Thank you Kai Bird for such a detailed and engaging biography that took decades to complete. It's a shame Martin Sherwin passed just two years ago. He would've been proud. His co-authored biography becoming a best-seller for the first time ever, and the adapted film becoming a critical and box office success.
The Americans did to Oppie what the British did to Alan Turing. Instead of thanking him, Truman called him a cry baby scientist. No good deed goes unpunished.
I found the story of Alan Turing in “The Imitation Game” to be far more moving emotionally than this movie. It held together much better thematically and I could feel how tragic Turing’s life was. The new Oppenheimer movie chopped his story into bits and pieces, I thought, his love life, his relationship to Teller, the strange scenes where the music crescendoes to atomic intensity, didn’t work for me. I enjoyed Kai Bird’s biography years ago.
It’s funny…..I could’ve easily assumed as much about this film EVEN DESPITE IT BEING CHRIS NOLAN OF ALL PEOPLE….I knew it would be garbage. Even interstellar was a better film. Wish we could get the quality of the Dark Knight back on the big screen :(
I haven't seen the movie. Wasn't sure if I could sit through 3 hours in a theater. But thanks to your comment, I will go see it! Im sure it's brilliant.
Coming back to say I just watched the movie. Not boring at all. Very riveting. The script, acting and the musical score were outstanding! A masterpiece by Nolan!
The point at 8:25, “we don’t seem to have many scientific gurus around,” which after 9:00 is equated to Oppenheimer’s public humiliation, is a common phenomenon even today. As a scientist, from my perspective the gurus of science are typically ignored out of others’ ignorance, fear, or self enrichment. Oppenheimer’s experience is simply one of many examples. For instance, environmental scientists have known since well before the middle 1980s, when I learned the physics, about humanity’s impact on climate change. Only recently, with the growing weather-related tragedies around the world, has a significant portion of humanity begun to acknowledge our contribution to this phenomena. The decades of denial wound my heart.
You are correct. Been following the environmental flags since then myself. Even TIME’s ‘Planet of the Year’ award/ warning in ‘89 was roundly ignored. Like in the movies, we always ignore the advice of the scientist until it’s too late.
Carl Sagan used his platform to call for nuclear disarmament and warned the world of the dangers of nuclear winter. Yet he was denied tenure at Harvard and membership to the National Academy of Sciences discrediting the concept of a public scientist educating the masses about science and its implications.
The attacks on scientific caution during the peak of Covid totally echoed the moves to silence and discredit Oppenheimer. The "debates" over climate change are sadly the same as well. If one side of the political spectrum doesn't like the message on an issue, it doesn't act to fix things but instead kills the messenger.
Its unfortunate that we have allowed a tool we invented for trade to control our destiny as a species. Capitalism when taken to extremes is no better than a blind religion.
When news of the first bomb at Hiroshima reached occupied Singapore, the personnel of the Japanese imperial army who were stationed there took fright and panicked. In the various detention camps scattered across the island, allied prisoners witnessed the extraordinary spectacle of sudden pandemonium in the quarters of their captors of three-and-a-half years, who burst shouting and screaming from every door, and ran straight for the jungle, leaving the compound gates open wide, and their stunned captives free to walk tentatively out of them and wander among the islanders in shared disbelief. Everyone had been aware that the war was going badly for the Japanese, from their dwindling rations of food and water, and the increasingly agitated behaviour of the guards and soldiers, many of whom were psychotic by training. There was a real anxiety that a Japanese withdrawal from the island might be preceded by orders to have them killed - random violence, executions and massacres had always been integral to the warcraft of the Imperial Army, which had a fundamental philosophical contempt for any warrior that surrendered in battle, and generally held the lives of both their military and civilian captives as cheap. Although Japan was a signatory to the Geneva convention, its provisions were routinely flouted by the imperial military establishment, under which countless war crimes were committed. On Singapore, tens of thousands had already died, either from the habitual violence or systemic neglect of the occupiers (and across the Pacific theatre, the fatalities of Japanese aggression were estimated to be in the millions) so the fears were real, and all too well justified. Then all of a sudden, a moment came when the oppressors fled in terror. What of, however, was unclear, as no allied forces appeared on the island until a couple of days later. For all the novel terrors this war of technology and industrial production had produced, no-one living at that time knew or could conceive of a nuclear weapon, let alone be able to imagine the catastrophic destructive power such a device could have. The first reports of it had filled samurai war criminals with existential terror; and after 1200 days of abusive deprivation and coercive fear, their victims were scarcely able believe that their ordeal might be at an end, still less conceive of the cause. Liberation could not save the dead, but came just in time for others who were suffering the effects of severe malnutrition and dehydration, tropical diseases that had gone untreated, and the exhaustion of hope. One such prisoner was my father, whose body had wasted to just 90 lbs, and knew from having watched so many of his comrades die that his own death was all but inevitable, until a miracle came just in time to save him. He was very sick, and had to spend three months in a British military hospital in Bombay before he was strong enough for the long sea voyage home. He did recover, physically at least. PTSD was one of WW II's major innovations, but it would be some years before neuroscience and psychology were able to name, describe or treat it, and social attitudes towards any kind of mental distress, especially in men, were extremely negative. So many returning servicemen, and others who had survived intense encounters with conflict, experienced lasting distress that they were unable to acknowledge even to themselves, let alone seek diagnosis, treatment or support. The PoWs who returned from the far east were welcomed by their families, but there was little interest or understanding for what they had experienced and survived in wider society. Dad was a courageous and determined man in many ways, but he was also damaged, and never really recovered from his experience. He rarely talked about the war, but I know that he strongly believed that he owed his life to the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima, and the tens of thousands of deaths it caused. So I've long been aware that I too owe my own existence to the bomb, which is a sobering thing to know. Oppenheimer's story, his achievement at Los Alamos, and his sunbsequent struggles, both with his conscience and the US political and military establishment during the early years of the cold war, have been of interest to me for a long time. He was a complicated man who lived a complicated life. He is a fascinating subject for creative artists, and it's a little surprising that Christopher Nolan is the first film maker to take him on. There was a bbc tv series in the 80s that was pretty good if I remember rightly; and in 2005, American composer John Adam wrote an opera about him (an Op-enheim-era perhaps?) which he titled Doctor Atomic, that I liked so much I saw it three times. I look forward to seeing what Nolan and his cast have made of Oppenheimer's extraordinary life.
Oh yes indeed, thank you for sharing! Powerful story. The atomic bomb certainly did end the war; no doubt about it. Wouldn't it be music to our ears to hear that that an attack of good common sense had befallen our leaders and that they had put as much effort into making peace, and that the peace were as successful as The Bomb.
