What is it that Churchill said about the Soviet Union: it’s a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma? The same could be said about J. Robert Oppenheimer, perhaps even more aptly.

And yes, we did it. We did all those things that I earlier said had to be done if you wanted to go see a movie. We did all of those things yesterday and saw the 3:45 screening at the Avalon, just up the street.

Sure, there are some advantages seeing a film in a theater instead of on your TV (you are getting out, you are supporting your neighborhood theater, the screen is big, etc.) But there are also advantages to seeing the film at home and, regarding Oppenheimer, those advantages may outweigh the value of watching the film in a theater. Here’s why:

1. When you are home, you can control the temperature in the room; the Avalon was freezing yesterday.
2. When you are home, you can control the volume; after a start where the volume was too low, it was amped up and at first almost knocked you out of the room.
3. You can turn on subtitles at home; once you become used to subtitles, and assuming your vision allows you to read them quickly, you realize the advantages; there was a little of mumbling in “Oppenheimer” and only with subtitles do you know what was said (irrespective of volume).
4. Miss something? Didn’t hear it, or just want to see it again because you didn’t quite get what was going on? Easy at home; impossible at the theater, no matter how loudly you yell at the projectionist (if this is still what he is called).
5. Want to go to the bathroom? This is a 3 hour show – at home, you put your set on pause and do your thing. I only saw 3 people leave and return mid-show yesterday, but the men’s room was packed after three hours of film.

Here are my thoughts on the film itself (I really have not read any reviews, only seen the promos and heard snippets from friends, so there is nothing copy-cat here):

1. I enjoyed a film and if asked to summarize the film in one letter, I would say “B”. For me, that’s a pretty good grade. Maybe for anyone these days.
2. Three hours is too long for a film, no matter what it is. Sure, this film covers a lot of time and a lot of complexity, but still. That does not mean that the film drags (I don’t think it does), but it just takes along time until you get to the credits.
3. I have read a fair amount about Oppenheimer and the story of the development of the atomic bomb, and even with this, there were parts of the film I had a hard (not impossible, but hard) time following. If you come into this without any background in the subject at all, I am not sure what you would think.
4. For reasons unclear to me, while about 2/3 of this film was shot in color, about 1/3 was shot in black and white. Frankly, I would rather the entire film be shot in black and white. It would have given it more gravitas (more like a newsreel of the time, and less like Lawrence of Arabia on the big screen), and the story of the development of the bomb is a black and white story (perhaps putting the mushroom cloud and aftermath in color).
5. I thought the acting was pretty much universally good – I had no idea that there were so many film stars in the cast – people like Matt Damon or Kenneth Branagh, Morton Downey, Jr., and Gary Oldman. And they all played older people – at first I thought that a trick, then I realized that none of them are 30 any more. I thought Gary Oldman, in times past, made a better Churchill (“Dunkirk”) than a Truman, and I thought the Einstein portrayal was a bit hackneyed, but other than those two…..
6. I loved the music. And I am sure that many who see the film will hate the music. It is highly percussive, and often increasingly loud and then even louder. It’s not only drums. The music arranger had the brass playing like they were drums, and even twice the stomping of feet (a version of “sitting Riverdance”, I guess – good exercise if you are 80).
7. Most of the cast members were playing famous, real-life physicists. They looked pretty close to the originals from what I know, but it was often hard to remember who was who. And, although they played, for the most part, secondary roles in the film, each had a life full enough that it could be the subject of its own biopic.
8. There was one other characterization that I question (I maybe wrong to question it, but I do), and that is the personality of Lewis Strauss as it became clear that the Senate was not going to approve him as Secretary of Commerce. I understand he was very egocentric and had a domineering personality – but did he really act like a 6 year old child while waiting for the Senate’s verdict? And who, by the way, was that guy on his staff, who secretly hated him and whose role was mainly like a Greek chorus, asking him questions as if from off stage?

And that gets me to another point. The entire process of the development of the atomic bomb by the United States government in such a short period of time, and under such complete secrecy, was a form of miracle. Recruiting thousands of people to work on a project whose purpose was totally kept from them (“compartmentalizing” was in fact rigidly enforced), spending millions and millions of dollars that were hidden in the budgets of numerous agencies, so that even Congress (much less the press and public) did not know what was being developed. And, sure, Oppenheimer and Los Alamos was a crucial part of this exercise, but there were other parts equally important (and only hinted at in the film) – the atomic research and nuclear reactor development going under Stagg Field a the University of Chicago, the uranium enrichment program at the new hidden town of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and the plutonium enrichment activities at Hanford, Washington. All four of these sites were crucial and working in concert. All of this needs to be understood to appreciate the full story.

And then there is J. Robert Oppenheimer himself. Tall, thin and handsome, the son of a self-made German Jewish millionaire, raised in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, brilliant in a quirky way but certainly not a school standout, socially uneasy and often mentally disturbed, today he might be said to be “on the spectrum”. Impractical and clumsy (“he couldn’t run a hamburger stand” – a description to which he agreed), but a theoretical physicist’s theoretical physicist, he was a surprise choice to run the atomic bomb program, chosen by General Leslie Groves in spite of his background of associating with known Communists during his years as a Professor of Physics at the University of California, Berkeley.

Because of this background (which I don’t have time to outline here), he was always under suspicion running a secret program, so important to national security and wartime victory. Remember that, during World War II, the Soviet Union was our ally, fighting on our side, and there was an ongoing question of whether or not the United States should be sharing our research with our allies; after all we were sharing everything with the British, why not the Russians?

Even during the Los Alamos days, the U.S. security services were keeping an eye on Oppenheimer, never finding anything to confront him over. But the suspicions remained. And when German-born British physicist Claus Fuchs had been assigned to work in Los Alamos (an assignment that Oppenheimer had nothing to do with) and turned out to be a Russian spy, things became murkier – at first Oppenheimer denied any Soviet spies were at Los Alamos, then said that he had heard through friends he would not identify that there might be a spy but he didn’t know who he was. (And of course Fuchs’ activities enabled the Russians to quickly develop their own bomb)

All of this raised suspicions, of course. Especially in the mind of Lewis Strauss, who was the head of the Atomic Energy Commission after the war, and who led a campaign (secret, as well) to deny Oppenheimer, who by now was an American hero, the renewal of his security clearance and making it clear that Oppenheimer would no longer be able to help his country’s nuclear programs.
In addition to all of this, there were all of those questions raised in the minds of many of the scientists who had helped develop the atomic bomb as to how it should be used and if it should be used and how its use and storage should be controlled and so forth. And whether an even more powerful bomb, the hydrogen bomb, should proceed with development.

At the end, Oppenheimer – the man in charge of the development of the bomb which he hoped would be used, if at all, on Germany but was instead used on Japan, when maybe it wasn’t even necessary – was accused (falsely) of collaborating with the USSR, a former ally and now adversary – and (helping to support that accusation) was arguing for stopping the American development of super weapons and putting existing weapons under some form of international control.

A riddle. A mystery. An enigma. Indeed.