The Wikipedia article calls Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer an "epic biographical thriller drama film". It also gets pretty good marks on its use of history, although the biographical arc introduces problems in the dramatic arc. The first half of the film ramps up the dramatic tension, culminating in the (literally) explosive climax of the Trinity A-bomb test. That makes the film's second half, dealing with Oppenheimer's post-Trinity career, seem anticlimactic. Still, the film deserves the honors it has received, and belongs on the top tier of Hollywood "historical" productions, where filmmakers are not bound by any constraints of historical accuracy. The film is about a person, not a big explosion, so kudos to Nolan for resisting the temptation to end the film with that dramatic mushroom cloud (or with Hiroshima).
The film also prompts a re-examination of that important period in history. Oppenheimer and those around him are fascinating characters, and many of them have also become the subject of scholarly biographies. I just finished reading The Pope of Physics by Gino Segré and Bettina Hoerlin, a fine 2016 biography of Enrico Fermi co-written by two children of Fermi colleagues. A re-reading and reviewing of two novels I read before these reviews began is also called for: Stallion Gate (1986) by Martin Cruz Smith, and Los Alamos (1997) by Joseph Kanon.
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