Anatomy of a Scene: The Glory and Horror of the ‘Oppenheimer’ Atomic Bomb Launch
Divided to its very core, Oppenheimer is an intensely subjective character study of a genius defined by contradictions as well as a sprawling origin story about the birth of the modern world. For its opening two-thirds, the film builds at a breakneck pace to the instant in which both man and civilization are irrevocably changed by an act of fusion: the July 16, 1945, “Trinity” test of the first atomic bomb in the Los Alamos desert. That scene is the initial climax of Christopher Nolan’s IMAX-sized masterpiece, and a bravura expression of the film’s intertwined formal and thematic ideas, all of which meld together and split apart in a big bang whose concussive power shakes reality itself.
Oppenheimer may be the story of a scientist figuring out a way to put theory into practice, but it moves at the speed of an apocalyptic thriller, with the fate of everyone and everything hanging in the balance of quantum physics pioneer J. Robert Oppenheimer’s (Cillian Murphy) race to beat the Nazis to atomic supremacy. That comes to a head in the New Mexico desert, where Oppenheimer and his colleagues hurry to meet the Potsdam Conference deadline set by President Truman (Gary Oldman) and pushed by their Manhattan Project director Leslie Groves (Matt Damon).
It’s the pivotal make-or-break moment that will determine the success of not only this groundbreaking scientific endeavor (and vital military undertaking), but possibly of World War II. Moreover, humanity itself hangs in the balance, since there’s a slim (“near zero”) chance that an atomic explosion will bring about Armageddon.