"Oppenheimer" is Christopher Nolan's first attempt at a biopic, but it goes way beyond what one might expect: The editing is unusual for the genre, jumping back and forth between different timelines and changing between color and black & white imagery to illustrate different perspectives. This is put to brilliant use here for creating suspense and urgency in a story of which the ending is already well-known, but which we now get to experience through the eyes of the person who pushed it forward, until he lost control over it and was eventually pushed out of it himself by the political establishment.

The film is infused with ethical questions about personal responsibility, many of which are connected to situations in which decisions need to be made in a state of uncertainty where possible outcomes can only be estimated with an approximate probability and some factors might even be completely unknown. Such scenarios are not uncommon: The government or our society at large is often faced with situations like this, e.g. when we had to decide which protective measures were appropriate during the pandemic without having complete information about the new coronavirus while being under pressure to react to the threat of the new virus quickly.

In the case of the creation of the atom bomb this scenario is brought to its extreme: The consequences of the decisions that have to be made could potentially destroy all of humanity. One such question is whether the bomb could start a chain reaction which could set fire to the atmosphere. We already know the answer to this question (no, it didn't), but the film shows how dramatic even the existence of a tiny probability that this might indeed happen must have been at the time and which far-reaching ethical considerations it entailed.

Oppenheimer's goal is to build a bomb before the Nazis do it with the primary purpose of defeating Nazi Germany, but of course another question raises its head almost immediately: Once brought into the world, will the existence of the bomb be a deterrent or will it actually be used? And will it also be used against other targets than Nazi Germany? Jumping between the different moments in time illuminates how knowing the answers to these questions changed Oppenheimer's own outlook on it.

If the Nazis had been able to build the bomb first, the consequences might have been unthinkable. On the other hand, is putting the bomb into the hands of the US government – or even any government at all – a good idea? Can politicians be trusted to deal with it in ethically responsible ways? Looking at Hiroshima and Nagasaki we also know the answer to this question today. We know that this was not the case. Oppenheimer realizes this only when it is too late. At times he appears so obsessed with finishing the project that he seems to lose track of the possible outcomes. Later however, he appears disillusioned and struck by remorse when meeting president Truman – who is unwilling to understand that he has wiped out two entire cities full of innocent civilians, perhaps one of the biggest war crimes imaginable, and privately thinks of Oppenheimer as a "crybaby scientist".

Oppenheimer might have been a scientific genius, but politically he appears naïve to a certain extent. It is Niels Bohr who first recognizes the enormous consequences of this new kind of weapon and how the possibility of nuclear war could threaten the future of humanity. It is he who comes up with the idea of international cooperation on nuclear energy which would lead to the foundation of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 1957.

When Oppenheimer realizes the implications of nuclear weapons for all of us, he strongly opposes the creation of a hydrogen bomb. At one point it is pointed out in the film that the hydrogen bomb is not a weapon of mass destruction – it is a weapon of mass genocide. After Hiroshima and Nagasaki Oppenheimer appears to realize the enormous guilt for what has happened which is made tangible in the film by disturbing images of the bomb's victims popping up in his mind's eye during a speech. Subsequently his actions are driven by trying to influence the political decision makers in order to stop an ever-increasing spiral of further escalation – which leads to him being falsely discredited as an alleged communist soviet sympathizer.

Nolan puts all of these questions and dilemmas into his film and succeeds at creating drama and urgency, further enhanced by the fantastic score and sound design. Obviously these are not simply historical questions but questions that are universal – they are questions that are relevant to mankind today. When asked at NBC Meet the Press what he would hope the US congress to take away from a screening of the film, Nolan states the following:

"Our relationship with the fear of nuclear weapons ebbs and flows with the geopolitical situation – and it shouldn't. Because the threat is constant. And very often, when you look back at history, some of the closest moments to nuclear disaster have actually been in times of relative calm, geopolitically. So, even though the situation in Ukraine kinda puts it more on the forefront of people's minds, the truth is: Nuclear weapons are an extraordinarily dangerous thing to have lying around the house.
And it is not something we should ever forget about, and it is not something we should take lightly, and one of the things that frightens me the most […] when I hear in the media, reasonable people talking about tactical nuclear weapons. As if this distinction can be made and can be made via politicians in the media, sort of warming us up to the idea that perhaps there is a certain size of nuclear weapon that would be acceptable as opposed to the larger ones."