Must-watchWorld War II · Film · 2023
Oppenheimer
Physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer builds a secret laboratory in the New Mexico desert to create the atomic bomb before Nazi Germany does, and then has to live with what he made.
Where it happened
Follow the story across 5 places.
Stop 1: Cambridge, England
A homesick, brilliant student struggles with laboratory work and turns to theoretical physics before moving on to Göttingen.
Stop 2: University of California, Berkeley
Oppenheimer builds a school of physics, falls for Jean Tatlock and moves among the left-wing circles that will later haunt him.
Stop 3: Los Alamos, New Mexico
Key location
On a remote mesa, Oppenheimer gathers the best scientists of the age and their families in a town that officially does not exist.
Stop 4: Trinity test site, Jornada del Muerto
Before dawn, in a storm-delayed countdown, the scientists wait in their bunkers to see whether the device works.
Stop 5: The White House, Washington
Celebrated as the father of the bomb, Oppenheimer tells President Truman he feels he has blood on his hands.
What really happened
The Manhattan Project grew from 1942 into an effort employing some 130,000 people. General Leslie Groves chose Oppenheimer to direct the new weapons laboratory at Los Alamos, which opened in 1943; on 16 July 1945 its implosion bomb was tested at the Trinity site near Alamogordo, and on 6 and 9 August atomic bombs destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing well over 100,000 people by the end of the year.
The film, based on Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin's biography American Prometheus, interweaves these years with the 1954 security hearing that stripped Oppenheimer of his clearance and the 1959 Senate hearing of Lewis Strauss. In 2022 the US Department of Energy vacated the 1954 decision. The film shows neither Hiroshima nor Nagasaki directly.
Where to watch
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Full details
- Original title
- Oppenheimer
- Directed by
- Christopher Nolan
- Countries
- United States, United Kingdom
- Languages
- English
- Released
- 2023
- Period
- –
- Theaters of war
- The Americas
- Themes
- Biography
- Politics
- True story
