Oppenheimer

In the 1920s, young American student J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) studies experimental physics at Cambridge under Patrick Blackett, struggling with severe anxiety. Encouraged by Niels Bohr, Oppenheimer moves to Gottingen to study theoretical physics under Max Born. Returning to the United States, Oppenheimer introduces quantum mechanics to the University of California, Berkeley, and the California Institute of Technology, engaging with communist sympathizers including his lover Jean Tatlock and future wife Katherine "Kitty" Puening.

Following the 1938 discovery of nuclear fission in Nazi Germany, Colonel Leslie Groves (Matt Damon) recruits Oppenheimer to lead the secret Manhattan Project. Oppenheimer selects the isolated plateau of Los Alamos, New Mexico, gathering the world’s foremost theoretical and experimental minds—including Hans Bethe, Edward Teller, and Richard Feynman—to construct an implosion-type plutonium bomb and a gun-type uranium bomb before the Axis powers.

On July 16, 1945, the team conducts the Trinity test at dawn. In utter silence before the thunderous sonic shockwave arrives, the sky erupts into an apocalyptic firestorm of blinding light. Oppenheimer silently recalls the sacred Hindu verse from the Bhagavad Gita: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." Germany has already surrendered, leaving Japan as the military target for the Little Boy and Fat Man detonations.

Following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Oppenheimer is hailed as a national hero on the cover of Time magazine. Yet behind closed doors, he is tortured by visions of radioactive annihilation. In a meeting with President Harry S. Truman, Oppenheimer confesses, "Mr. President, I feel I have blood on my hands." Truman dismissively offers him a handkerchief and brands him a "crybaby scientist."

During the height of the Red Scare, Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) chairman Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.) orchestrates a vendetta against Oppenheimer for opposing the hydrogen superbomb. A Kangaroo-court security hearing headed by Roger Robb subjects Oppenheimer and Kitty to humiliating interrogations regarding their past associations. Oppenheimer’s Q security clearance is revoked on the eve of expiration.

In 1959, Strauss’s ambition to become Secretary of Commerce is dramatically thwarted when Los Alamos scientist David Hill exposes Strauss’s behind-the-scenes conspiracy. The film circles back to Oppenheimer’s 1947 conversation with Albert Einstein by the Princeton pond: Oppenheimer recalls his fear that the atomic bomb might trigger an atmospheric chain reaction, admitting that in setting off nuclear proliferation, "I believe we did."