Upon welcoming colleagues to Los Alamos, Christopher Nolan’s J. Robert Oppenheimer (played in the movie by Cillian Murphy) places two glass containers on a table.
One, approximately the size of a large cooking bowl, represents the amount of enriched uranium necessary to produce an atomic bomb. The second, smaller and more like a vase, represents the amount of plutonium necessary for a different bomb design. This is an effective cinematic device, allowing Nolan to depict the passage of time on the Manhattan Project. At first, Oppenheimer can only place precious few marbles inside – but as the film repeatedly cuts back to the table viewers see the level rise as the project marches to completion.
These bowls do more than mark time. They also gesture to the world outside of Los Alamos. The Manhattan Project consisted of much more than the fabled laboratory on the mesa in New Mexico where much of the scientific action of Nolan’s film unfolds. Other sites included enormous production facilities at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Hanford, Washington, that were responsible for producing the fissionable material without which the bomb designs in “Oppenheimer” would have remained theoretical. Nolan’s titular character was certainly central to the project and later became its public face. But he was not its head. That was Gen. Leslie Groves (played by Matt Damon).
So why focus on Oppenheimer? Since a critically acclaimed documentary in 1981 (“The Day After Trinity”), many filmmakers, novelists, musicians and others have told his story. For my scholarship, I have read or watched virtually all of these, and I think Nolan’s film stacks up well. Of course, there are times when historical accuracy yields to dramatic effect; for example, the movie overstates Einstein’s role and doesn’t acknowledge that the atomic bomb was only one factor in the Japanese surrender. But overall, the movie tells a complex story in a clear and compelling manner.
But why focus on Oppenheimer in the first place? After all, it was Groves who hired him. Groves also directed the construction at Oak Ridge and Hanford, secured supplies of uranium from abroad, organized the Alsos mission to determine the status of the Nazi nuclear program and ensured that the military would be operationally able to transport and drop the atomic bombs. Of course, he did not do these things alone – much as Oppenheimer was not solely responsible for Los Alamos’ success. But any book or movie that aspires to tell the whole story of the Manhattan Project should surely have Groves as the main character, and Oppenheimer as the supporting one.
It’s no accident that people keep opting for the scientist over the general. The struggles of a brilliant but conflicted scientist make for better on-screen drama than would the minutiae of construction schedules and procurement protocols. Not being a filmmaker myself, I am unsure how one might create a biopic of Leslie Groves; is there a way to create drama out of construction timetables and transportation schedules?
But as a historian, I am convinced that this would be a more complete and accurate depiction of the Manhattan Project. It would also be unfamiliar. Such a story would not center moral qualms, ethical dilemmas or tortured brilliance. Following Leslie Groves through the war would suggest that the atomic bomb was simply another example (admittedly a grand one) of a familiar process of industrial and military mobilization.
That is not the story Nolan gives us. He depicts someone who struggled – however imperfectly – with the meaning of his work. There is something comforting about the simple acknowledgment of ethical quandaries, even if they remain unresolved. Oppenheimer’s story can raise issues that a Groves movie might not – about science, technology, war and ethics. These are the right questions to ask. But we should not confuse them for history, or at least for not a full history of the Manhattan Project. For that, we would need to look to Groves.
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