On the warm Friday afternoon of August 4, 2023, our group went to a movie theater and saw Christopher Nolan’s new release, Oppenheimer. As good physicists, we had to pay tribute to a film about a man who led one of the biggest physics projects in the 20th century. Unfortunately, not all of us could join for various reasons, such as being at CERN, having seen it twice already, etc. However, for those who went, it was a blast (pun intended).
We walked over to Kendall Square, went on the oldest subway line in America, got off at Park Street station, strolled past “stumptown” coffee, and arrived at the AMC Boston Common 19. Despite jokes and rumors that some of our group members had wished to see Barbie instead, we stayed true to our course. There was no line going in; yet, our IMAX theater was packed with people by the time the movie started.
Three full hours of suspense and drama! It is rarely the case that a single physicist receives so much attention in popular culture. Yet, here was a roll-call of so many important physicists from the 20th century: Hans Bethe, Patrick Blackett, Niels Bohr, Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, Ernest Lawrence, Isidor Rabi, Edward Teller, and of course, J. Robert Oppenheimer. But the movie was not just about physicists. A large part of it captured the political aspect, too. As the plot unfolded, we discovered the intricate political play that caught Oppenheimer in his later life, a play in which Lewis Strauss was the mastermind.
So, what did we make of this film? For starters, there was a unanimous complaint about the theater’s sound engineering, for the music overwhelmed the dialogue. Still, we thought that it was an interesting film. Some found it intriguing that a morally ambiguous character like Oppenheimer was able to lead the Manhattan project with such success. Others appreciated the suspenseful scene of the first nuclear explosion at the test site. And for most of us, it provided an unusual opportunity to step out of our daily routine of work, research, and meetings, and connect with the world out there.
Nice summary of our extended Friday afternoon hour and indeed, the discussions after the movie were excellent, as everybody had some reasonably strong reaction to the movie.