"Oppenheimer' Review: The Amazing Christopher Nolan

[Ben Shapiro]

“Oppenheimer” is an amazing achievement; Christopher Nolan is the best living
director.

There is no question about this. How do you turn a three-hour biopic about a
nuclear physicist into a blockbuster movie with essentially one big
explosion?

The movie is a masterclass. The filmmaking is beautiful to watch. It’s the
best biopic about science ever made — and no others are even close. The
performances are universally fantastic. There are many cameos of people who
you will recognize in addition to lead actor Cillian Murphy, who turns in a
great performance.

What’s fascinating about the film from a historical point of view is the
pro-Oppenheimer angle. The basic thrust of the Oppenheimer story is that he
was granted security clearance in order to help produce the atomic bomb.

There is good evidence that the Soviets were using J. Robert Oppenheimer in
the early 1940s, even during the Manhattan Project, in order to facilitate
transfer of information. The man was deeply embedded in and surrounded by
tons of communists. Many actual acting Soviet spies were present at Los
Alamos during this period.

Everyone was worried about Oppenheimer’s communist ties. But they had no
choice because most of the best nuclear scientists had sympathy with
communists. Albert Einstein himself said of Vladimir Lenin, “I honor Lenin as
a man who completely sacrificed himself and devoted all his energy to the
realization of social justice. I do not consider his methods practical, but
one thing is certain: men of his type are the guardians and restorers of
humanity.”

One reason for the sympathy for communists was because most of Europe at this
point was divided between fascists and communists. A lot of people who
opposed the Nazis fell into the communist camp because the communists very
often would promise equality of man and brotherhood. For a lot of Jewish
expatriates who had been victimized by Nazis on the basis of race, they
looked at communism, which suggested equality, and were sympathetic.

So Oppenheimer was brought to Los Alamos; despite serious suspicions about
his security, he was given security clearance.

After the war, he became an ardent opponent of the development of the
hydrogen bomb, saying it would lead to an arms race and perhaps the United
States should share technology with the Russians. Then everyone would put
down their weapons.

There are two ways to read that. Oppenheimer’s fans would suggest he was so
stunned by the power of the bomb that he turned against the use of nuclear
weapons and their possibility, with him saying, “Now I _am_ become Death, the
_destroyer_ of worlds.” The other perspective is that he was perfectly fine
using the bomb on Japan when the Soviets wanted the bomb to be used on Japan.
But then as soon as the war was over, he didn’t want the United States
leaping far ahead of the Russians in terms of nuclear technology, so he
wanted to stop the development of the hydrogen bomb.

These suspicions led Lewis Strauss to organize a removal of Oppenheimer’s
security clearance. In the movie, this is played as a McCarthyite scare, as
if everyone was overwrought. But there is good evidence suggesting that
Oppenheimer probably should not have had security clearance in the aftermath
of the war because he had been given it simply as an emergency measure. Every
woman he ever slept with was a communist. All of his friends were communists.
He gave money to communist causes.

The biggest problem with the movie is the time in which the movie has been
made. Here’s why: The entire premise of the movie is that Oppenheimer has
created the means for the world to destroy itself, and he can’t deal with it.
That’s the entire plotline of the movie. All of the counterarguments to him —
mutually assured destruction, we have to bomb Japan because a million men
will die on the beaches of Japan if we don’t, we have to beat the Soviets —
are treated as bad concerns.

History proves all of Oppenheimer’s critics _basically_ correct. The reality
is that nuclear power has been one of the greatest achievements in the
history of science, maybe the greatest achievement in the history of science.
Why? Not only because of the development of nuclear energy, which is
essentially endless and clean, but also because the development of the
nuclear bomb itself has made wartime death extraordinarily less of a
mathematical issue.

The number of American soldiers who were killed in World War II was 405,000.
116,000 Americans died in World War I.

Then the nuclear bomb was developed.

There were 36,000 American deaths in the Korean War, which is less than one-
third the total of World War I and less than one-tenth the total of World War
II. 58,000 Americans died in the Vietnam War. These are bloody, long wars.
The Persian Gulf War totaled 382 deaths; the Iraq operation, 4,600; and the
Afghanistan operation, 2,400.

The number of wartime deaths on planet Earth went down dramatically in the
aftermath of the development of the bomb. Why? Because if you’re going to
fight a proxy war, it better not escalate into anything that approaches a
nuclear exchange.

There’s a scene in the movie where Oppenheimer visits President Truman. In
it, he tells Truman he doesn’t want to help create the hydrogen bomb and he’s
very concerned about the casualties. He says that he is disturbed because
he’s the person who created the bomb. Truman looks at him and says, “You
didn’t drop it. I dropped it. Nobody’s gonna remember you for dropping it.
They’re gonna remember you for the science and remember me for dropping the
bomb.” Then he says, “Get this crybaby out of my office.” Truman was right.
Nobody remembers Oppenheimer for being the guy who dropped the bomb because
he didn’t drop the bomb.

The movie seems to suggest the scientists had some sort of special viewpoint
into humanity because they developed the science while the politicians were
venal and corrupt and had worldly concerns — but the scientists operate on a
spiritual plane.

The cult of scientific expertise probably went out of fashion with
Oppenheimer. It’s a good thing it did, because the reality is that just
because a scientist is great at science _does not mean_ they know anything
about politics or about human nature. Take Anthony Fauci, for example, who
does not know about human nature. Fauci does not know what decisions should
be made to balance all the interests of human beings. This is why we elect
politicians. This is why we don’t have scientific god-kings.

There are a couple messages from the film that conflict. One message: It’s
bad scientists don’t get to run things because politicians are venal. Second
message: Scientists can be screwed up because they’re just like all other
human beings. They’re not a class apart. They are not wiser or more
brilliant, except in the fields in which they’re wiser and more brilliant,
which includes nuclear physics but does not include politics.

But the fact that the movie takes on all of these issues — politics, science,
the interplay of the two, communism versus freedom of speech — in a three-
hour blockbuster that will make hundreds of millions of dollars?

All of this is a testament to what Christopher Nolan is capable of.

It’s so good I will watch it twice. That’s saying a lot because it’s three
hours long.

And it’s worth every minute.