Oppenheimer

Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer (2023) is a biographical thriller about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the American theoretical physicist who directed the Los Alamos Laboratory during the Manhattan Project. Cillian Murphy plays Oppenheimer, tracing him from graduate years in Europe through his appointment at the University of California, Berkeley, and his wartime recruitment by General Leslie Groves. Matt Damon portrays Groves, who selects the remote New Mexico site where scientists, soldiers, and support staff race to build an atomic bomb before Nazi Germany can do so. Emily Blunt appears as his wife, biologist Katherine "Kitty" Oppenheimer, while Florence Pugh plays American psychiatrist Jean Tatlock. The narrative follows the laboratory's increasingly urgent work, including the July 16, 1945 Trinity test in the New Mexico desert. It depicts Oppenheimer watching the first successful detonation and later confronting its consequences after bombs made with Los Alamos designs are used against Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Rather than presenting a simple victory story, Nolan's screenplay incorporates arguments among the project's scientists about military targets, a demonstration test, and whether the weapon should be used. The title character's recollection of the Bhagavad Gita, "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds," is connected to the Trinity test in the film. Oppenheimer also frames its protagonist's postwar fall through two formal proceedings. Black-and-white sequences focus on a 1959 Senate confirmation hearing involving Lewis Strauss, played by Robert Downey Jr.; the color story includes the 1954 security hearing that stripped Oppenheimer of his security clearance. The hearing examines his earlier associations with Communist Party members, including his brother Frank and Tatlock, as well as his opposition to the hydrogen bomb program. Jason Clarke plays attorney Roger Robb, who aggressively questions him. The film identifies Strauss's resentment of Oppenheimer and conflict over physicist Isidor Isaac Rabi and nuclear policy as motives against him. Nolan wrote and directed the film, adapting American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin's biography. The cast includes Emily Blunt as Kitty, Florence Pugh as Tatlock, Josh Hartnett as Ernest Lawrence, and Kenneth Branagh as Niels Bohr. Hoyte van Hoytema shot Oppenheimer on large-format film on IMAX. Ludwig Goransson composed the score. Released by Universal Pictures, it premiered in Paris on July 11, 2023, and opened wide in America on July 21. It won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor for Murphy, and Best Supporting Actor for Downey.