Christopher Nolan’s three-hour epic Oppenheimer has managed to turn what would normally just be cinema-lover Oscar-bait into a huge summer blockbuster. But how much of the film is actually true, and what did that ending really mean?

Based on the book “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer,” the film follows the life of theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer as his ego and quest for recognition of his brilliance leads him to becoming the “father of the atomic bomb,” and to the unfolding of unimaginable horrors to which there are no true end. The film explores many key events over the course of his life and work, showing us multiple sides to the story, with the ‘objective’, fact driven scenes in black and white and the subjective scenes from Oppenheimer’s point of view in color. The film does not seek to make him a martyr, but instead give us a deeper insight into how someone so ingenious could be driven to bring such horrors into the world, letting go of all morals to achieve the success they think they deserve.

Here’s our Take on what Oppenheimer got right, where it embellished, and how, in the end, all of the brilliance in the world means nothing if it’s at the expense of everything else.

The film ends by finally revealing the truth of a conversation we’ve seen but not heard several times previously in the film: Oppenheimer and Einstein by the pond at Princeton in 1947. The first time we see this event play out near the beginning of the film, it’s from Strauss’ point of view, too far away to understand what’s going on – and this confusion in fact becomes one of Strauss’ big reasons for wanting vengeance, because he believes that Oppenheimer is telling Einstein something negative about him. Now, as we come back to this scene for the final time however, we get the true content of their chat (at least from Oppenheimer’s perspective): Einstein pointedly telling Oppenheimer that just like him, his moment of greatness is passing and he will have to “deal with the consequences of [his] achievement.” Throughout the film, Oppenheimer is shown to be willing to push his morals aside in his quest for greatness, thinking that he would always be kept safe by his brilliance. But as we’ve been shown in the security clearance hearing that is intercut throughout the film, his great mind alone is not enough to stop the windfall of consequences crushing down on him.

Chapter 1 - Ending Explained

Einstein tells Oppenheimer that after those in power feel that he has suffered enough, they’ll pull him back into the fold – but only for their own gain. And we see flash-forwards of an elderly Oppenheimer being given the Enrico Fermi Award by President Johnson in 1963. Many of his once-rivals are indeed there, cheering him on. Even Edward Teller, who had spoken against Oppenheimer at the security clearance hearing, comes up and shakes his hand. The entire ceremony is just the government using Oppenheimer for its own political rehabilitation – just as Einstein predicted.

As Einstein begins to walk away from the pond, Oppenheimer brings up when he had come to him years before, worried that the atom bomb might “destroy the entire world.” Einstein asks, “What of it?” Oppenheimer answers, “I believe we did,” and we’re served a series of images from the consequences of his actions that we all now have to contend with: the ever looming thread of modern day nuclear missiles. The final moments highlight the true core of the film: the unimaginable horror of what unrestrained ego and quest for glory above all else can beget. The final shots are of Oppenheimer, internally consumed, staring at the rain droplets on the pond.

Director Christopher Nolan grew up under the specter of the Cold War and the fear that the entire world could be annihilated at any moment. So it makes sense that he would have interest in exploring the nucleus at the center of this awfulness, the man who certainly didn’t act alone to create these horrors but was instrumental in their creation. He told Vulture, “The delayed onset of consequences that people often forget — the film is full of different representations of that. Some visceral, some more narrative.”

But he also wanted to make sure he captured Oppenheimer’s humanity, not just making him into a cartoon villain but really grappling with the reality that in addition to all of that ego, he was also seemingly wracked with guilt for what he had created, and what he knew it would lead to once it became clear that the atomic bomb was not the end of all wars on Earth. Nolan said, “I felt that in the telling, I wanted to be true to my interpretation of the interior turmoil he must have felt, how that would’ve manifested itself.” Oppenherimer’s visions, which once contained the sparks of particle science, the excitement of future possibilities, and the suggestion of greater ideas to come, by the end of the film are replaced with constant reverberations of the destruction that he has wrought.

For a three-hour blockbuster, Oppenheimer has a very tight focus: this so-called modern-day Prometheus bringing fire to the world and being tormented for eternity. The concentration on this singular thread allows the film to dig into the deeper truth of how ego can drive people to do the unthinkable and devolve into shadows of their ideal selves. It holds up a mirror to those in our present society that, like Oppenheimer, always seem to have some justification for why the evil they’ve brought upon the world is “necessary.” Literature and film have long focused on explorations of polarizing and complicated people not as a means to exonerate them, but for the rest of us to understand their psyches more deeply so that we may not become them, to give us the power to recognize the cowardice of ego and avoid its dangers. By not making Oppenheimer a one-dimensional villain, but also not letting him off the hook or glorifying him, the film asks us to see him as a person, and in recognizing his deeply-flawed humanity we see reflected our own capacity for great inhumanity, to overlook the suffering we may cause in the quest for glory or power.

Chapter 2 - Separating Fact from Fiction

“Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds” – While over time this quote has become attributed to Oppenheimer himself in the West, as the film notes, it’s actually from the Bhagavad Gita.

Poisoning Patrick Blackett – Like in the movie, while Oppenheimer was attending Cambridge University, his tutor Patrick Blackett did push him to do lab work, which he hated. He eventually attempted to kill Blackett as revenge, though he ultimately failed and university officials found out. They wanted to expel Oppenheimer and press charges, but his father was able to convince them to only put him on probation and to force him to get psychiatric help.

Oppenheimer and Einstein – Einstein is used as a kind of mirror to Oppenheimer in the film, a star whose influence is fading as Oppenheimer’s grows brighter. The pair did know each other in real life, having worked together for a time and becoming closer friends later in life. But, Oppenheimer didn’t actually seek out Einstein for his thoughts on Edward Teller’s concerns that nuclear weapons could ignite the atmosphere, he actually went to Nobel Prize winning physicist Arthur Compton.

