How does one judge a man whose chief contribution to the world was a weapon that killed hundreds of thousands of people, and which has now been enhanced to the point where it could kill millions or billions more? Even more to the point—how would that man judge himself?
Christopher Nolan's masterful biopic Oppenheimer, about the father of the atomic bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer, offers a multiplicity of possible answers: He may well be a monster and a savior, a genius and a man incapable of reading other people, a compassionate friend and a callous careerist. He may see himself as a hero and as a villain, as a bystander and a central player in world events, as a scientist and a politician. In the movie's sprawling, prismatic view of the man and his work, no single answer applies—and perhaps all of them do.
