SPOILER DISCUSSION

1.In order to most easily understand the effects of formally separating the film into the Fission and Fusion sections, one only needs to look at the three moments that make up the latter section’s flashbacks: the discussion of isotopes, the Hydrogen bomb round table, and the conversation regarding Einstein.

Taking the isotopes discussion as the jumping-off point, it becomes readily apparent that the difference in the way both strands interpret the same event lies in the perspective they privilege which determines the manner in which the event is framed, both literally as in within the frame and in the context of the character’s respective perspectives.

Fusion depicts the scene from Strauss’s point-of-view. We see him sitting and staring at Oppenheimer as the latter rips the proposal apart. The focus in the frame makes it obvious that Strauss sees the discussion as a vested attack on his person. The framing is all about him. He is the center of attention and Oppenheimer is positioned in relation to him. Conversation becomes a slight which must be rectified in order to wash away ignominy.

Fission depicts the same moment from Oppenheimer’s point-of-view, but the framing of the shot reveals the purview that he sees himself working in as much larger than his counterpart. For Oppenheimer, the discussion is a necessary step in a larger over-all discussion, one aimed at helping the nation and the world at large, one that must be navigated for the benefit of all parties.

This dichotomy between self-interest and public importance defines the opposition between two parties and effectively renders each formal strand as a take on a distinctive character study, one for Oppenheimer and one for Strauss, science as ordered towards the public good versus science as ordered for political power.

This perspective informs every interaction between Oppenheimer and Strauss and also explains why there’s such a pervasive antagonism:

– Isotopes: Oppenheimer wants to stop the continued politicization of isotopes due to their humanitarian benefits while Strauss wished to politicize them and maintain control over them to retain a supposed military advantage.

-H-Bomb: Oppenheimer wants to prevent the development of the super because he understands that nation states will use whatever weapons are available to them and will not hesitate to use such a weapon to destroy the world if the supposed need came up. His focus is on the potential deaths of everyone on the planet. Meanwhile, Strauss believes that if the U.S. doesn’t have the biggest stick, they’ll lose out to other countries who will develop the same and that the death of their citizens matters more than the deaths of people around the world.

-Einstein: Strauss believes that Einstein ignored him that fateful day due to Oppenheimer poisoning the well. He reasons that Einstein, who was previously engaged with Oppenheimer, would have no reason to ignore Strauss if not for some negative association. If Einstein had been talking to him previously, then this current moment of disavowal had to be due to Oppenheimer. Meanwhile, we learn the truth of this conversation and its aims at the end of the film and know it had to deal with something much bigger.

2. There are a host of sequences where Oppenheimer seemingly chances into a new encounter. An uncritical eye would take these moments as pure convenience on the part of the filmmakers, cheats in story logic to help propel the plot along. However, if one pays attention to the film’s form, one realizes that Nolan is taking his focus on time’s effects to the next level, transforming it into a surreal chronology, a filmic equivalent to Dali’s “The Persistence of Memory”.

These conveniences only happen in the Fission strand, the realm of subjectivity, demonstrating the manner in which memory is compartmentalized into key moments and the time in between is lost in the lapse. The neat chronology is thus an effect of subjectivity in relation to time, not a contrivance meant to make avoid doing narrative heavy lifting. Perspective renders one life into dramaturgical form to be analyzed, revealing the manner by which subjectivity intervenes onto a seemingly immutable past, transforming it into memory which can be endlessly traversed and mined as one loses track of time in the vestiges of one’s mind.

There are multiple moments that utilize this surreal chronology as a tool to demonstrate the manner by which Oppenheimer views his own life leading up to the moment, but I’m going to focus on three that stick out to me.

A- In an early use of the technique, we see Tatlock and Oppenheimer, hands encased in one another’s, walking down the street, seemingly on a date. This moment of romance is broken apart when Oppenheimer sees one of his scientific acquaintances burst out a storefront and run down the street: scientific discovery trumps romance and redirects interests. Oppenheimer runs after while Tatlock exits the frame, heading in the opposite direction.

We see another molecular interlude, the revelation being run to as the scientists discover the power of fission and its ability to infinitely recur into itself, linking this subjective recapitulation to the quantum realm, memory rendered as matter making connections within and throughout itself, proceeding ad infinitum.

As soon as Oppenheimer realizes the weight of the discovery, the film cuts back to his attempts to woo Tatlock, but the moment has passed and she refuses his advances. Without the romantic lure to temper him, he heads to the F.A.E.C.T. meeting with Chevalier (Jefferson Hall) and is pushed to give a speech to an energetic crowd which screams his name: “Oppie! Oppie! Oppie!” Love’s lack becomes political instead of scientific.

The twin poles of Oppenheimer’s life – science and politics – are thusly tied to his love life, each facet blending into the next.

B- Upon being exfiltrated, Bohr confronts Oppenheimer and reveals the stakes of the nuclear discovery informing the latter that the “power” he’s to reveal “will forever outlive the Nazis.” Oppenheimer ties this moment back to the duo’s initial encounter by calling back to the Edenic allusion: “You could lift the stone without being ready for the snake that’s revealed.” Scientific power and divinity tied part and parcel with one another.

This is cemented by Bohr’s proclamation: “You are an American Prometheus. The Man who gave them the power to destroy themselves, and they’ll respect that. Then your work really begins.” The Promethean epithet explicitly calls to mind the film’s opening text, and we’re painfully aware that Prometheus paid the price for his discovery.