Thank you for your amazing account...and for the survival of your father and those prisoners, tortured and abused. I have "ear-witnessed" accounts of the treatment of Malaysians by the Imperial Army, and just when it seems humanity reached rock-bottom, statements from survivors that the Chinese were even worse! OH broken humanity! In Britain we recognised PTSD and its ramifications but had a different word: "Shell shock." This covered a multiplicity of aetiologies, but just the two words whispered sotto voce to explain bizarre behavior were enough for us to show extra courtesy and consideration to the person concerned.
Side point, to the question these men asked about whether the Bomb would put an end to the world's ability to conduct wars: they could not anticipate the role of profiteers. What Eisenhower came to address in his 1961 "beware the Military-Industrial Complex" speech. War makes big money for contractors, and conscience has no place where greed exists. No better example in America's history than the Iraq War from 2003 to 2011.
Eisenhower authorized the CIA’s first Coup, removing Iran’s democratically elected leader Mossadeq, and installing the Shah as an American puppet. (CIA Operation Ajax 1953)…Eisenhower commissioned the CIA’s second Coup of a sovereign government in Guatemala, removing their democratically elected President Jacobo Arbenz. (CIA Operation PBSuccess 1954) Crimes in violation of International Law and the UN Charter.
And the US is still incapable of coming to terms with Eisenhower's legacy. A great General, an impactful President but also an actual war criminal from the Oval Office.
Can the US economy continue to thrive nee exist in the absence of gigantic expenditures in war industry. Those budgets are simply $ spent as a necessary (?) "jobs bill". If memory serves some 60% of the US GDP can be directly linked to our various war industries.
Two of my favorite authors. I wish this was a regular segment!! Kai's written many tour de forces but not as much of the recognition...this should change.
We have let money dictate. “We” meaning the USA with the rest made to follow. President Eisenhower’s warning about the Military-Industrial Complex went unheeded. Money has bought democracy so ethics and the common good are ignored. Any mention of social concern in the US is labelled Communist. This is very difficult for the rest of the World.
There is no public space for intellectuals. The public wants to be lied to. Fortunately there are venues where they can speak and reach an audience that wants them.
The first film within Japan to address the atomic bombing of Hiroshima was commissioned by the Japanese Teachers Unions. The film, “Children of Hiroshima” was released in 1952 at the end of the American occupation. A somber and poignant film with an underlying message of hope.
Amazing book & definitely still worth reading if you've seen the movie. Also damn!, Walter Isaacson is doing the interview? I guess he's the right person for the job as he knows a thing or two about Biographies.
Truman was Truman, he was a hard head. In a sense he gave Oppenheimer an out when he said he had blood on his hands (Truman) because he ordered it dropped, not Oppenheimer. Take it from me, Truman was human, he was a pretty educated man, knew history, but he also had little tolerance for what he saw as namby pambies. Truman said he never regretted dropping those bombs, that is the way he was. He out of anyone had a hard task, he didn't know about the Manhattan project until April, Roosevelt kept him in the dark with most things, so the guy faced the surrender of Germany&dealing with Stalin&the other allies, the war in the Pacific& of course the bomb.
Great discussion. And a vital one to continue. I'm really anxious to see Christopher Nolan's film, and I want to get the Kai Bird-Martin J. Sherwin book.
Agree with Nigel re: dropping the bomb did save lives in the short term-on both sides. But this "winning the war" has actually been dwarfed by the larger "war" between the forces of peace and the forces of violence, chaos, and authoritarianism that could still use nuclear weapons to destroy our world.
My friend your are unequivocally wrong. At the time General Eisenhower, we now know, said the bomb wasn't necessary because at that time the Germans had already surrendered and the japanese would soon follow. So no, dropping the bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not necessary. That's what they say to justify the murder and destruction of two cities and it's inhabitants who where almost all civilians
If you actually read the history of the 2nd world war you wouldn't say that about the atomic bomb and Japan. Put it this way, Hirohito wasn't the flower loving, haiku writing nerd in glasses that he was portrayed as. Hirohito made Tojo PM bc he felt the prior PM was too soft ( this after a track record that made the Germans seem nice). When they went to drop the A bomb, they had trouble finding a target big enough...why? Bc most Japanese cities had been levelled or burned, Le May was literally incinerating cities every night. A million civilians had died by that point, and no surrender. I have also heard it was the USSR declaring war that did it. But thing is, once Germany was defeated the threat of the USSR was there for almost three months, Stalin had promised to declare war once Europe was done...no surrender. There was a plot to pull a kamikaze attack on the Missouri during the surrender, Hirohito had to make a broadcast and his brother personally meeting w the ppl plotting it to stop it. Stalin declared war after Hiroshima,when he knew Japan would likely surrender, so no that didn't do it. Japan didn't surrender when they declared war, they surrendered a week after Nagasaki. Want further proof what it is like invading a defeated country? Read about what the fighting was like in Europe after D day. The German military knew they had lost by 1943, but the fighting was brutal. When they hit Germany they were taking huge casualties until the end. Japan because of its topology , all the islands, would make it much worse. If they invaded it would have been a million allied casualties and likely several million japanese.
It is a great movie, everyone who love physics and history should watch it. Before watching the movie, I knew nothing about Robert Oppenheimer. I really like to read the book.
The quote from the movie that struck me was the lawyer asking Oppie if he had moral qualms about dropping a hydrogen bomb on Hiroshima. Oppie replied he did, and that Hiroshima wasn't a BIG enough target. A city of 1.1M people, was not BIG enough. The only two suitable targets were Tokyo or Osaka which would have killed 7M (including the Emperor) or 5M people respectively. Of course he had moral qualms about the "Super". We ALL should.
a man looking for BIGGER targets in order to KILL more children is NOT a man with "moral qualms"....he supported dropping the bombs till the day he died he's a nightmare of a human being
The tech geeks who are developing AI and other robotic technologies are NOT 'polymaths'...are probably woefully undereducated in the humanities, and incapable of the thought experiments that could foresee consequences on humanity.
You can’t say that. The people who are really good in AI are on par or better than those polymath physicists. They really understand information theory which Arguably, is even a more fundamental framework for understanding how our universe works than Physics.
@@sitanshurai892: No, Information Theory is NOT an "even more fundamental framework for understanding how our universe works than physics." It is COMPLEMENTARY with Physics. The one cannot work without the other; there is what we call 'matter' and what we call 'energy', and what we acknowledge as 'interactions' and 'transformations', and it is all physics and the information that allows us to recognize, understand, acknowledge, and intentionally interact with (or manipulate, as in splitting atoms) the physics.
Sitan there is such a thing as a Renaissance polymath which Oppenheimer was--a man who knew French poetry & Eastern philosophers, including the Baba Gita, which would NOT be a description you could give to any contemporary scientist that I have ever heard of. This is what Kai was speaking of and making reference to.
