At three hours long I nearly avoided this film. A grave error of judgement. Three hours flew past leaving me with a warm sense of privilege. Why? I felt that I’d been part of something, which was out of the ordinary.

Instead of being straightforward biopic it was a ‘biography’ of a unique historical moment. A moment when geopolitics changed and war entered an entirely new phase. Secondly, Oppenheimer wasn’t a boring unidimensional geek.

He was brilliant on a different plane to everyone else and with an insatiable desire to learn. He was a serial womaniser. And had a profound social conscience, which involved flirting with the USA’s communist party. He also supported the 1930s Spanish Republicans in their desperate fight for survival against Franco.

Unamazingly, lesser mortals (which was just about everyone else) either worshipped or loathed him. This is where the wonderful performance of Robert Downey comes in. Slimy and treacherous, Lewis Strauss (Downey), tried to wreck Oppenheimer’s post-war career. But he in turn was wrecked by Oppenheimer’s supporters who ruined his chance of becoming a cabinet member in the 1950s.

So, two biopics, a history lesson, and absolutely wonderful insights done by a master director in Christopher Nolan and the great Cillian Murphy as Oppenheimer.

 Note

This quote is from a previous blog,

“The all-American upper-class Jew, Robert Oppenheimer, who was a world-class physicist, rose in the academic world because of sheer genius. The chair of his department was Raymond Birge. When Oppenheimer tried to appoint Robert Serber, an outstanding physicist, Birge said, “One Jew in the department is enough”

The Evian Conference and Kristallnacht, 1938 | Odeboyz’s Blog (oedeboyz.com)