Surreal chronology bridges the gap and interrupts the conversation between the scientists; Oppenheimer, the newly christened Prometheus, learns that his lover, Tatlock, has died. The promised punishment comes immediately as the epithet is granted – divine retribution.

Kitty reinforces the religious reading of this moment by confronting Oppenheimer after the fact, explicitly telling him that he doesn’t “get to commit the sin” and have everyone else “feel sorry” for him “that it had consequences”. The coding of the punishment as a type of “sin” both explicitly calls back to the Biblical subtextual link and explains Kitty’s own view of the situation, the cheating as a sin against her marriage.

Additionally, there is a point of ambiguity that arises in the above moment due to the depiction of Tatlock’s death. Given the film’s form, it’s difficult to clarify whether or not Oppenheimer thought that Tatlock had been killed by federal agents during the time of learning the news about her demise or whether or not his personal experiences afterwards culminated in his visualization of that murder by her hands after the fact; in both cases, he is recalling a fictional memory, an imagined past based on his knowledge of the situation, in lieu a similar one.

Fission constantly plays with this retroactive framing, presenting newfound information that then clarifies or transforms previous moments into something new, and there’s no reason to suggest this effect is just intended for the viewer and not also Oppenheimer. We learn during Fusion, that Oppenheimer had his trash rummaged through by Federal Agents who wear the same black gloves he imagines in the murdered past of Tatlock. He’s connected her death to his sin in the most direct fashion. It’s either his disavowal of her in favor of his scientific duty that killed her via her suicide or his connection to her and role as the head of the nuclear program that had her taken out by federal agents to stop any compromised information from leaking. Either way, he takes it as his fault.

C – Garrison (Macon Blair) informs Oppenheimer that the security hearing is nothing more than a kangaroo court, a legally concerted effort to strip Oppenheimer of power that the scientist won’t be able to fight back in any meaningful manner. Oppenheimer explains he has his reasons for taking the fight and Einstein immediately appears in the frame as the car leaves.

The scientists discuss patriotic duty in reference to this grand perversion of justice and Oppenheimer reiterates his love for the country, his refusal to acquiesce for its own sake. His movement becomes politically coded, a patriotic move to change bureaucracy.

This is the reason this interaction happens after we’ve seen Dr. Hill testify to the nature of Strauss’s involvement in the affair; we’re privy to the fact that it was because of the recorded nature of the trial and the breadcrumbs surrounding its creation that Oppenheimer was unjustly maligned and that bureaucracy was perverted against its purported nobler aims. Oppenheimer’s gambit is revealed for what it is: by allowing himself to bear the criticism in the manner he did, he allowed for the possibility of the same government structure which crucified him to reveal the “truth” behind it all – a “trial about a trial” as Strauss puts it in the scene immediately following this encounter.

3.There’s been a great deal of criticisms levied at the notion of nudity and sexuality within the film, decrying them as unnecessary sensationalism or disrespectful provocation, but those complaints completely gloss over the subtext that these moments introduce within the film, threads that imbue the themes with a meaningful heft.

Sexuality and nudity are introduced together, a conjoined entity, at around the 23-minute mark when we see Tatlock and Oppenheimer in the throes of passion. They take a break from this embrace to talk about Oppenheimer’s interests – psychoanalytic texts written by Jung and Freud and religious matters evidenced by the Gita. The former works are processes explaining the subconscious, the drives that underlie everything and render themselves cogent in the realm of the conscious, an analog to the molecular sciences, and are directly tied to sex, both from the level of the context proper and from Tatlock’s enunciation that opposed to dreary analysis, Oppenheimer “needed to get laid” to rid himself of the murderous desires he exhibited in the opening scene regarding the Edenic apple – religion against sex, albeit in a referential, concealed manner.

This juxtaposition is made more explicit when Tatlock decides to resume intercourse with Oppenheimer and has him read from the “Bhagavad Gita” – religion against sex, now fully laid out in the open. It’s no coincidence that the line she’s picked out for him is the one most associated with him, the scripture he recites at the Trinity test, a test for a weapon of mass death named after the Christian Trinity, upon its successful completion: “And now I am become Death. The destroyer of worlds.” This is an inversion of the Edenic apple situation, death is transformed into pillow talk between two lovers instead of a painful declaration of an apocalyptic vision – a reversal which he’ll be forced to experience.

Even outside of these textual and meta-textual formulations, the simple act of having sex, the act of humanity tended towards copulation, bringing life into the world, being intimately tied towards the idea of becoming “Death” forces a more direct comparison: the same humanity which can love and embrace in tender, intimate fashion can destroy one another in the most painful manner possible – everything is contained within, much as the molecular forces that underwrite everything around and within us.

The focus on and positioning of nudity as a symbol of the body or at least as a mode of representation of the same, ties into the films’ larger reading as the body, the physical stand-in for subjectivity, as a site of inscription for powers that permeate and seek to render the same into a fungible entity, a type of currency.

The body starts as nude, in an Edenic state, not yet subject to the subjectifying powers of shame. Like Adam and Eve in the Garden, this body is dressed in “innocence and immortality” because even though it is nude it is not rendered as nudity as such.^[1] Östman, L. (2010). Agamben. naked life and nudity. DANISH YEARBOOK OF PHILOSOPHY, 45(1), 71–88. https://doi.org/10.1163/24689300_0450105 It’s not until later (See Point 4) where this nudity is transformed into something sinful, but it’s initially coded as a base state which allows for flourishing, for connectivity. Thus, it’s no surprise that Oppenheimer’s final visit with Tatlock sees him in the nude again, a final attempt at a rejoinder aimed towards a peace which we know will be violently stripped from him as he’s forced to wear garbs the powers foist upon him.

