* NO SPOILERS * Saw “Oppenheimer” at 10:40am yesterday in a packed Sheepshead Bay iMax theater. Not many story-tellers can keep Brooklynites enthralled for three hours nowadays. Well, Christopher Nolan sure did. In sharp contrast to the 5 previews we had to suffer through featuring non-stop violence, this one is a bit more complex than “A” outguns, out-avenges, out-crashes, out-slaughters “B”. If you’re looking for depictions of the physical & technical enormity of the Manhattan Project, look elsewhere.

For instance, it took 40,000 workers in a remote Pacific Northwest wilderness (Hanford) to create enough plutonium for a dozen bombs by late Summer 1945; and in rural Oak Ridge, Tennessee, thousands more in a 44 acre building (then the largest in the world) labored for two years to enrich enough uranium for a single bomb, the one that leveled Hiroshima. All of which was reduced by Nolan to a recurring image of Los Alamos physicists dropping marbles (surrogates for nuclear fuel) into two bowls: one for Oak Ridge and a much larger one for Hanford.

No, this film was after something much more compelling, a fear that we have all lived with for our entire lives, often buried, but always lurking. Early in the movie there is a scene between Einstein and Oppenheimer at Princeton. Be aware that in true Nolan fashion, he will return to this scene again from another viewpoint. Listen closely to the lines ending that conversation, causing its own chain reaction. Chilling. After you’ve seen the film, this recap will help explain what might have been missed. And there is ALWAYS something I’ve missed in most Nolan movies. 🤣