If there is one good thing this movie has done is reignite debate among human at a deep level about nuclear weopons and hopefully like in the 1980s mass protest eventually puts pressure on the political establishment like it did with Reagan and Campaign for nucelar disarmament protests in United States and Europe regular million plus marches were common occurrence back then and one day Reagan started agreeing with the protesters and everything changed also another Hollywood also swayed his opinion I do not now if its true called Wargames. Where the message of the movie was the only winning move was not to play the wargame. Apparently being a Hollywood movies nut being once an actor in Hollywodd himself this movie had a profound impact on Reagan and he started to support the Protesters privately and in 1985 he initiated talks with the Russians. As far as I know only John F Kennedy and Ronald Reagan and maybe Richard Nixon as well were the only American Presidents who finally came around to Oppenheimers way of thinking regarding nuclear weopons after initially being warhawks finally came around the the idea that nuclear arms reductions and eventually total abolishment and must be agreed upon and acted upon and we saw that come to fruition in the 1970s with Nixon and Breznev and then Reagan and Gorbachev in the 1980s.
In retrospect. Most of the physicists who knew him at the time, knew that he had never administered anything in his career, not a department, not a research group. You can hear some of the reactions of his peers in a BBC documentary on Oppenheimer. It was only after he had shown what that he could do it, that his peers realized that it was a genius choice. ("The Trials of Oppenheimer," BBC History)
7 of our 8 5 star Army and Naval officers are on record in 1945 stating the atomic bombs were militarily unnecessary, morally reprehensible, or both…Generals Dwight Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur, Henry “Hap” Arnold, and Admirals William Leahy, Chester Nimitz, Earnest King, and William Halsey.
Teller wanted to use the bomb ASAP to destroy the Soviet Union while the USA still had an "advantage", a strategy Craven calls Nuclear Utilisation of Tactical Systems. Fortunately saner minds prevailed and we got Mutually Assured Destruction. That scene in Dr Strangelove is not fiction.
I am in full agreement about this scene. When I explain to people the reason why Nagasaki and Hiroshima aren't shown in the film, this is the scene that is the metaphorical understanding of the bomb's effects. The film isn't about who used the bomb or where. Oppenheimer wasn't physically there when the bomb was dropped and the movie is Oppenheimer.
As other commenters responded, the use of atomic bombs on cities wasn't necessary. First, Japan was willing to surrender if they would allow to keep the emperor. Second, if they really wanted to intimidate the enemies and show the capability of the weapon, it could have been used in an non-urban area, where none, or fewer, people would have been affected.
1914-1918 The First World War: "the war to end all wars." It will be over in 2 weeks, they also said. Geo Bush II and Obama both said "war is ultimately about peace."
Kai Ford reference to the threat Oppenheimer posed to military budgets, which was why he was attacked and humiliated, is what President Eisenhower was later warning about in his Presidential Farewell Address in warning against the corrupting affects of the burgeoning “Military-Industrial Complex.”
"It [the Nuclear Age] still could end badly." That would have to be the silliest, most understated opinion ever! Absent complete and total global nuclear disarmament, "badly" is the ONLY way the Nuclear Age will end. The only real hope is that the Nuclear Age will NEVER end.
I do not know what year you won the Pulitzer Prize for the book...The question I have is how much different information is included or clarified from the 1980 BBC series " Oppenheimer" starring Sam Waterston? How did the BBC series discover all of the information/sequences that it shared and having seen the new film " Oppenheimer" how is it really any different or substantially different then the 7 hour mini-series shown in 1980?
Curious about how the Manhattan project influenced future collaboration between science and industry in the US. Anyone that has some input about this? One dimension of the project that I find interesting is how they managed (or tried) to stage an interplay between two completely different cultures for information exchange. One governed by security clearence, another one by the ability to grasp compleixity and add value. We try to set up data sharing in multi-stakeholder ecosystems, and it is quite tricky.
Oppenheimer: One last thing; remember the movie The Producers (aka Springtime For Hitler), where Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder intentionally make a bad movie to cash in on an insurance loss policy. It seems we have a copycat here. The dialogue is almost not existent due to the loud, overwhelming, spastic violins and cellos. If you didn't observe this, then you are deaf or didn't see the movie. This movie might get an 8 if muted and using closed captions. Historically it was correct and the acting was excellent.
I disagree Oppenheimer should be called ‘the father etc’. He managed the project but Oppenheimer had no direct discovery as far as nuclear fission and the mechanics concerned
Though his nickname “Oppie” has been brought up several times in the film, top scientist, advocate & martyr are the titles what we lay people suppose to know him, unlike what he call himself as a “death, destroyer of the world”, “American Prometheus” definitely is he, but thanks to Gary Oldman’s US President Truman who’s proactively seized the title of destroyer.
See democracy now on the bomb and Oppenheimer. And the fact that dropping the bomb on Hiroshima was unnecessary and the second bomb on Nagasaki was a crime.
We’re on such a knife’s edge right now in this conflict with Russia. I know Zelenskyy is just advocating for his country, but some of the demands that they make seem to be from a world where the bomb tied to ICBMs doesn’t exist. In the end, the bomb has and should make us a more peaceful species.
As soon as I heard about this film, I knew people would use it as a metaphor for AI. Hee hee. I also think nukes should be dismantled. Yes, we could build them again at any time, but dismantling them would substantially reduce the risk of a war because everyone wouldn't be on hair-trigger alert. The biggest danger moments for nuclear war in the last 80 years have been ones of rapid escalation, where everyone was instantly ready to fire the weapons. If they were dismantled, we would at least have some breathing room and wouldn't have to worry about that anymore.
Good points made; we seem to have become inured to the oppression inherent in this Capitalism - gone to seed the Banana Republic we now function in. no accident.
The U.S.A. has not become a "Banana Republic" ( a racist term usually applied to Central American Countries plundered by the capitalist corporation The United Fruit Company). By dropping weapons of mass destruction (two atomic bombs), one on Hiroshima and the other on Nagasaki, killing thousands of civilians, the U.S.A. became a terrorist state, now a decaying empire.
@@grahamfloyd3451 that is true. I am just not that impressed by his responses, and his body language reflects that. In his book he wrote, Oppenheimer had some serious mental illness. I think more credits should go to the other scientists. Oppenheimer was good at creating the social structure of Manhattan project and keep maintaining the collaborative atmosphere amongst the scientists. This is where General Groves came in who intuitively knew that about Oppenheimer.
@@ndeamonk24 Like every other country in the world, the US government has flaws, but more than in most there are people with influence that strive to mitigate those flaws.
Because the communists around him He had involved too many ex-communists in his life and at that time that is enough to be flagged as suspicious subject
Edward Teller had a hard on for developing the H bomb--the super and his baby-- Oppneheimer's rhetorical misgivings stood in his way; therefore, he had to be eliminated.
Nolan’s film did not make clear why Oppenheimer was castigated publicly! It made it seem like it was only about the ‘red scare’ of communism! Not his urgent pleas for peace!