When he’s given charge of Los Alamos, he is initially dressed in military wear, a sovereign analog to the divine nudity which attempts to become the “clothes of grace, of supernatural justice and immortality.” The outfit is an explicit attempt to manifest power. However, this explicit evocation of the State’s control is troubling given the metaphorical likening of the statecraft with the divine. Rabi opposes this garb and asks Oppenheimer to reject the same in favor of his traditional scientific clothing, a uniform which rejects the immediate correlation with “power”. ^[2] Östman, L. (2010). Agamben. naked life and nudity. DANISH YEARBOOK OF PHILOSOPHY, 45(1), 71–88. https://doi.org/10.1163/24689300_0450105 Oppenheimer may be a part of the military machine, but he doesn’t have to be wholly subservient to it if he pledges his allegiance to science qua science.

However, we know that this movement away from the state is only temporary. Oppenheimer is stripped of his power, branded a liability in relation to the state, and removed from a policymaking power. And as Einstein warned the scientist in their encounter by the lake, the rehabilitation of Oppenheimer’s image isn’t for him as much as it’s for everyone else, the machinery of bureaucracy patting itself on the back for a heinous wrong it itself has committed of its own volition. The final image of Oppenheimer, final relating to the chronology of his life as depicted in the film and not his final outfit within the run-time proper, is one that sees him split between these identities – the scientist and the pawn of the military – as he’s awarded a medal, a purely symbolic gesture taking the place of the military regalia from earlier, marking him as an extension of the statecraft and its policies: the scientist and his power have been fully encapsulated within the political machine.

4.The film can be read as Oppenheimer’s Tale of Two Women – one who serves as an analog to him, Tatlock, and another who serves as an analog to Strauss, Kitty.

Kitty’s (Emily Blunt) introduction to the story proper happens near the 32-minute mark. The camera moves from its framing on Oppenheimer’s face and re-racks focus during this movement, revealing Kitty in the space behind Oppenheimer staring directly at him. This moment of intersubjectivity – another’s gaze informing the narration of their life by another – showcases the first encounter between the married couple.

They meet at a party and are immediately swept up in one another’s charms. He takes her hands as he explains quantum mechanics as a perceptual schema, one that takes the empty space, groupings of tiny energy waves bounded together by forces of attraction strong enough to convince people that matter is solid; bodies cannot pass into one another. Thus, perception, subjectivity, becomes the grounding force that allows scientific force to function.

More importantly however, is the grounding of this explanation against the act of the duo holding hands, the bodies in question; love is thus rendered into a force akin to the waves, invisible to the eye, but operating in its purview, organizing people into couples who are drawn to one another. This places the relationship between Oppenheimer and Kitty in a vastly distinctive space to his with Tatlock’s; the former’s is furnished by science while the latter’s is furnished by the humanities.

We see the soon-to-be married couple embrace one another at Los Alamos, Oppenheimer’s dream site wherein science will come to roost, and then immediately cut to an image of him holding Tatlock in his embrace, a chain-reaction through love leading to a romantic (dis)entanglement.

Tatlock astutely notes that the primary difference between the two women is their difference in desire; Kitty knew what she wanted and went for it, while Tatlock was unable to wholly commit to a vision not unlike Oppenheimer himself as the ensuing trial and his own subjective deliberation will reveal. She looks back at him, nicely tying the movement between the gazes’ of the lovers, past and present, together.

The counter-point to this genesis in romance happens nearly 45 minutes later at the 75-minute mark, when the security committee calls Oppenheimer to task over his continued relations with known communists, namely Tatlock. We see the subjective recounting of the duo’s encounter with one another as Oppenheimer is forced to give up said details to the committee who prompt him to recount his reasoning for doing so. He explains that he had to do so because he worried for her psyche and didn’t want to leave her in a wholly darkened place. He was the light in her life, the fire.

As he gives his answer, the camera begins to track from behind Robb. As Oppenheimer is hidden by Rob’s visage, there’s a cut to Robb staring at Oppenheimer, which brilliantly hides the transition to another tracking shot following the initial one’s spatial positioning and movement, now showing Oppenheimer fully nude. This is his Fall from Grace, the moment of exile from bureaucracy qua Eden, and his nudity, is rendered as “sinful” as opposed to “gracious and glorious.” ^[3] Östman, L. (2010). Agamben. naked life and nudity. DANISH YEARBOOK OF PHILOSOPHY, 45(1), 71–88. https://doi.org/10.1163/24689300_0450105

When he reveals that Tatlock’s desire to see him was couched in her love for him, the film cuts to Kitty’s shocked expression and cuts back to Tatlock sexually riding Oppenheimer in full view of the hearing. The infidelity rears its head as Kitty is just as haunted by the ghost of the deceased lover as Oppenheimer is. He is once again, caught between the gaze of the lovers, the past incarnated into the present as it determines the future.

It’s in this recollection of the past, the final chronological depiction of a comforting nudity, that Tatlock confronts Oppenheimer with the truth of the situation: “You drop in and out of my life and you don’t have to tell me why. Now that’s power.” The line, effective in its own right at demonstrating the asymmetry between the lovers and the capricious manner in which Oppenheimer treats someone who meant so much to him, also reveals, albeit in allegorical fashion, the power of subjectivity and memory, the way they can constantly intervene in an immutable arena and generate powers which can change things when rendered as such by institutions (See Point 10).

