Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is fast on its way to becoming the biggest film of the year. It’s certainly one of the more surprising success stories in 2023: it’s not every day that a three-hour World War II-era biopic scores both critical and commercial acclaim. That Oppenheimer dives deep into the moral complexities of nuclear warfare makes its success even more surprising. That said, not everyone is in love with the new Nolan film. Oppenheimer is doggedly faithful to its subject, “father of the atomic bomb” J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy). Very little takes place outside of his own subjective point of view. That means that, while Oppenheimer dedicates the majority of its attention to the creation of and fallout from the invention of nuclear weapons, very rarely does it turn its gaze to those immediately affected by Oppenheimer’s work.