I debated seeing this movie........I have friends from that area and her son recently died YOUNG there from exposure... I hear the movie does NOT address what the bomb did to New Mexico residents......I decided NOT to see the movie ......rather honor my friends and their loss from relatives working there......the movie should have honored local americans who died (and are STILL dying) at that toxic spot on american soil......c'est la vie
You need not worry about India using nuclear weapons because India is a responsible country unlike the USA, Pakistan and Russia. India also has not to strike the first policy.
@@IKARUSBLOODYWINGS Yeah, LANGUAGE and PROPER PRONUNCIATION are picky, picky, picky little things. If you you don't agree go ahead and speak like an ignoramus. THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE!
Cilian Murphy deserves the Academy Award for this; Matt Damon didn't fit in that role. Too young and he over=acted to compensate. Didn't care for his performance at all.
Really, we will never use nukes again. Now, doesn't that sentence seem preposterous? Oppenheimer quotes the Gita and why? Because in the Mahabharata there is evidence that nukes were employed except on a greater scale and we live as a species with amnesia as if this ancient Hindu text bears no historicity to warn us to not wipe out our civilization as has happened anciently before where great technology destroyed everything, so that most humans laughably believe we only discovered fire quite recently. We are toast... literally.
There will be no nuclear war. I get tired of all the doom and gloom. There is no scenario in the foreseeable future where a nuclear war could possibly occur. And don't even bother mentioning a regional conflict in Europe, Russia will win that war (in some way), and they don't need nukes to do it. They have time on their side. Climate change is the real problem we need to be addressing, not nukes. This isn't the 1960's anymore.
I don't know why so many are raving about this movie....I thought it was WEAK for not taking on the practical effects of the bombs or the moral issues associated with dropping them. they gave oppenheimer a pass on his view of dropping the bomb as if he had real reservations about when in reality he had been HOPING and PUSHING to have the bombs dropped on Larger numbers of people and supported the bombs being dropped till the day he died. It didn't even take on the issue of the health effects the test bombs caused on Americans in the southwest. AND, the movie tried to take on Too Many other issues such as: 1. oppneheimer's wildly naive Views on politics (in terms of what the bombs effect would be on America/world politics), 2. oppenhiemers incessant cheating on his wife, 3. the hearings associated with the smear campaign against him (where they infer that the smear campaign is responsible for oppenheimer not being more of a hero....I don't think that's why he's not considered more of a hero....I think Americans like a hero who faces enemies and death face to face rather than someone who who works on a chalkboard while screwing various women in his spare time) 4. the racism that drove so many German-Jewish scientists to come to America and which motivated so many Jewish scientists to make the bomb to destroy hitler. These are quite a few topics to take on in a single movie (a movie that is also wildly jumping around time periods to tell the story) WHY did there need to be SO MANY EXTREME CLOSEUPS?? I got sick and tired of oppenheimers nose being shove in my face. The non linear story telling confused things more than need be Between the almost always booming in your face musical score, all the extreme closeups and the non linear story telling, it became a very tiring movie to watch....especially for 3 friggin hours In the end, you can NOT claim to be a serious movie about the bomb and the man who lead it's creation and leave out 3 year old kids with their skin melted and hanging off their arms with their eyes blown out lying on their cheeks or mothers, trapped in their collapsed houses, SCREAMING for their kids to come save them while they burn alive.
I saw the movie and I was totally disappointed that Oppie’s intellectual side was completely absent the entire bomb making process was his study of Sanskrit literature particularly BHAGAVADGITA the movie has a passing reference which does not even explain the significance which of pivotal importance
Thank you Kai Bird for such a detailed and engaging biography that took decades to complete. It's a shame Martin Sherwin passed just two years ago. He would've been proud. His co-authored biography becoming a best-seller for the first time ever, and the adapted film becoming a critical and box office success.
The Americans did to Oppie what the British did to Alan Turing. Instead of thanking him, Truman called him a cry baby scientist. No good deed goes unpunished.
The British chemically castrated Turing. Not the same thing
I found the story of Alan Turing in “The Imitation Game” to be far more moving emotionally than this movie. It held together much better thematically and I could feel how tragic Turing’s life was. The new Oppenheimer movie chopped his story into bits and pieces, I thought, his love life, his relationship to Teller, the strange scenes where the music crescendoes to atomic intensity, didn’t work for me. I enjoyed Kai Bird’s biography years ago.
That’s exactly what I thought
It’s funny…..I could’ve easily assumed as much about this film EVEN DESPITE IT BEING CHRIS NOLAN OF ALL PEOPLE….I knew it would be garbage. Even interstellar was a better film. Wish we could get the quality of the Dark Knight back on the big screen :(
Lol. Truman had a legit view. Oppenheimer never had to build it.
Such an apt movie for the right time. 3 hrs flew by in an instant. Kudos to Chris Nolan & the cast! Phenomenal piece of work!
I haven't seen the movie. Wasn't sure if I could sit through 3 hours in a theater. But thanks to your comment, I will go see it! Im sure it's brilliant.
Did you find little boring ? and unnecessarily non linear ?
Coming back to say I just watched the movie. Not boring at all. Very riveting. The script, acting and the musical score were outstanding! A masterpiece by Nolan!
The point at 8:25, “we don’t seem to have many scientific gurus around,” which after 9:00 is equated to Oppenheimer’s public humiliation, is a common phenomenon even today. As a scientist, from my perspective the gurus of science are typically ignored out of others’ ignorance, fear, or self enrichment.
Oppenheimer’s experience is simply one of many examples. For instance, environmental scientists have known since well before the middle 1980s, when I learned the physics, about humanity’s impact on climate change. Only recently, with the growing weather-related tragedies around the world, has a significant portion of humanity begun to acknowledge our contribution to this phenomena. The decades of denial wound my heart.
You are correct. Been following the environmental flags since then myself. Even TIME’s ‘Planet of the Year’ award/ warning in ‘89 was roundly ignored. Like in the movies, we always ignore the advice of the scientist until it’s too late.
Carl Sagan used his platform to call for nuclear disarmament and warned the world of the dangers of nuclear winter. Yet he was denied tenure at Harvard and membership to the National Academy of Sciences discrediting the concept of a public scientist educating the masses about science and its implications.
The attacks on scientific caution during the peak of Covid totally echoed the moves to silence and discredit Oppenheimer. The "debates" over climate change are sadly the same as well. If one side of the political spectrum doesn't like the message on an issue, it doesn't act to fix things but instead kills the messenger.
Its unfortunate that we have allowed a tool we invented for trade to control our destiny as a species. Capitalism when taken to extremes is no better than a blind religion.