Back within the sterile apparatus of bureaucracy, this formerly warm embrace of the lovers becomes cold and clinical as it’s dissected by the political machine and rendered into the public record, the larger reason for Kitty’s indignation at the affair. Now everyone will know of this transgression and it will be lobbied against the family.

Furthermore, this scene is the last depiction of nudity within the film, a telling choice given that we know that Kitty and Oppenheimer had plenty of carnal relations given the choice to show her with her pregnancy bump and the duo with their children. This holy realm is no longer capable of being entered as Oppenheimer is cast into the one institution “which does not know of either interruption nor end: hell.” ^[4] Östman, L. (2010). Agamben. naked life and nudity. DANISH YEARBOOK OF PHILOSOPHY, 45(1), 71–88. https://doi.org/10.1163/24689300_0450105

The scene thusly ends, with the calamitous sounds of the footsteps getting increasingly more violent, two quick cut-aways to the scene of Tatlock’s death, and then deafening silence as Oppenheimer reveals that he never saw his former lover again. Kitty confronts him about the damaging effects of the testimony and leaves him with just a pressing indictment as Tatlock did, questioning his refusal to fight and defend himself and his family.

5.The bomb itself, the film and Oppenheimer’s raison d’être, is given a suite of wonderful visual metaphors that tie together all the film’s themes: humanity, connectivity, peace, violence, extinction, faith, divinity. Oppenheimer confirms as much when he labels the test “Trinity” explicitly quoting the first line of “Holy Sonnet XIV”: “Better my heart, three’person’d God”. In a surprisingly Bergmanian turn, this moment is rendered as a prayer, a call to a silent God.

The domesticated vision of the bomb starts with the metaphor induced by the glass receptacles which hold marbles, spheres which at first come to represent the pieces of fissile material that the scientists have access to. However, we see additional marbles put into the receptacles as other scientists come on board or add to the knowledge base. Thus, the marbles take on a secondary function and come to stand-in for human connectivity, communal bonds which serve as a metaphorical power-source churning forward the bomb’s development.

Once the containers are full, the metaphor transforms and the human element signified by the same becomes literal as we see the scientists themselves slowly put the casing for the bomb together. Like the scenes of the marbles, this construction scene is intercut among the second portion of the film even though we know that such a project would be more immediate than the marbles. The reason for this approach is to equate the two experiences because both are representative of the bomb itself and the respective forces going into the creation of it.

Finally, the moment arrives as the bomb is finished, the fissile material carefully loaded into its center by the very cautious hands of the scientists. The danger has become materialized and their response to the bomb metaphor changes as it transforms from representation to reality proper.

Then it’s finished, the ultimate symbol, the harbinger of extinction or peace, the culmination of scientific effort taken to its limit, the result of human interconnectedness putting together all its resources towards one concrete end. This creature, a bomb, is treated as divinity proper, God rendered through humanity, fitting given the test’s name’s allusion to the Trinity, the Christian God rendered through multiple domains – the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit – which certainly includes and ties in humanity with the holy. The nuclear prophet, Oppenheimer, an analog for both Prometheus and Krishna, goes towards the bomb, shot in near-silhouette such as to render both him and the bomb in the same light, puts his head against it, an act of prayer, a gesture towards faith. The ultimate synthesis of science and spiritual, scientific method as a tool or exegesis.

With the bomb complete, it’s its explosion that takes center stage. Before it’s completed, we see two separate test explosions which are meant to help gauge the impending finale. The first explosion has few visible flames and mainly helps to establish the way sound travels slower than light as its noise takes slightly more time to hit the soundscape. The second explosion is bigger, has more flames, and withholds the sounds of the same for a bit longer. These two instances demonstrate the power of Fission, literally and formally as a tool, as perspective, that is the time to measure both the length of the flaming phenomena and the time it takes to hit the ears, is used as the criteria, both diegetically and non-diegetically, to assess the impact of the explosion to come.

It’s analogous to trick of forced perspective, but within the film, this tool of the craft is given formal power that thereby sanctifies it within the grammar of cinematic syntax, transforming an explosion that may seem small from certain frames but is rendered enormous, earth-shattering, holy by form itself.

When the explosion happens, the sound completely cuts out from 1:55:46-1:57:29: 103 seconds. It’s an order of magnitudes greater than the previous two explosions and feels completely sublime in due to the film’s constant use Göransson’s soundtrack to underscore the majority of the rest of the runtime. This is Nolan stressing, with no pretense, the immensity of the explosion.

Detractors of the scene who think it doesn’t feel as impressive or big as other depictions of the iconic Trinity test, miss that this formal gambit is the heart-beat of the film and ties the bomb’s explosion with the opening montage that dominates Oppenheimer’s subjectivity. When we’re initially shown the glimpses into his mind, we see flames expand and plume out, but these images, initially cast as part and parcel of the molecular visions perforating through his psyche, feel like they would go hand-in-hand with the depictions of the nuclear bomb as it goes off. The molecular is visually tied not as just as analog but as a perfect representation to the devastation of the bomb proper: Oppenheimer’s visions are of a nuclear nightmare underlying the ontology of the world itself, conflagration comes to be the be-all and end-all. Nuclear hell radiates through even the interstices of being itself. It’s no wonder he ends this moment with Krishna’s iconic line: “And now I am become Death. The destroyer of worlds.”

