent figures like Max Born. Other students complained that it was impossible to learn in the same room as him. In one case, the entire class refused to attend lectures unless the professor kicked Oppenheimer out of the course. (Read more.)

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