When news of the first bomb at Hiroshima reached occupied Singapore, the personnel of the Japanese imperial army who were stationed there took fright and panicked. In the various detention camps scattered across the island, allied prisoners witnessed the extraordinary spectacle of sudden pandemonium in the quarters of their captors of three-and-a-half years, who burst shouting and screaming from every door, and ran straight for the jungle, leaving the compound gates open wide, and their stunned captives free to walk tentatively out of them and wander among the islanders in shared disbelief. Everyone had been aware that the war was going badly for the Japanese, from their dwindling rations of food and water, and the increasingly agitated behaviour of the guards and soldiers, many of whom were psychotic by training. There was a real anxiety that a Japanese withdrawal from the island might be preceded by orders to have them killed - random violence, executions and massacres had always been integral to the warcraft of the Imperial Army, which had a fundamental philosophical contempt for any warrior that surrendered in battle, and generally held the lives of both their military and civilian captives as cheap. Although Japan was a signatory to the Geneva convention, its provisions were routinely flouted by the imperial military establishment, under which countless war crimes were committed. On Singapore, tens of thousands had already died, either from the habitual violence or systemic neglect of the occupiers (and across the Pacific theatre, the fatalities of Japanese aggression were estimated to be in the millions) so the fears were real, and all too well justified. Then all of a sudden, a moment came when the oppressors fled in terror. What of, however, was unclear, as no allied forces appeared on the island until a couple of days later. For all the novel terrors this war of technology and industrial production had produced, no-one living at that time knew or could conceive of a nuclear weapon, let alone be able to imagine the catastrophic destructive power such a device could have. The first reports of it had filled samurai war criminals with existential terror; and after 1200 days of abusive deprivation and coercive fear, their victims were scarcely able believe that their ordeal might be at an end, still less conceive of the cause.
Liberation could not save the dead, but came just in time for others who were suffering the effects of severe malnutrition and dehydration, tropical diseases that had gone untreated, and the exhaustion of hope. One such prisoner was my father, whose body had wasted to just 90 lbs, and knew from having watched so many of his comrades die that his own death was all but inevitable, until a miracle came just in time to save him. He was very sick, and had to spend three months in a British military hospital in Bombay before he was strong enough for the long sea voyage home.
He did recover, physically at least. PTSD was one of WW II's major innovations, but it would be some years before neuroscience and psychology were able to name, describe or treat it, and social attitudes towards any kind of mental distress, especially in men, were extremely negative. So many returning servicemen, and others who had survived intense encounters with conflict, experienced lasting distress that they were unable to acknowledge even to themselves, let alone seek diagnosis, treatment or support. The PoWs who returned from the far east were welcomed by their families, but there was little interest or understanding for what they had experienced and survived in wider society. Dad was a courageous and determined man in many ways, but he was also damaged, and never really recovered from his experience. He rarely talked about the war, but I know that he strongly believed that he owed his life to the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima, and the tens of thousands of deaths it caused. So I've long been aware that I too owe my own existence to the bomb, which is a sobering thing to know. Oppenheimer's story, his achievement at Los Alamos, and his sunbsequent struggles, both with his conscience and the US political and military establishment during the early years of the cold war, have been of interest to me for a long time. He was a complicated man who lived a complicated life. He is a fascinating subject for creative artists, and it's a little surprising that Christopher Nolan is the first film maker to take him on.
There was a bbc tv series in the 80s that was pretty good if I remember rightly; and in 2005, American composer John Adam wrote an opera about him (an Op-enheim-era perhaps?) which he titled Doctor Atomic, that I liked so much I saw it three times. I look forward to seeing what Nolan and his cast have made of Oppenheimer's extraordinary life.
Thank you for sharing. This subject is so multilayered. No easy answer or simple solution.
Regarding the "Japs"....All so true.... My uncle was there.
Oh yes indeed, thank you for sharing! Powerful story. The atomic bomb certainly did end the war; no doubt about it. Wouldn't it be music to our ears to hear that that an attack of good common sense had befallen our leaders and that they had put as much effort into making peace, and that the peace were as successful as The Bomb.
Thank you for your amazing account...and for the survival of your father and those prisoners, tortured and abused. I have "ear-witnessed" accounts of the treatment of Malaysians by the Imperial Army, and just when it seems humanity reached rock-bottom, statements from survivors that the Chinese were even worse! OH broken humanity! In Britain we recognised PTSD and its ramifications but had a different word: "Shell shock." This covered a multiplicity of aetiologies, but just the two words whispered sotto voce to explain bizarre behavior were enough for us to show extra courtesy and consideration to the person concerned.
Thank you for sharing !!!
Side point, to the question these men asked about whether the Bomb would put an end to the world's ability to conduct wars: they could not anticipate the role of profiteers. What Eisenhower came to address in his 1961 "beware the Military-Industrial Complex" speech. War makes big money for contractors, and conscience has no place where greed exists. No better example in America's history than the Iraq War from 2003 to 2011.
I thought the film would have drawn this out.
Eisenhower authorized the CIA’s first Coup, removing Iran’s democratically elected leader Mossadeq, and installing the Shah as an American puppet. (CIA Operation Ajax 1953)…Eisenhower commissioned the CIA’s second Coup of a sovereign government in Guatemala, removing their democratically elected President Jacobo Arbenz. (CIA Operation PBSuccess 1954) Crimes in violation of International Law and the UN Charter.
The US invasion of Iraq was declared illegal on Sept 15, 2004 by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
And the US is still incapable of coming to terms with Eisenhower's legacy. A great General, an impactful President but also an actual war criminal from the Oval Office.
Can the US economy continue to thrive nee exist in the absence of gigantic expenditures in war industry. Those budgets are simply $ spent as a necessary (?) "jobs bill". If memory serves some 60% of the US GDP can be directly linked to our various war industries.
THat interaction about Nobel Prize is one of the best dialogs in the movie!
Two of my favorite authors. I wish this was a regular segment!! Kai's written many tour de forces but not as much of the recognition...this should change.
We have let money dictate. “We” meaning the USA with the rest made to follow. President Eisenhower’s warning about the Military-Industrial Complex went unheeded.
Money has bought democracy so ethics and the common good are ignored.
Any mention of social concern in the US is labelled Communist.
This is very difficult for the rest of the World.
There is no public space for intellectuals. The public wants to be lied to. Fortunately there are venues where they can speak and reach an audience that wants them.
Politicians will always berate Intellectuals, especially Scientists!!
Your dads service will never be forgotten by millions. Our families story is not too different from yours.
Oppenheimer wanted to show how destructive atomic weapons are but the US administration wanted to show how powerful they are.
Thank God. Or Russia woulda gotten one too. Kudos to National Security.
The first film within Japan to address the atomic bombing of Hiroshima was commissioned by the Japanese Teachers Unions. The film, “Children of Hiroshima” was released in 1952 at the end of the American occupation. A somber and poignant film with an underlying message of hope.
Hope is good. Future wars deterred, also good.
The thing about hope is that its a feeling that only the living may enjoy
Amazing book & definitely still worth reading if you've seen the movie.
Also damn!, Walter Isaacson is doing the interview? I guess he's the right person for the job as he knows a thing or two about Biographies.
Professor Chomsky has been warning us for decades...
I hope I leave this life before the Weapons are used again.
Thank You Professor Chomsky!