6. It’s a smaller thing in the grand scheme of the film, but the way Fission is framed is primarily through addresses. We consistently see Oppenheimer trying to give speeches to crowds who clamor to hear his words even if their reasons for doing so are vastly distinct from one another. However, the truth of such admissions to others is that they always require an equal action towards oneself for how could one address others with a “truth” if they themselves are unable to reconcile with the same in regards to themselves? It’s perfect that the film ends with Oppenheimer giving this “final” address to himself, forcing himself to constantly experience the nightmarish thoughts in his head in an attempt to find a single ray of hope to point him towards a future not ending in the absolute annihilation of the world around him.

7.The trial sequence serves as the primary framing mechanism of Fission, demonstrating the multifaceted notion of subjectivity and the way it intervenes onto and is affected by the present to create new pathways of power and features a host of wonderful moments that deserve their own mention:

A-The discussion of the interaction with Pash (Casey Affleck) is wonderful rendered through cross-cutting and reinforces the manner in which subjectivity is constantly re-interpreted by different agents. The discussion of the “Chevalier incident” neatly intercuts between different scenes where Oppenheimer is constantly forced to defend himself. We cut between the Security Clearance room which features dialogue from both Oppenheimer and Groves respectively, the room in Berkley where Pash and Oppenheimer have their significant conversation, the train where Oppenheimer and Groves talk about the Pash conversation after it has chronologically happened.

The sequencing of the moment serves a literalization of the way memory codes events after the fact. Nolan emphasizes as much when he reveals the recordings of Oppenheimer taken from the initial meeting involving Pash differ significantly in content from the scene we’ve seen, demonstrating the way that subjective investment, both from us and Oppenheimer, is always subject to power relationships both externally via bureaucratic structures and internally via the way our ego perceives itself. These different drives act as officials vying for control, determining the direction our memory goes towards.

B-The moment where Groves is revealed to have been the force that saved Oppenheimer from Pash through his deployment efforts is touching and an effective emotional conclusion to the moment wherein Groves is forced to testify against his former appointment. Seeing Oppenheimer’s face light up as he realizes that he has allies is touching in this otherwise harrowing environment.

C- Lawrence leaving immediately after seeing Rabi’s face, on top of being a moment of surreal chronology, neatly demonstrates the impact of relationships and the way we feel towards them serving as the motivation for action. This friend, previously willing to testify against our protagonist in deference to another friend, is turned away from doing so for the same reason.

D- Kitty’s entire section is worth of praise and is presaged quite nicely by Oppenheimer’s statement that the couple has “walked through fire together.” Given the nuclear imagery up to the point, this metaphorical reading of the couple’s marriage is quite poignant and reflects the way that she’s helped him figure out the manner by which to fight the bureaucratic machine – by using its own tools against it.

8.There’s also such a beautiful use of doubling – point and counterpoint – in relation to both big and small events that warrants a mention:

A- The iconic line of Krishna from the Gita is read both during the initial sexual encounter between Tatlock and Oppenheimer and enunciated later during the Trinity test. Death and life are juxtaposed against one another against the backdrop of divinity.

B- Rabi feeds Oppenheimer the orange two times. The first time is during the duo’s initial meeting as they prepare to meet Heisenberg, a journey meant to venture into the potentials of the quantum realm which is immediately tied to its propagation to the United States, and the second time occurs when Rabi attempts to comfort and ensure Oppenheimer of his fate during the Security Hearing proper.

C- Oppenheimer’s relationship to his brother, Frank, is predicated on the saying: “You’re happy, I’m happy.” It’s first used when Oppenheimer expresses his support for his brother’s marriage, one that directly ties the family to Communism and is then used again when the brothers embrace one another as Oppenheimer is given his ceremonial medal by the government. This statement, based on the idea of happiness generating more of it as it experiences itself, is a perfect encapsulation of the molecular interplay of Uranium and its relation to the atom bomb and once again ties the notion of human relationality to the explosive powers promised by the science underpinning everything else. This is a perfect tie-in to the bomb metaphor explained in Point 5.

D-The act of “putting up the sheets”, which initially serve as the code-phrase Oppenheimer uses to secretly tell Kitty of his success at the Trinity test, becomes the means by which the scientist confirms that his security clearing has been denied. His inability to enact meaningful change towards nuclear policy is thus directly equated to his powers when he was directly in charge of the policy, emphasizing the importance of the trial in preventing Oppenheimer from having the ability to meaningfully change anything.

E-Breaking glass connects both Oppenheimer and Kitty. The former does the same when he’s exploring the ideas of molecular physics as he focuses on the way atoms shatter into multiple pieces, unity breaking itself into atoms which interact with one another into an infinity. The latter does the action when she correctly ascertains and accuses Strauss of his betrayal, demonstrating the way the ideal human subject fractures into the multiple moving aspects of their desire which determines the actions they take. The same emotions which promote patriotism engender hatred for others based on vindictive origins; the human condition is just as volatile as the molecular backdrop which makes it up.

9.For a film with such careful precision in its editing, deviations from the norm immediately flag themselves as points of analysis. There are two such moments of poignancy in Oppenheimer, both linked to the use of a black dissolve which signifies the loss of the titular character’s influence and scope of power, both occurring one after another as the Trinity test comes to its end; Oppenheimer is rendered into the star cooling and being subsumed by the gravity of the situation as his light can no longer escape this particular pull.

