Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer" throws a lot at the audience — in a good way.
From the significance of horses to the use of moody black and white scenes, there's more
to "Oppenheimer" than meets the eye.
At the beginning of the movie, we follow a young J. Robert Oppenheimer during his studies
in physics across Europe.
While at Cambridge, Oppenheimer is severely depressed and becomes frustrated with his
highly critical instructor, future Nobel Prize winner Patrick Blackett.
In an unthinkable fit of anger, he injects an apple on the professor's desk with deadly
potassium cyanide.
Oppenheimer quickly regrets the decision and races back to the classroom to dispose of
the apple, only to find his idol, Niels Bohr, holding it.
Thankfully, the whole affair ends quietly without anyone taking a bite.
Though dramatized, this bizarre event is based in real history.
Oppenheimer's poor mental health at Cambridge is well documented, and according to various
reports he did attempt to poison one of Blackett's apples.
The severity of the actual encounter is debated, and it wasn't necessarily anything as dangerous
as cyanide.
The inclusion of Bohr is a fictional addition from Christopher Nolan, but the kernel of
the story remains true.
Like "Memento," Christopher Nolan's second film, some scenes in "Oppenheimer" are in
color and others are in black and white.
If you're familiar with his past work, you might assume that the division is being used
in the same way as the earlier movie — to differentiate between two different points
in time.
At first, that holds somewhat true, with the black and white scenes all taking place after
the Manhattan Project.
However, the theory doesn't totally hold up.
Oppenheimer's hearing is shot in color despite taking place well after World War II.
By the end of the movie, we even get versions of the same scenes in both color and black
and white.
The real distinction seems to be that the black and white scenes show things from the
perspective of Lewis Strauss, the primary villain of the film in its final act.
His congressional hearing and all of his meetings are shot in black and white, as are his versions
of different encounters with Oppenheimer.
Early in the film, before he's recruited to lead the Manhattan Project, Oppenheimer's
primary area of study is black holes and neutron stars.
At the party where he first meets Jean Tatlock, he's knee-deep in black hole research, clearly
fascinated by the inherent paradoxes of the field.
When asked, he says that he's studying "how stars die," adding,
"The bigger the star, the more dramatic its demise."
This line isn't just science, but a grim bit of foreshadowing for how Oppenheimer's own
life will end up.
After becoming the most famous scientist in the world for nightmarish reasons, he tries
to remedy the damage, but fails.
Frustrated by his outspoken opposition to continued nuclear weapons development, the
U.S. government effectively blacklists him.
The "star" of the country who helped win the war is ostracized, the gravity of his notoriety
collapsing in on itself.
There's a second sad significance to Oppenheimer's black hole research, which is that several
of his contemporaries believed he might have won a Nobel Prize had he continued exploring
that area of quantum physics.
Instead, he largely abandoned the field and became much better known for the Manhattan
Project.
Though Oppenheimer was nominated for the award several times in his life, he never won it.
General Leslie Groves is one of the major players of "Oppenheimer."
He recruits Oppenheimer to helm the Manhattan Project, and is the driving force in finally
getting him his security clearance.
"This is the most important thing to ever happen in the history of the world!"
Additionally, he offers genuine advice to Oppenheimer when the FBI and other intelligence
folks start poking around his life.
Groves also plays a less overt role as a measure of time in the film.
Over the course of the Manhattan Project, we see Groves visibly rise through the ranks.
At his first meeting with Oppenheimer, he's still just a colonel, but he tells the physicist
that he's being promoted to general for his work on the project.
We then observe Groves as a brigadier general, and eventually, a major general.
We're not told these things, but the ranks are shown on his uniform, marking the passage
of time at Los Alamos in a movie that otherwise does all it can to muddy its chronology.
Groves retired as an honorary lieutenant general — the rank he held after retirement when
testifying at Oppenheimer's security hearings.
Though he's starred in a ton of major movies over the years, Cillian Murphy may be best
known today for his leading role of Thomas Shelby in the British crime drama "Peaky Blinders."
Set in the wake of World War I, the series follows a Birmingham street gang as it ascends
to international prominence under the leadership of Murphy's character.
J. Robert Oppenheimer is a very different character than Tommy Shelby.
However, there is one big similarity between the two: They both find solace in their relationships
with horses.
In "Peaky Blinders," Tommy is arguably more comfortable around the animals than he is
around any single human.
He has a deep love and respect for horses that helps him occasionally escape from his
stressful, criminal life.
In much the same way, Murphy's Oppenheimer seems happiest when out peacefully in the
New Mexico desert with a horse.
The rest of his life becomes an unceasing procession of guilt and death after the Manhattan
Project.
When he's out alone with a horse, however, Oppenheimer seems to find some tranquility.
This almost certainly isn't an intentional reference, as it merely reflects a true aspect
of Oppenheimer's life.
But given that Tommy Shelby is probably Murphy's most famous role, the similarity stands out
as a notable little detail.
After his initial relationship with Jean Tatlock ends, Oppenheimer marries Kitty.
Things go well at first, but life gets tough after they have their first child, Peter.