What shocked me the most about Oppenheimer, was how unbelievably stupid Truman was.
It's historical fiction. The caricature of Truman is one of the film's few weak points.
@@norwegianblue2764 No what Truman said really happened, just that Truman did not say these things in front of Oppenheimer.
@@laneromel5667 I understand that, but context is everything. The film made Truman look like a fool. He was anything but.
Truman was Truman, he was a hard head. In a sense he gave Oppenheimer an out when he said he had blood on his hands (Truman) because he ordered it dropped, not Oppenheimer.
Take it from me, Truman was human, he was a pretty educated man, knew history, but he also had little tolerance for what he saw as namby pambies. Truman said he never regretted dropping those bombs, that is the way he was. He out of anyone had a hard task, he didn't know about the Manhattan project until April, Roosevelt kept him in the dark with most things, so the guy faced the surrender of Germany&dealing with Stalin&the other allies, the war in the Pacific& of course the bomb.
@@njlauren Well said.
I need to read the book. I do think AI is as important today as Bomb was in 40s. Nuclear weapons scare hell out of me.
Read the book it is brilliant and very relevant.
Great discussion. And a vital one to continue. I'm really anxious to see Christopher Nolan's film, and I want to get the Kai Bird-Martin J. Sherwin book.
Agree with Nigel re: dropping the bomb did save lives in the short term-on both sides. But this "winning the war" has actually been dwarfed by the larger "war" between the forces of peace and the forces of violence, chaos, and authoritarianism that could still use nuclear weapons to destroy our world.
Absolutely Agree 👍🏻
Yes! No war is actually won! Once humans decide to sort out differences by means of war, humanity has lost already!
Dropping a bomb on innocence is not "winning a war" per say. I don't know what u would call it, but it doesn't sound like winning to me.
My friend your are unequivocally wrong. At the time General Eisenhower, we now know, said the bomb wasn't necessary because at that time the Germans had already surrendered and the japanese would soon follow. So no, dropping the bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not necessary. That's what they say to justify the murder and destruction of two cities and it's inhabitants who where almost all civilians
If you actually read the history of the 2nd world war you wouldn't say that about the atomic bomb and Japan.
Put it this way, Hirohito wasn't the flower loving, haiku writing nerd in glasses that he was portrayed as. Hirohito made Tojo PM bc he felt the prior PM was too soft ( this after a track record that made the Germans seem nice). When they went to drop the A bomb, they had trouble finding a target big enough...why? Bc most Japanese cities had been levelled or burned, Le May was literally incinerating cities every night. A million civilians had died by that point, and no surrender.
I have also heard it was the USSR declaring war that did it. But thing is, once Germany was defeated the threat of the USSR was there for almost three months, Stalin had promised to declare war once Europe was done...no surrender.
There was a plot to pull a kamikaze attack on the Missouri during the surrender, Hirohito had to make a broadcast and his brother personally meeting w the ppl plotting it to stop it.
Stalin declared war after Hiroshima,when he knew Japan would likely surrender, so no that didn't do it. Japan didn't surrender when they declared war, they surrendered a week after Nagasaki.
Want further proof what it is like invading a defeated country? Read about what the fighting was like in Europe after D day. The German military knew they had lost by 1943, but the fighting was brutal. When they hit Germany they were taking huge casualties until the end. Japan because of its topology , all the islands, would make it much worse. If they invaded it would have been a million allied casualties and likely several million japanese.
War is a racket...
It is a great movie, everyone who love physics and history should watch it. Before watching the movie, I knew nothing about Robert Oppenheimer. I really like to read the book.
I'm half way through the book - it's brilliant. Read it!
The quote from the movie that struck me was the lawyer asking Oppie if he had moral qualms about dropping a hydrogen bomb on Hiroshima. Oppie replied he did, and that Hiroshima wasn't a BIG enough target. A city of 1.1M people, was not BIG enough. The only two suitable targets were Tokyo or Osaka which would have killed 7M (including the Emperor) or 5M people respectively. Of course he had moral qualms about the "Super". We ALL should.
a man looking for BIGGER targets in order to KILL more children is NOT a man with "moral qualms"....he supported dropping the bombs till the day he died
he's a nightmare of a human being
The tech geeks who are developing AI and other robotic technologies are NOT 'polymaths'...are probably woefully undereducated in the humanities, and incapable of the thought experiments that could foresee consequences on humanity.
You can’t say that. The people who are really good in AI are on par or better than those polymath physicists. They really understand information theory which Arguably, is even a more fundamental framework for understanding how our universe works than Physics.
@@sitanshurai892: No, Information Theory is NOT an "even more fundamental framework for understanding how our universe works than physics." It is COMPLEMENTARY with Physics. The one cannot work without the other; there is what we call 'matter' and what we call 'energy', and what we acknowledge as 'interactions' and 'transformations', and it is all physics and the information that allows us to recognize, understand, acknowledge, and intentionally interact with (or manipulate, as in splitting atoms) the physics.
Sitan there is such a thing as a Renaissance polymath which Oppenheimer was--a man who knew French poetry & Eastern philosophers, including the Baba Gita, which would NOT be a description you could give to any contemporary scientist that I have ever heard of. This is what Kai was speaking of and making reference to.
Back to the future. May we learn from our past in order to create a more inclusive and equitable present and tomorrow.
It doesn't happen enough.
@@robvangessel3766 Probably never will
Great conversation.
If there is one good thing this movie has done is reignite debate among human at a deep level about nuclear weopons and hopefully like in the 1980s mass protest eventually puts pressure on the political establishment like it did with Reagan and Campaign for nucelar disarmament protests in United States and Europe regular million plus marches were common occurrence back then and one day Reagan started agreeing with the protesters and everything changed also another Hollywood also swayed his opinion I do not now if its true called Wargames. Where the message of the movie was the only winning move was not to play the wargame. Apparently being a Hollywood movies nut being once an actor in Hollywodd himself this movie had a profound impact on Reagan and he started to support the Protesters privately and in 1985 he initiated talks with the Russians. As far as I know only John F Kennedy and Ronald Reagan and maybe Richard Nixon as well were the only American Presidents who finally came around to Oppenheimers way of thinking regarding nuclear weopons after initially being warhawks finally came around the the idea that nuclear arms reductions and eventually total abolishment and must be agreed upon and acted upon and we saw that come to fruition in the 1970s with Nixon and Breznev and then Reagan and Gorbachev in the 1980s.
Honestly how could Oppenheimer be the most unlikely choice if he must have been one of the few scientists to even be capable of doing it. 3:49
In retrospect. Most of the physicists who knew him at the time, knew that he had never administered anything in his career, not a department, not a research group. You can hear some of the reactions of his peers in a BBC documentary on Oppenheimer. It was only after he had shown what that he could do it, that his peers realized that it was a genius choice. ("The Trials of Oppenheimer," BBC History)
@@iseolake thanks
I don't think groves gets enough credit the pentagon and the a bomb were both a plus projects
7 of our 8 5 star Army and Naval officers are on record in 1945 stating the atomic bombs were militarily unnecessary, morally reprehensible, or both…Generals Dwight Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur, Henry “Hap” Arnold, and Admirals William Leahy, Chester Nimitz, Earnest King, and William Halsey.