A – Once Kitty gets the message of the test’s success, the film uses a fade to black to demonstrate the immediate loss of Oppenheimer’s influence on the situation. The military ignores him and the bomb is packed away and moved away from his control. It’s at this point that Groves, one of the symbolic stand-ins for the military apparatus as a whole, signifies to Oppenheimer that the scientist’s relevance to status-quo decisions to the bomb has become a null point. Groves becomes, to use a Dickensian metaphor, the ghost of a nuclear “past”, a marker of Oppenheimer’s former influence on the project, his haunted legacy, and the loss of his ability to effectively change things – the past is the past and what’s done has been done.

As soon as Groves and the vehicle transporting the bomb leaves, Nolan uses surreal chronology to bring in Teller, immediately tying the scientist who will be the ghost of a nuclear “future” to this loss of influence. The future intercedes onto the present specter, Oppenheimer, who is faced with the ghosts of his past come to roost. Teller confirms Oppenheimer’s worst thoughts and strips away the wilting optimism promised behind the latter’s beliefs in mutually assured destruction as a way of achieving peace via description of a seemingly inevitable arms-race focused on making increasingly bigger bombs. The atom bomb was just the beginning and a horrific future will eventually intervene. This news heavily upsets Oppenheimer, who leaves after hearing as much, a deliberate move which ties back into the ending, wherein Oppenheimer’s apocalyptic interpretation of this proclamation shakes Einstein to his core and causes him to similarly leave.

B- The next use of the black dissolve happens at the end of one of the film’s most important scenes, the horror-like surreal experience Oppenheimer experiences as he’s forced to give a speech addressing the scientists at Los Alamos after the news of the successful bombings on Japan.

We open on him entering the building to give a speech to an energetic crowd who cheers his name – “Oppie! Oppie! Oppie!” – and hear the thunderous applause of their footsteps, a sound which has been present in the soundscape since the opening and which can now finally be identified. This moment has been a part of his psyche ever since, burrowing itself deep into his mind and we’re now finally privy to it, in a position to understand the reason for its severity. A preacher at the pulpit, he begins his sermon to his dedicated followers, an ecstatic crowd waiting for the word.

The scene quickly moves from a wide shot of him addressing the crowd to an intimate series of close-ups which quickly reveal the fragmentation of Oppenheimer’s grasp on reality. The background behind him fluxes and threatens to rupture and the audience goes ominously quiet, hanging on to each and every word coming from his mouth. He desperately tries to read the room and deliver the proper response, ascertaining his efforts through the audience’s expressive reaction. But without a moment’s notice, the crowd’s cheers drop out and a shrill scream dominates the soundscape. It’s absolutely bone-chilling. But the crowd keeps clapping and we can see them cheering even if nothing can be heard anymore sans a muffled, disheartening rumble. Complete breakdown. Disassociation. There is no absolution to be found in this hell.

Oppenheimer tries to find his footing and continues to speak, praising the group for their efforts. But far from getting better, the horrors of the bomb persist, permeating out from the periphery, poignantly puncturing our protagonist’s phenomenological posturing.

Suddenly, a bright flash. The room is completely lit up – the specter of the bomb lights everything, consecrated illumination perverted through destructive intentions. The crowd becomes a metaphysical stand-in for the victims in Japan. The camera cuts to a woman’s face, her skin peeling off, its flapping temporarily dominating the aural environment. Try as he might, Oppenheimer can’t be free from this destructive light. Then a jump cut. The crowd has now disappeared leaving only Oppenheimer in the light, the prophet of the nuclear age forced to bathe in the horrors of the light brought to life through his discovery.

Absolute and utter silence. The spectral luminesce dissipates. And then with the same intensity by which it left, the crowd and their cheers come back into the fray, erupting much like a jump-scare in traditional horror cinema through an appropriate jump-cut. The ugly cosmic monster lurking within the realm of the molecular has reared its head and Oppenheimer is unable to escape its gaze.

He walks forward and sees a charred corpse underneath his feet. Hallowed ground no longer.

He peers on a couple, deep in the throes of amorous joy. It does nothing for him. Only the horrors await and this tender moment might as well not exist. Another couple pops into his purview, sobbing and holding onto one another. But his mind, already fractured and weighed down with sin, can only read this moment as one of terror – persons crying over a loss. Love rendered into terror. Nolan’s use of the two couples as a counter-point tells us the truth: Oppenheimer is truly lost, wandering in pure despair, his gaze now fully enmeshed within the throes of a nihilistic despair where love can no longer flourish.

Confirmation follows shortly: Oppenheimer’s perspective renders a young man throwing up outside as a radiation victim suffering from the bomb’s fallout. The boy’s uncanny stare follows. Oppenheimer’s worst fears have been confirmed and the frame fades to black on a devastated close-up of his face. His obsessive desire to right the wrong of his actions can now be understood within a larger context, as the film follows him as he attempts to communicate with President Truman and other parties in a desperate attempt to prevent the hellscape engendered by his perceptions.

10. The reveal of Strauss’s duplicity is no real surprise as the film repeatedly hints towards as much, but Nolan plays the moment for all it’s worth, relishing in revealing the inner-workings of the bureaucratic structure of power that frames and demarcates the political capital Oppenheimer possesses.

We see the degrees of separation employed by Strauss who uses Nichols and Borden as pawns, extensions serving as an apparatus by which to extend his will. We see the creation of the hearing room which serves as the backdrop that the Fission strand of the film couches itself within as a framing device, formally revealing the way the strands of the film truly operate in respect to one another. The subjectivity explored in Fission is ultimately striated, forced to operate in deference to the machinations of Fusion, a Russian Doll hiding the contents of Oppenheimer’s confessions within a structure which comes to stand-in for the “truth.” If one wishes to affect the powers to be, one must encase their subjectivity within the parlance of bureaucracy, exposing their subjectivity to the levers of power.

