SPOILER ALERT: the following article contains massive spoilers, including the ending. If you have not yet seen the movie, proceed at your own risk, or better, come back to this article later!
A biographical film about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist who led the Manhattan Project and developed the atomic bomb.
SPOILERS AHEAD
Oppenheimer Plot Summary and Synopsis
In 1926, 22-year-old doctoral student J. Robert Oppenheimer grapples with anxiety and homesickness while studying under experimental physicist Patrick Blackett at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. Oppenheimer, upset with the demanding Blackett, leaves him a poison-laced apple, but retrieves it the following morning. Visiting scientist Niels Bohr recommends that Oppenheimer should instead study theoretical physics at Göttingen, where Oppenheimer completes his PhD and meets Isidor Isaac Rabi. The two later meet theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg at a conference in Switzerland.
Oppenheimer returns to the United States, wanting to expand quantum physics research there. He begins teaching at the University of California, Berkeley, and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). He meets his future wife, Katherine “Kitty” Puening, a biologist and ex-communist, and has an intermittent affair with Jean Tatlock, a troubled member of the Communist Party USA.
In December 1938, nuclear fission is discovered, and Oppenheimer immediately realizes that it could be used to create a bomb. In 1942, amid World War II, US Army General Leslie Groves recruits Oppenheimer to lead the Manhattan Project to develop an atomic bomb after he gives assurances that he has no communist sympathies.
Oppenheimer, who is Jewish, is particularly driven by the Nazis potentially completing their nuclear weapons program, headed by Heisenberg. He assembles a scientific team including Edward Teller and Rabi in Los Alamos, New Mexico, and also collaborates with scientists Enrico Fermi and David L. Hill. As the work continues, Oppenheimer grieves over the suicide of Tatlock.
Upon Adolf Hitler’s death in 1945, some Project scientists question the bomb’s relevance, while Oppenheimer believes it will quickly end the ongoing war in the Pacific and save Allied lives. Teller’s calculations reveal the possibility that an atomic detonation could trigger a chain reaction that ignites the atmosphere and destroys the world. Oppenheimer brings this revelation to Albert Einstein, who declines to be involved, and Oppenheimer concludes that the chances of the accident occurring are “near zero.”
The Trinity test is successful, and President Harry S. Truman orders the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, forcing Japan’s surrender. Oppenheimer is thrust into the public eye as the “father of the atomic bomb”, but the immense destruction and mass fatalities haunt him. He urges Truman to restrict further nuclear weapons development, which Truman curtly dismisses.
As an advisor to the US Atomic Energy Commission, Oppenheimer advocates against further nuclear research, especially the hydrogen bomb proposed by Teller. His stance becomes a point of contention amid the tense Cold War. AEC Chairman Lewis Strauss comes to resent Oppenheimer for publicly humiliating him when dismissing his concerns about exporting radioisotopes, and for recommending negotiations with the Soviets after they successfully detonate their own bomb. Strauss also believes that Oppenheimer denigrated him to Einstein in 1947 during their visit to the Institute for Advanced Study.
In 1954, desiring to eliminate Oppenheimer’s political influence, Strauss secretly orchestrates a private hearing before a Personnel Security Board to decide whether to renew Oppenheimer’s Q clearance. However, it quickly becomes clear that the hearing has a predetermined outcome—special counsel Roger Robb harshly cross-examines Oppenheimer, negatively twists the testimony of Groves, Teller, and other associates, and fixates on Oppenheimer’s past communist associations. The board votes 2–1 to strip Oppenheimer of his clearance, damaging his public image and limiting his influence on nuclear policy.
In 1959, during Strauss’ Senate confirmation hearing for Secretary of Commerce, Hill testifies for the scientific community about Strauss’ personal motives in engineering Oppenheimer’s downfall. The Senate votes against his nomination. Strauss privately rages against Oppenheimer. In 1963, President Lyndon B. Johnson presents Oppenheimer with the Enrico Fermi Award as a gesture of political rehabilitation.
A flashback shows Einstein and Oppenheimer’s conversation in 1947, revealing that Oppenheimer never mentioned Strauss, but instead expressed his somber belief that he had indeed started a different kind of chain reaction that would destroy the world.
Oppenheimer Ending
The film ends with Oppenheimer’s downfall in the post-war era, when he becomes a target of anti-communist witch-hunts led by Lewis Strauss and other members of the Atomic Energy Commission. He is accused of being a security risk and a Soviet spy, based on his past associations with leftist groups and his opposition to the development of the hydrogen bomb. He is stripped of his security clearance and banned from working on nuclear projects. He spends his last years as a professor at Princeton University, where he dies of throat cancer in 1967.
Oppenheimer Ending Explained
Throughout “Oppenheimer,” a seemingly innocuous moment becomes a gigantic sticking point: a meeting between J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) and his friend, Albert Einstein (Tom Conti). When we first see this encounter, it’s from the eyes of Admiral Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.), as he’s trying to entice the father of the atomic age to take a post at Princeton University. The ending of “Oppenheimer” clears up what actually happened, through the physicist’s perspective. As it turns out, the man lovingly nicknamed “Oppie” confesses that he thinks he’s ended the world, all thanks to his work on inventing the atomic bomb
Oppenheimer Plot Twist
There’s a pivotal scene when Robert speaks with Albert Einstein at Princeton in 1947, shown through Lewis Strauss’ point of view. Robert and Einstein share a few words before Einstein walks away from Robert and doesn’t say a word to Strauss, who was the head of the Atomic Energy Commission at the time¹. This moment seems harmless but has lasting implications. Strauss interprets Einstein’s indifference toward him as a slight and believes Robert poisoned Einstein against him. This sets in motion a chain of events rooted in revenge.
Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0).