Fantastic book. Everyone should read it and dwell on what you will learn.
Teller was the guy who really crucified him
Teller wanted to use the bomb ASAP to destroy the Soviet Union while the USA still had an "advantage", a strategy Craven calls Nuclear Utilisation of Tactical Systems. Fortunately saner minds prevailed and we got Mutually Assured Destruction. That scene in Dr Strangelove is not fiction.
Because he favored an even more monstrous weapon of true mass destruction
The subtitle of Mary Shelley's "Frankensetin" is "The Modern Prometheus."
Written in, what, 1808?
Why is this hardcover book so hard to find and so expensive when available??
I am in full agreement about this scene. When I explain to people the reason why Nagasaki and Hiroshima aren't shown in the film, this is the scene that is the metaphorical understanding of the bomb's effects. The film isn't about who used the bomb or where. Oppenheimer wasn't physically there when the bomb was dropped and the movie is Oppenheimer.
As other commenters responded, the use of atomic bombs on cities wasn't necessary. First, Japan was willing to surrender if they would allow to keep the emperor. Second, if they really wanted to intimidate the enemies and show the capability of the weapon, it could have been used in an non-urban area, where none, or fewer, people would have been affected.
That was cheery
The opening of this is screwed up. Oppemheimer is not about the msnhattan project, it us about Oppenheimer the man. I
1914-1918 The First World War: "the war to end all wars." It will be over in 2 weeks, they also said. Geo Bush II and Obama both said "war is ultimately about peace."
Kai Ford reference to the threat Oppenheimer posed to military budgets, which was why he was attacked and humiliated, is what President Eisenhower was later warning about in his Presidential Farewell Address in warning against the corrupting affects of the burgeoning “Military-Industrial Complex.”
Thank you for pronouncing "Nuclear" correctly! :)
It seems to be a lost art! :(
Sounds to me like Mr. Bird says "newc-ya-ler" which is not the correct pronunciation. The work is correctly pronounced "new-clee-ur."
"It [the Nuclear Age] still could end badly." That would have to be the silliest, most understated opinion ever! Absent complete and total global nuclear disarmament, "badly" is the ONLY way the Nuclear Age will end. The only real hope is that the Nuclear Age will NEVER end.
Trying to get caught up on this before I see the movie...
rip martin sherwin.
Aside from the mispronunciation of “nuclear” meaning “of the nucleas” (there’s no such thing as a nuke-you-lus)… it was a great conversation.
I do not know what year you won the Pulitzer Prize for the book...The question I have is how much different information is included or clarified from the 1980 BBC series " Oppenheimer" starring Sam Waterston? How did the BBC series discover all of the information/sequences that it shared and having seen the new film " Oppenheimer" how is it really any different or substantially different then the 7 hour mini-series shown in 1980?
Curious about how the Manhattan project influenced future collaboration between science and industry in the US. Anyone that has some input about this?
One dimension of the project that I find interesting is how they managed (or tried) to stage an interplay between two completely different cultures for information exchange. One governed by security clearence, another one by the ability to grasp compleixity and add value. We try to set up data sharing in multi-stakeholder ecosystems, and it is quite tricky.
Oppenheimer: One last thing; remember the movie The Producers (aka Springtime For Hitler), where Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder intentionally make a bad movie to cash in on an insurance loss policy. It seems we have a copycat here. The dialogue is almost not existent due to the loud, overwhelming, spastic violins and cellos. If you didn't observe this, then you are deaf or didn't see the movie. This movie might get an 8 if muted and using closed captions. Historically it was correct and the acting was excellent.
How do u compare😢
I disagree Oppenheimer should be called ‘the father etc’. He managed the project but Oppenheimer had no direct discovery as far as nuclear fission and the mechanics concerned
Though his nickname “Oppie” has been brought up several times in the film, top scientist, advocate & martyr are the titles what we lay people suppose to know him, unlike what he call himself as a “death, destroyer of the world”, “American Prometheus” definitely is he, but thanks to Gary Oldman’s US President Truman who’s proactively seized the title of destroyer.
Many of the scientists involved were European born and educated. Very much an international effort, as was the film, mainly British I think....
Didn’t America pulled out of the nuclear controls agreement with Russia . Also in the war on terror , there all this talk about small nukes .
Even South Africa developed nuclear weapons. Then again we also conducted the first heart transplant…
????? Main supporting character played by Emily Blunt .,....not Florence Pugh...
A Genius.👍
The real authority is Martin Sherwin while Kai is just a sidekick
See democracy now on the bomb and Oppenheimer. And the fact that dropping the bomb on Hiroshima was unnecessary and the second bomb on Nagasaki was a crime.
Why do so many people struggle to pronounce nuclear instead of "nuc-u-lar"
Why was this topic even taken as a movie subject in the first place?
I stopped watching at min 19, I´ll come back after watching the movie
We’re on such a knife’s edge right now in this conflict with Russia. I know Zelenskyy is just advocating for his country, but some of the demands that they make seem to be from a world where the bomb tied to ICBMs doesn’t exist. In the end, the bomb has and should make us a more peaceful species.
They are absolutely capable of calculating the future with AI, but late capitalism worships monetization above all else.
You should make another one with turtle or another family
Love Florence Pugh, but she hardly deserves top billing besides Murphy in the intro here.
Talk about nuclear power stations ready to melt and explode, ticking time bombs.
As soon as I heard about this film, I knew people would use it as a metaphor for AI. Hee hee.
I also think nukes should be dismantled. Yes, we could build them again at any time, but dismantling them would substantially reduce the risk of a war because everyone wouldn't be on hair-trigger alert. The biggest danger moments for nuclear war in the last 80 years have been ones of rapid escalation, where everyone was instantly ready to fire the weapons. If they were dismantled, we would at least have some breathing room and wouldn't have to worry about that anymore.
Good points made; we seem to have become inured to the oppression inherent in this Capitalism - gone to seed the Banana Republic we now function in. no accident.
The U.S.A. has not become a "Banana Republic" ( a racist term usually applied to Central American Countries plundered by the capitalist corporation The United Fruit Company). By dropping weapons of mass destruction (two atomic bombs), one on Hiroshima and the other on Nagasaki, killing thousands of civilians, the U.S.A. became a terrorist state, now a decaying empire.
It's "nuclear," not "nukular."
Maybe he was more like an editor. The other author passed away, and he was the one who authored many books.
It's a colloquial pronunciation. You're neither smart enough nor educated enough to try and wield that as some kind of insult.