Secretary of War Henry Stimson saves Kyoto – In the film, Stimson removes Kyoto from the list of possible bombing sites because of the city’s cultural significance and because he and his wife had their honeymoon there. In real life, they likely didn’t honeymoon there, and he wasn’t just able to remove targets from the list on a whim. But this addition to the film does help elucidate just how flippant many in power seem to be with the reality of the destruction they unleash on the world.

Oppenheimer’s womanizing – At first it might feel like Oppenheimer’s womanizing is Nolan’s attempt to make up for his usual ‘wife problem’ by giving Oppenheimer not only his own wife who lives to the end of the movie, but also several other people’s wives, too. But Oppenheimer really did stay married to Kitty until his death, and apparently was quite the ladies man. In his biography on Oppenheimer, A Life Inside The Centre, writer Raymond Monk notes, “He was very good-looking and could be charming… It’s clear from the memoirs of his secretaries that they were all in love with him.” He did have several loves, including psychiatrist Dr. Jean Tatlock (played by Florence Pugh in the film.)

Dr. Jean Tatlock, more than just a mistress – The film focuses on Tatlock’s romantic connection with Oppenheimer, but she had a very full, if tragically short life. She studied psychology and became a doctor in 1943, at a time when it was quite rare for women to study medicine, and worked at a hospital treating children. She did unfortunately pass away in 1944, though as is hinted at in the film, there are some questions about if she really took her own life. In a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shot of her drowning, we see a pair of gloved hands holding her head under water. While her real life death was ruled a suicide, some in her life believed that the same government officials who had her followed and wiretapped her also had her killed.

Bohr’s escape & the German’s Lagging Atomic Program – Bohr did in fact make a quite harrowing escape from Nazi Germany to England through Sweden. In the film we hear him telling part of the story – during the escape, he had to fly in a bomber that went to such high altitudes that riders needed to wear oxygen masks to be able to breathe. But Bohr didn’t hear the pilot when he told everyone to switch on their oxygen masks, so eventually passed out. In the film Bohr also arrives with the news that, even though they had started out ahead the Nazis had now fallen behind the Allies in the atomic race – and this is true as well. A miscalculation had led to the Germans running out of the graphite monitor for the plutonium option, and they went through several inefficient methods in an attempt to use uranium for the bomb that all failed.

So, was he a communist? – Oppenheimer was allegedly not very political early in his life, but during the ‘30s he began to support social reforms and other activist efforts. Tatlock, who openly supported communist causes, opened his mind to backing more left-wing endeavors. But Oppenheimer never joined the Communist Party or openly identified as a communist in any capacity, and was in fact notably willing to put his morals aside when he felt it would benefit him to do so. However as the Cold War began and anti-communism soared, more militant members of the government, like Senator McCarthy, found it politically useful to brand anyone that wasn’t fully pro-war as a communist. Oppenheimer’s own opponents then were able to use his prior leanings as a way to strip him of any power…

Oppenheimer vs Strauss – Oppenheimer’s mostly-one-sided feud with Strauss, played by Robert Downey Jr, is a very important part of the story. We eventually find out that Oppenheimer’s perceived slights against Strauss were what led Strauss to engineer the secret court to strip Oppenheimer’s security clearance in the first place. Oppenheimer’s mocking of Strauss during the hearing on shipping isotopes to Europe is shown repeatedly, with Oppenheimer joking that the isotopes aren’t something to worry about because they’re less important than electronic devices but “more important than a sandwich.” He did actually make a joke in real life, though it was that the isotopes were “less important than, say, vitamins.” And, like in the film, Strauss’ “personal vindictiveness” was indeed called out in his presidential cabinet nomination hearing (though while physicist David Hill did say that scientists would prefer for Strauss to be out of government, it was actually chairman of the Federation of American Scientists David Inglis who specifically called out Strauss’ vindictive attack on Oppenheimer.)

The bombs and their true toll – Oppenheimer, in the film, estimates that around 20,000 people will die in the bomb blasts, and this seems to be accurate to his real life estimation that he shared with Compton. But of course, the real toll ended up being far greater – with real world estimates falling between 110,00 and 210,000 people killed. And those numbers don’t include the thousands of others who were severely injured in the blast, and by the radiation poisoning afterward. The film, in its tight focus on Oppenheimer himself, conceptualizes the horrors to a degree but mostly in their effect on his psyche. But there are other films that deal directly with these grave events and their aftermath, importantly, from the point of view of the victims: like Barefoot Gen, which is based on creator Keiji Nakazawa’s own childhood as a 6 year old living in Hiroshima when the bomb was dropped; or Grave of the Fireflies, the tragic war film animated by Studio Ghibli.

Conclusion

For a three-hour blockbuster, Oppenheimer has a very tight focus: this so-called modern-day Prometheus bringing fire to the world and being tormented for eternity. The concentration on this singular thread allows the film to dig into the deeper truth of how ego can drive people to do the unthinkable and devolve into shadows of their ideal selves. It holds up a mirror to those in our present society that, like Oppenheimer, always seem to have some justification for why the evil they’ve brought upon the world is “necessary.” Literature and film have long focused on explorations of polarizing and complicated people not as a means to exonerate them, but for the rest of us to understand their psyches more deeply so that we may not become them, to give us the power to recognize the cowardice of ego and avoid its dangers. By not making Oppenheimer a one-dimensional villain, but also not letting him off the hook or glorifying him, the film asks us to see him as a person, and in recognizing his deeply-flawed humanity we see reflected our own capacity for great inhumanity, to overlook the suffering we may cause in the quest for glory or power.