Despite a three-hour runtime, Oppenheimer omits some pretty important details in the
story of the father of the atomic bomb. From a precocious childhood to an often
tragic and complicated legacy, here's the real story that inspired the film.
J. Robert Oppenheimer was born on April 22, 1904 in New York City to German Jewish parents named
Julius and Ella. Thanks to Julius' work in the textiles industry, the couple were quite wealthy,
and their son had a comfortable upbringing. The family resided in a spacious Upper West
Side apartment adorned with art, and they employed three maids and a chauffeur.
Despite his affluent home life, the young J. Robert Oppenheimer had a humble, even charitable
personality. According to Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin's biography American Prometheus,
one of his school friends described him as "very frail, very pink-cheeked, very shy." Even from
a young age, Oppenheimer's genius was evident to those who knew him. As his school friend put it,
"Very quickly everybody admitted that he was different from all the others and superior."
When he was only 9 years old, Oppenheimer was already reading philosophy,
in multiple languages. Another academic obsession of his was mineralogy. In fact,
he became so knowledgeable on the subject that he was invited to give a lecture by the New
York Mineralogical Club when they thought that the letters he sent them had been written by an adult.
Oppenheimer's unusually mature scholarly pursuits meant that he didn't easily fit
in with other children his own age, and he was often the target of mockery. But
he knew how smart he was, though that may have given him an arrogance that
didn't sit well with others. According to American Prometheus, he once claimed,
"I repaid my parents' confidence in me by developing an unpleasant ego, which I am sure must
have affronted both children and adults who were unfortunate enough to come into contact with me."
"No one can predict what vast new continents of knowledge the future of science will discover."
Oppenheimer the film hints at the various issues that haunted its subject, particularly
his realization that he gave the world a weapon that he couldn't take back. However,
it glosses over many of the particular demons that he wrestled with throughout his life.
Oppenheimer's graduate studies at Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory were a particularly difficult
time for him. His perceived ineptitude in that setting pushed him into a state of despair so
severe that he had regular thoughts of suicide. His unfulfilled ambitions also
even apparently drove him to poison the apple of his professor Patrick Blackett.
This incident is featured in the film, though it differs quite a bit from the
real story. As in the film, Blackett did not actually consume the apple,
though in real life Oppenheimer did confess to his crime, though his only punishment
was a suspension. It's generally believed that Oppenheimer was motivated by extreme insecurity.
Oppenheimer's fragile mental state also reportedly drove him to nearly kill Francis Fergusson,
who was one of his few friends at the time. Upon learning that Fergusson was engaged,
Oppenheimer wound a trunk strap around his neck, though he managed to pull himself free.
Besides a fascination with the "Bhagavad Gita," the film doesn't reveal much about
the real Oppenheimer's considerable passion for classic literature. But
during his time in graduate school, it was one of his few life preservers.
"Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds."
According to American Prometheus, upon reading Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time,
Oppenheimer was able to find some comfort in his emotional existential pain. The young scientist
avidly read French poetry as part of his mission to conquer the seriousness of growing older
and wiser. Like so many great minds, he wasn't satisfied with the pursuit of only one interest.
In fact, Oppenheimer even tried his own hand at writing. He dabbled in poetry,
as well as prose in the style of Russian writer Anton Chekhov. Not much came out of
his own literary efforts, though his poem "Crossing" was published in a 1928 issue
of Hound & Horn, a student-run literary quarterly at Harvard.
While Oppenheimer depicts how Albert Einstein had only a tenuous connection
to the Manhattan Project, it doesn't go into every little detail about his connections
with the operation. It's a generally accurate portrayal, as Einstein himself once claimed,
"I do not consider myself the father of
the release of atomic energy. My part in it was quite indirect."
That statement is certainly correct, though Einstein did write a letter to President Franklin
Roosevelt in 1939 stressing the importance of building a nuclear weapon before the Nazis
did. However, he also expressed remorse for his action, as he also admitted to Newsweek,
"Had I known that the Germans would not succeed in developing an atomic bomb,
I would have done nothing."
Considering Einstein's massive contributions to theoretical physics,
one might assume that he would've at least been approached to join
the Manhattan Project. This didn't happen, though, as Army Intelligence
believed that his leftist political views made him a threat to America's interests.
Oppenheimer depicts the Manhattan Project as a massive operation that
spanned the United States, required the efforts of thousands of people,
and ultimately cost more than $2 billion. This is all fairly accurate in terms of how it ended up,
though the film glosses over the project's humble origins. When it officially began in 1942,
the American government provided a paltry $6,000 for the relatively
small group of scientists in their efforts to harness the power of the fission process.
But as the Nazis grew closer to building a nuclear weapon of their own, the urgency for
the U.S. to beat them to the punch dramatically increased, and so too did their funds. In fact,
the amount of money set aside for the Manhattan Project increased so much that the War Department
hid the total amount from Congress. The development of atomic weapons was the second
most expensive military operation of World War II, behind only the B-29 Superfortress bomber.
"It was more or less taken for granted that if a new weapon could put an end to this agony,
it should be so used."
