At 5.29am on 16 July, 1945: the first ever atomic bomb is detonated. Against the desert landscape of New Mexico, the device explodes with a power equivalent to 21,000 tons of dynamite, releasing a flare of light so bright researchers said it would have been visible from Mars. The code name for this world-changing, history-making test event? Trinity. The bomb’s creator, J Robert Oppenheimer, was said to have christened it thus as a tribute to the great love of his life and former mistress Jean Tatlock, with whom he shared a deep appreciation for John Donne’s poetry. “Batter my heart, three person’d God.”
It is a fascinating tidbit; one that speaks both to what kind of man Oppenheimer was and the influence that the women in his life undoubtedly had on him. And yet, this moment and others like it, do not make it into Christopher Nolan’s new biopic, Oppenheimer. The three-hour epic is a tremendous film, expectedly tense and superbly acted by Cillian Murphy, who wears the physicist’s signature porkpie hat and pipe as easily as his faraway gaze. Surrounding him are the many bespectacled scientists, buttoned-up politicians and gruff military personnel – all men – who played a pivotal part in his story. Largely absent, however, are the women of his life. A handful do appear – played by Florence Pugh, Emily Blunt and Louise Lombard – but their screen time is fleeting, and their importance is understated. The women of Oppenheimer are portrayed mostly as collateral damage, rather than what they were: an instrumental part of the story.