Oppenheimer is off organizing the early stages of the Manhattan Project, and he comes home
one night to find their infant son screaming and Kitty drunk at the dining room table.
She explains that he's been crying all night.
Distressed and unsure what to do, Oppenheimer takes his son to the house of Berkeley colleague
and good friend Haakon Chevalier, who watches over the child for a time.
For the rest of his infancy as depicted in the film, Peter almost never stops screaming.
He cries when the family moves into Los Alamos, and he cries at the dinner table.
These details are some of the more fictionalized parts of "Oppenheimer," but they serve a greater
thematic purpose.
After the Manhattan Project, the physicist continues to be plagued by screaming, albeit
the imagined kind, as he's haunted by the horrors of his creation.
His children foreshadow all the death his inventions ultimately bring.
"I don't know if we can be trusted with such a weapon."
One small detail at the end of "Oppenheimer" is that in addition to his affair with Jean
Tatlock, Oppenheimer also slept with close friend Ruth Tolman during his marriage to
Kitty.
It doesn't affect the story all that much but is something you might have expected if
you paid attention earlier in the film.
Ruth doesn't get a ton of screen time.
However, she does feature in a few key moments.
In one scene, before Oppenheimer is invited to join the Manhattan Project, he's in the
room when Ernest Lawrence and Ruth's husband Richard begin a meeting concerning the operation.
Because he isn't cleared to know about it, Oppenheimer is asked to leave, and on the
way out he tells Richard to tell Ruth that he'll be up to visit soon.
At the time, this seems like a harmless comment to a friend, but it could be read as a hidden
jab.
Tolman gets to be in the room while Oppenheimer doesn't, and we know from earlier scenes that
he's vindictive.
Later, there's a conversation between Ruth and Oppenheimer at a party.
While shorter and less suggestive — mirrors the one he has with Kitty earlier in the movie.
These clues foreshadow their affair, which is only confirmed at the end.
Some of the small details in "Oppenheimer" are added for dramatic effect, but a surprising
percentage of them are pulled straight from the history books.
In addition to the encounter where Oppenheimer attempts to poison his instructor at Cambridge,
his meeting with Harry S. Truman is pretty accurate.
According to the Oppenheimer biography "American Prometheus," Oppenheimer did confess to feeling
like he had blood on his hands to Truman, and the president did brush him off like he
does in the film.
During the Trinity test, the movie shows Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman watching the
explosion without protective glasses, as he claims that the windshield of his truck will
protect him.
This too is true to life, according to Feynman's own account in his autobiography.
Additionally, a lot of lines in the movie were actually spoken by the actual people.
For instance, in his Los Alamos speech, Oppenheimer did say that he regretted that the bomb couldn't
have been used on the Nazis.
Though it certainly makes some tweaks, "Oppenheimer" has a lot of great historical details that
really add to the effect.
At the beginning of the film, Oppenheimer has visions of the subatomic world he's studying.
Niels Bohr speaks about quantum physics like it's a magical language, asking Oppenheimer,
"Can you hear the music?"
However, these glimpses of a magical world give way to more nightmarish visions of the
Earth engulfed in flames.
During the Trinity test — the first detonation of an atomic weapon — the two meld into
one.
It's easy to miss, but as Oppenheimer stares at the fire from the Trinity explosion, he
sees the glistening particles from his earlier visions.
The crystallized fragments blur into the flames, creating a sickening distortion of the thing
that once gave him so much excitement to study science.
In the wake of Trinity, Oppenheimer never again sees the beautiful visions from his
youth.
He only sees horrors, fire, and dread.
Throughout "Oppenheimer," there are numerous references to chain reactions.
Nuclear fission explosions operate off the basic concept of a chain reaction, and at
one point, the Los Alamos scientists believe there's a chance that an A-bomb detonation
could start a chain reaction that never stops.
There's a greater-than-zero chance before the Trinity test that the explosion could
set fire to the entire atmosphere, effectively destroying the world.
It doesn't, but Oppenheimer believes that the chain reaction he's started will still
end in Armageddon.
"Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds."
Going along with this theme, the whole structure of the movie is like a chain reaction.
We see how certain decisions lead to other moments all at once.
The beginning, middle, and end of Oppenheimer's life develop in tandem with each other, giving
the impression of his whole life being a giant explosion of causality.
Your mileage may vary on where "Oppenheimer" ranks in the pantheon of Christopher Nolan
movies.
However, one fact is indisputable: The movie feels like the culmination of many of his
past projects.
The heavy focus on quantum physics can be tracked back to "Interstellar," which was
praised in its day for being more scientifically accurate than most sci-fi movies.
The black and white vs. color dynamic and non-linear narrative echo "Memento," while
the fixation with World War II history evokes "Dunkirk."
Nolan himself has said that he sees the ending of "Oppenheimer" as being similar to that
of "Inception," as both leave the audience with unanswerable questions.
And of course, you could compare the history-altering-weapon storyline of "Tenet" to the real history of
the Manhattan Project.
Undoubtedly, Nolan still has many movies left to make.
But the sheer scale of "Oppenheimer" puts it on the top shelf of his filmography.
Given the wide range of movies the director has helmed thus far, it should be particularly
interesting to see where he goes from here.