@@grahamfloyd3451 that is true. I am just not that impressed by his responses, and his body language reflects that. In his book he wrote, Oppenheimer had some serious mental illness. I think more credits should go to the other scientists. Oppenheimer was good at creating the social structure of Manhattan project and keep maintaining the collaborative atmosphere amongst the scientists. This is where General Groves came in who intuitively knew that about Oppenheimer.
It’s “nutulear”
You say ‘tomahto’ and I say ‘tomato’ - Let’s call thing off!!
Scripture says man WILL destroy himself. Look around. We're on our way.
The US does not possess a humane society.
Riiiight
This is true
@@ndeamonk24 if that is true no country possesses a humane society.
@@ndeamonk24 Like every other country in the world, the US government has flaws, but more than in most there are people with influence that strive to mitigate those flaws.
@@jons4418 ok. And.....
Glad all involved seem to be aware of my mood. My situation is disgusting.
I dont get how Oppenheimer was a threat to the 'nation's budget' simply by disagreeing with spending more on the hydrogen bomb.
Because the communists around him
He had involved too many ex-communists in his life and at that time that is enough to be flagged as suspicious subject
He was revered by the public and other scientists.
Edward Teller had a hard on for developing the H bomb--the super and his baby-- Oppneheimer's rhetorical misgivings stood in his way; therefore, he had to be eliminated.
Nolan’s film did not make clear why Oppenheimer was castigated publicly! It made it seem like it was only about the ‘red scare’ of communism! Not his urgent pleas for peace!
Pay attention
Truman such a badman
I debated seeing this movie........I have friends from that area and her son recently died YOUNG there from exposure... I hear the movie does NOT address what the bomb did to New Mexico residents......I decided NOT to see the movie ......rather honor my friends and their loss from relatives working there......the movie should have honored local americans who died (and are STILL dying) at that toxic spot on american soil......c'est la vie
The real authority is Martin Sherwin while Kai is just sidestepping
It would behove "US" to make sure Saudi Arabia is not building and Atomic or Hydrogen Bomb for the $2B they paid Kerschner.
Ind vs pak no new nuke war both countries progress towards good things
Why doesn’t the film present those issues. But instead the movie gives the audience a Hollywood perspective of klitch.
The Soviets got the bomb, not the Russians. There is a difference kids
@ 13.18
Not just Putin, but N. Korea.
You need not worry about India using nuclear weapons because India is a responsible country unlike the USA, Pakistan and Russia. India also has not to strike the first policy.
Utter nonsense
It will be the Us not Putin for first use.
7:37 NEWCULAR??!! How in the world can the author of a book on Oppenheimer NOT KNOW how to properly pronounce the word NUCLEAR.
Anyone can make mistakes. Are you really going to be so picky as to stick just with that and not to the main message that he is sharing with us ?
@@IKARUSBLOODYWINGS Yeah, LANGUAGE and PROPER PRONUNCIATION are picky, picky, picky little things. If you you don't agree go ahead and speak like an ignoramus. THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE!
@alphaomega4159 Yeah, I'll learn from you. I'm sure you have never ever mispronounced a word in your entire life, oh great language master 🖐🤚
It's new-clee-er, not new-cue-ler! Why can so few people pronounce this simple word?!
America did to Oppenheimer what they will eventually do to Dr. Fauci.
Cilian Murphy deserves the Academy Award for this; Matt Damon didn't fit in that role. Too young and he over=acted to compensate. Didn't care for his performance at all.
Please do a different family 🥺
RADIATION…RADIATION…RADIATION…RADIATION…RADIATION…RADIATION.😢😢😢😢😢😢
lt saddens me that this gifted writer cannot pronounce nuclear correctly. Nu. Cle. Ar. Not nucular.
Less fiction and more reality so I can move on is essential
I’d love to meet ppl in real life in real settings after they rehab me and get me away from this chaos
Let’s see if all the brilliant ppl involved in this can figure smthg out that works for me bc this doesn’t.
The idea that if they know who I’m attracted to I lose bc they will use my situation and I have no choice was very 2013-2023. Not now!
Really, we will never use nukes again. Now, doesn't that sentence seem preposterous? Oppenheimer quotes the Gita and why? Because in the Mahabharata there is evidence that nukes were employed except on a greater scale and we live as a species with amnesia as if this ancient Hindu text bears no historicity to warn us to not wipe out our civilization as has happened anciently before where great technology destroyed everything, so that most humans laughably believe we only discovered fire quite recently. We are toast... literally.
And not to mention Atlantis
There will be no nuclear war. I get tired of all the doom and gloom. There is no scenario in the foreseeable future where a nuclear war could possibly occur. And don't even bother mentioning a regional conflict in Europe, Russia will win that war (in some way), and they don't need nukes to do it. They have time on their side. Climate change is the real problem we need to be addressing, not nukes. This isn't the 1960's anymore.
he says, "nucular"
I don't know why so many are raving about this movie....I thought it was WEAK for not taking on the practical effects of the bombs or the moral issues associated with dropping them.
they gave oppenheimer a pass on his view of dropping the bomb as if he had real reservations about when in reality he had been HOPING and PUSHING to have the bombs dropped on Larger numbers of people and supported the bombs being dropped till the day he died.
It didn't even take on the issue of the health effects the test bombs caused on Americans in the southwest.
AND, the movie tried to take on Too Many other issues such as:
1. oppneheimer's wildly naive Views on politics (in terms of what the bombs effect would be on America/world politics),
2. oppenhiemers incessant cheating on his wife,
3. the hearings associated with the smear campaign against him (where they infer that the smear campaign is responsible for oppenheimer not being more of a hero....I don't think that's why he's not considered more of a hero....I think Americans like a hero who faces enemies and death face to face rather than someone who who works on a chalkboard while screwing various women in his spare time)
4. the racism that drove so many German-Jewish scientists to come to America and which motivated so many Jewish scientists to make the bomb to destroy hitler.
These are quite a few topics to take on in a single movie (a movie that is also wildly jumping around time periods to tell the story)
WHY did there need to be SO MANY EXTREME CLOSEUPS?? I got sick and tired of oppenheimers nose being shove in my face.
The non linear story telling confused things more than need be
Between the almost always booming in your face musical score, all the extreme closeups and the non linear story telling, it became a very tiring movie to watch....especially for 3 friggin hours
In the end, you can NOT claim to be a serious movie about the bomb and the man who lead it's creation and leave out 3 year old kids with their skin melted and hanging off their arms with their eyes blown out lying on their cheeks or mothers, trapped in their collapsed houses, SCREAMING for their kids to come save them while they burn alive.
At least they limited my options to ppl with degrees. That was a necessary shift.
I saw the movie and I was totally disappointed that Oppie’s intellectual side was completely absent the entire bomb making process was his study of Sanskrit literature particularly BHAGAVADGITA the movie has a passing reference which does not even explain the significance which of pivotal importance
Can’t wait to see how much money was generated and who it went to the last forty years on my existence.