Downey Jr. revels in his big moment as Strauss, slithering forward into the center of the frame and making explicit these rules of the game: “Amateurs seek the sun, get eaten. Power stays in the shadows.” Oppenheimer, the great scientist whose subjectivity allowed him to harness the powers of the sun, to take the “divine” flames and give them to “humanity” has been eaten by the shadowy specter of bureaucracy.

The line, on top of being excellent and evocative in its own right, truly great dialogue, has the additional effect of revealing that Fusion, shot in black-and-white, the cinematographic realm of shadows, is quite literally where power is affected and affects.

It’s no coincidence then, that Oppenheimer’s decision to leverage his capital as the prophet of the nuclear age is marked by a transition to the realm of Fusion. When he first sees himself on the cover of Time, the revelation is done in color, the world of Fission, subjectivity untethered. But he realizes he can do nothing in this realm to change the world as he sees fit. It’s only by playing “the game”, submitting to Fusion, that he can try to do anything. It’s why when he sees himself on another magazine cover, this time on LIFE as opposed to TIME, it’s in black-and-white, the realm of Strauss, whose own depiction on TIME is depicted in the same color palette.

As philosopher Michel Foucault points out: “Rules are empty in themselves, violent and unfinalized; they are impersonal and can be bent to any purpose. The successes of history belong to those who are capable of seizing these rules, to replace those who had used them, to disguise themselves so as to pervert them, invert their meaning, and redirect them against those who had initially imposed them; controlling this complex mechanism, they will make it a function as to overcome the rulers through their own rules.” ^[5]Foucault, M. (2010). Nietzsche, Genealogy, and History. In P. Rabinow (Ed.), Foucault Reader (pp. 76-100). Pantheon Books. (Reprinted from Hommage á Jean Hyppolite, pp. 113–123, 1971, Presses … Continue reading

This frames Oppenheimer’s decision to go forth with the hearing, at least from Nolan’s point-of-view, as a move towards posterity. There are two moments earlier in the film where Oppenheimer, in an attempt to protect himself and ensure that he can’t be compromised, prevents Dr. Hill (Rami Malek) from taking notes from conversations down. He refuses to be tied down and rendered culpable.

But he comes realize that the only way to play the game is to acquiesce and allow one’s self to become instrumentalized through text, through records which can be interpellated by powers that be, powers whose perspectives can change over time and render previously identified information in radically distinct manners to achieve new aims.

The transcription of the security hearing initially seems damning, spurred on by this very technique of power, as Borden’s testimony, the impetus behind the whole procedure, is just a recapitulation of previously understood facts, given spin by bureaucracy in condemning fashion. Oppenheimer is rendered a victim and is stripped of immediate power by nothing more than a perspective on the past; power is nothing more than an enunciation of one point-of-view at the cost of all others.

But by that same token, what is excluded remains on the periphery, haunting the demarcated inside, waiting to be exorcised and brought to new light such that previous proclamations can be revised. Just as Borden used past records to condemn Oppenheimer, the records of the hearing are used by Dr. Hill, no coincidence given his role as the film’s scientific scribe, to condemn Strauss. A new perspective has become enshrined as the past intervenes on the present and opens up a new future.

11. In relation to relegated horrors, it is telling that the direct victims of the Los Alamos Project, the native populations whose lands were appropriated by the Government and rendered radioactive and the Japanese populations who directly suffered the impacts of the two nuclear bombs dropped, are only mentioned in the film’s text but are not shown at all. The violence done to them is not seen because Oppenheimer does not see it. The only thing he has is knowledge of these horrors, second-hand articulations of the damage being done.

This distance demonstrates the way bureaucracy renders violence at an arm’s length, projecting it onto another population that must be made to experience it as “our” proximity to this devastation is neatly compartmentalized though utilitarian calculations. There are two such scenes which demonstrate this logic: 1- when Strauss asks Rabi to instead draw circles on the map showing the violence of the bombs if dropped on American soil, a clear evocation of the us-vs-them forced dichotomy 2-the war meeting where officials treat the decision of which city to bomb as a callous afterthought based on aesthetic choices (Kyoto is beautiful after all), a respect for Japanese culture that does not extend to its population proper.

Thus, violence transforms into a necessity so no one ends up feeling moral weight for their transgressions. It must be done so one must choose how to do it. The parameters of the decision are completely upended. However, this maneuver, as exhibited in the final bout of questioning by Robb, can be reversed to indict and damn. Oppenheimer’s previously framed forced choice to develop the bomb is rendered as a choice done made without any coercion and his guilt is used to paint him as a hypocrite even as he stammers that more persons would have been killed with the H-bombs. The decision to engage in any violence whatsoever impugns him, so no ethical qualms can be raised anymore. Utilitarian logic only when it’s convenient.

However, these horrors are inescapable and come to life in the form of the spectral surrealistic visions he has of the victims appearing, possessing the sanctity of his memory, namely the ghostly sights he sees after his speech on the successful launch night (Point 9B). There’s no reason to assume that these are the visions he saw at the time but they may be manifestations of his guilt burrowing through his past, proliferating into his subjectivity and forever rendering the space within his mind a graveyard where the victims of his actions lay waiting.