The detonation test of the very first atom bomb,
codenamed "Trinity," is depicted with great intensity and gravitas in Oppenheimer,
although the story behind the codename remains a bit of a mystery. Interestingly enough, it was
even a bit of a mystery to J. Robert Oppenheimer himself. Almost 20 years after the test, General
Leslie Groves wrote a letter to Oppenheimer asking about why he chose that name, to which he replied,
"Why I chose the name is not clear, but I know what thoughts were in my mind.
There is a poem of John Donne, written just before his death, which I know and love."
Considering Oppenheimer's deep love for classic literature,
it's hardly surprising that he would turn to poetry for inspiration. But how and why this
specific poem spoke to him so much is anybody's guess. Perhaps he saw a connection between
his story and that of a man facing death, ready to accept an eternity in the heavens.
The film explores the complicated relationship between J. Robert Oppenheimer and Jean Tatlock,
who's played by Florence Pugh. This includes multiple marriage proposals,
the secret affair while he was married to his wife Kitty,
and how her communist ties were used against him years later.
But Tatlock's fate was even more tragic than what's shown in the movie. There's strong
evidence that she was secretly gay or bisexual. Also, she was studying to be a psychiatrist,
a field that was still very much under the shadow of Freudian psychology,
which considered homosexuality to be a flaw. Her frustration
about her own sexuality exacerbated her conflicted feelings about Oppenheimer.
What's worse, these feelings may very well have contributed to her death,
which is widely presumed to have been suicide. Tatlock's father paid her a visit on January 4,
1944, only to find her dead in her bathtub. Before he called for help, he burned various papers
and photographs that are widely believed to contain proof of her true sexuality.
In the film, the debate surrounding nuclear proliferation is largely confined to the
security hearings in the 1950s. But the debate actually began right after the
U.S. demonstrated its might on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
Oppenheimer and the destructive power of nuclear weapons were presented to a wide audience in 1946
in the short documentary Atomic Power, which features the man himself in a recreation of the
Trinity test. This was followed by the New Yorker article "Hiroshima," which contains the sentence,
"It would be impossible to say what horrors were embedded in the minds of
the children who lived through the day of the bombing in Hiroshima."
President Harry S. Truman then convinced former Secretary of War Henry Lewis Stimson to respond
with an article of his own for Harper's Magazine called "The decision to use the
atomic bomb." And that wasn't the only weapon in the arsenal of the bomb's supporters. Truman and
General Leslie Groves demanded that the script for the 1947 film The Beginning or the End put
as positive a spin on the bomb's use as possible, thereby essentially turning it into propaganda.
"Men will learn to use this new knowledge well."
The final act of the film focuses on the hearings that led to Oppenheimer being
denied his security clearance. This leaves us with the impression that the remainder
of his career was sidelined by bureaucratic vengeance fueled by the Red Scare of the 1950s.
It's true that the denial of his security clearance greatly hindered Oppenheimer,
but that doesn't mean that he didn't keep himself busy with a variety of important projects. One of
the most notable was the founding of the World Academy of Art & Science in 1960,
which included help from other influential thinkers like Albert Einstein and Bertrand
Russell. According to the organization's website,
"The Academy serves as a forum for reflective scientists, artists,
and scholars dedicated to addressing the pressing challenges confronting humanity
today independent of political boundaries or limits, whether spiritual or physical."
Well after Oppenheimer was stripped of his security clearance, he still had to contend
with the ghost of the intense interrogations that crippled his career. In the 1960s,
German playwright Heinar Kipphardt wrote the play In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer,
which used the transcripts from the hearings as inspiration.
Oppenheimer pointed out numerous ways in which the play distorted the facts of what really
happened. Specifically, he took issue with the way it portrayed Niels Bohr's reaction
to the Manhattan Project and its allegation that Oppenheimer had severe misgivings about working on
an atomic bomb. Oppenheimer even wrote a letter to Kipphardt threatening him with a lawsuit.
While it's hard to blame Oppenheimer for being upset about his portrayal in
a play about a bleak time in his life, does that mean great art still can't come out of
it? In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer has continued to be performed long after his death,
with a New York Times review of a 2006 production declaring,
"The proceedings do seem to lag at times [...] But so what? This is a play of real ideas,
posing questions about moral relativism, the limits of vigilance and human decency."
Following World War II, Oppenheimer served as the director of Princeton's Institute for
Advanced Study, a position he held until he retired in 1966. The following year,
he passed away on February 18 from throat cancer, likely brought on by
his years as a smoker. Since then, his legacy has continued to live on in a variety of ways.
For example, on December 16, 2022, Secretary Jennifer M. Granholm of
the Department of Energy officially reversed the decision of the hearings
that stripped Oppenheimer of his security clearance. As she stated,
"As time has passed, more evidence has come to light of the bias and unfairness
of the process that Dr. Oppenheimer was subjected to while the evidence
of his loyalty and love of country have only been further affirmed."
"It's just sort of a righting of historical wrongs."
While it has taken far too long for this grave injustice to be rectified,
at least Oppenheimer's patriotism has finally been recognized.