Christopher Nolan’s historical drama took home seven Oscars, but the film conspicuously avoids Oppenheimer’s intimate involvement in how his diabolical weapon was used – and where.
The success of ‘Oppenheimer’ at the Academy Awards presents an opportunity to think about critical criteria for viewing historical film — and what we are owed by historical filmmakers.
Hopefully, Academy Award winners will be chosen because voters believed in the actors’ performances − not because of some meta narrative about their off-screen behavior.
What constitutes righteous action in the face of moral ambiguity and the inevitability of violence? This question is at the heart of The Bhagavad Gita.
Oppenheimer’s knowledge of Sanskrit literature was more than cursory. He used quotes and parables from Sanskrit texts as a guide to right actions in his life.
Remember building model molecules with balls and sticks in chemistry class? You have J. Robert Oppenheimer to thank for that, as a quantum chemist explains.
Lack of effective regulation means the risk of nuclear war is greater than at any time since the end of the Cold War. Other potentially existential military threats remain similarly uncontrolled.
The Christopher Nolan film ‘Oppenheimer’ is set to become a summer blockbuster. But one of the featured sites in the movie is a sobering reminder of the horror of nuclear war.
As my seat shakes from the stereo effects, nobody in the nearly-full cinema flinches. The teenagers to my right are as used to explosions as J. Robert Oppenheimer himself.
In the 1957 worldwide bestseller, Australia is – briefly – the last habitable place on earth, following a nuclear world war. One character asks, as they wait to die: ‘Why did all this happen to us?’