The absence speaks louder than anything else, rendering these violent tragedies as unspeakable, giving them a power that depiction would take away. Rendering the scenes would flatten them to the same level as everything else – ontological erasure through inclusion. Instead, by remaining uncognizable, present only in approximation through surreal imagery which can only conceptualize such violence on a wholly global level, an Earth on fire, or in highly personal levels, like the subjective visions Oppenheimer is haunted by, this unstated violence becomes painfully apparent in every scene, a damning indictment of bureaucracy and the manner in which it determines what lives are valuable and worth protecting.

12. The brutal ending montage is wonderfully set-up and portended starting with the Fission discussion of the H-bomb program at the 90-minute mark. We start with Lawrence removing flowers from the table. It’s no coincidence that this scene follows the revelation of Tatlock’s death, and flowers served as a representation of Oppenheimer’s repeated attempts to connect with his perturbed lover. With her gone, the veneer of “love” is removed from the newly purposed “war” table.

Now, violence can be rendered into cartography. Rabi draws circles on the map to render the geographic domain of violence that the H-bomb program would lead to. Rabi likens the use of such weapons and the idea of nuclear deterrence to drowning. He cautions against the fusion program by explaining: “You drown in tent feet of water or 10,000, what’s the difference? We can already drown Russia. They know it.” Water as a metaphor for death takes on a perverse meaning after we’ve seen Tatlock’s suicide/murder done through the same. She died in water and now the world looks to meet the same fate.

Oppenheimer stares at terror at this revelation while the strands of his life come together in horrifying fashion: Tatlock, war, water, death. It’s at this moment where we finally are shown the cause of the stomping leitmotif, the feet of the scientists at Los Alamos, an event which Oppenheimer has already gone through and which pervades his mind but one which the audience has still not been shown up to this point.

He looks back at the crowd as the stamping feet dissipate, but there’s a foreboding rhythmic knock that punctuates the dialogue as Oppenheimer desperately tries to suggest an arms treatise that Strauss refuses to acquiesce to. The meeting ends in a state of antagonism during which Borden makes his first appearance to Oppenheimer. He explains his concerns to Oppenheimer prompted by sight of a V-2 rocket he glimpsed during a flight back from a raid and his fears over an enemy rocket carrying a warhead towards the homeland.

Sounds of stamping feet come back. Rippling water floods over the map, literally flooding the symbolic representation of the world with the impacts of impending war; Tatlock’s fate will spread to everyone. The stomping gets louder. Visions of a war-torn air, filled with the plumes of the aforementioned missiles, enter the frame. Oppenheimer sees himself in the rocket Borden described himself in, an oneiric shift in perspective which terrifies the former party as he sees the same warheads going everywhere; enemy or ally, destruction cares not for affiliation. We see the moment he loses Borden as he becomes lost within the miasma of his nightmares.

The climax of the Security Clearance hearing takes these audio-visual patterns and continues to develop them. The (un)holy light of the spectral nuclear weapons tears through reality, quite literally emerging into the frame as a rupture, and overwhelms the previously drab room. Robb is elevated to the position of holy inquisitor, calling Oppenheimer to task and marking him as a heretic for daring to question the moral imperatives of the powers that be. The once beloved prophet is brutally stripped of his honors and rendered an apostate.

His castigation triggers a montage, specters previously rendered resurrected in rapid succession, lingering on the screen just long enough to burn into the retina and evoke a previously felt dread, haunting both the audience and Oppenheimer himself: the removal of the flowers from the table, the drowning map, the burning flesh, the flooding tub, Tatlock’s death. The footsteps return and the score cascades – relentless cacophony leaving no room for explanation.

Terror moves metonymically as the threads running through Oppenheimer’s mind are systematically split-apart by outside forces and explode, culminating in his ultimate submission at the site of bureaucratic power. No reprieve can be found.

The final scene ends on the conversation between Oppenheimer and Einstein. Far from being the egoistic attack Strauss projected onto it, the reality of the moment is revealed to be a confession on the part of the prophet: he believes that his nuclear discovery will be the “start of a chain reaction that” will “destroy the entire world.” It’s no wonder then that one of the progenitors of the quantum world leaves the scene as dejected as his successor, the protagonist.

The following montage, featuring the stamping feet and scored to the depressing and aptly titled track “Destroyer of Worlds” thusly acts as an antithetical rejoinder to the “Can You Hear the Music?” montage from the start of the film, serving as a stark and painfully hopeless confirmation of Oppenheimer’s nightmare. The identifications enunciated in the aforementioned moments of terror gain full momentum and rapidly collide into one another. Each image lingers on the screen, and cuts to a tracking shot constantly pushing onto Oppenheimer’s face, reminding us that these are the cursed visions of the man who could see into the very matter of the world.

The droplets of water which served as the opening image of the film become apocalyptic harbingers; their visuals no longer promise a soothing respite to the heat of a thermonuclear war but instead act as a painful confirmation of the same terrible power, portending a world drowned through explosions.

His eyes remain open.

Rockets get ready to launch.

His eyes remain open.

Missiles fly through the sky and their plumes overwhelm the clouds.

His eyes remain open.

Oppenheimer sees himself, once again, in the rocket, forced to witness the destruction up close and personal.

His eyes remain open.

The sky burns with fires, now destroyed by nuclear ravages.

His eyes remain open.

The earth collapses under the weight of its violence, a planetary object fully engulfed which replaces the stars from earlier visions.

And at the crescendo of the movement, Oppenheimer finally closes his eyes, tired of his visions of the future – an act of futile prayer in the hopes that the nightmares won’t come to fruition.