The torment of blood on his hands, his lifelong passion focussed on the minute particles of existence catastrophizing into a mushroom of death and destruction, the reduction of existence.

Oppenheimer is the anxiety of Nolan's upbringing in 80s Britain where the threat of nuclear annihilation was very real to the public conscience. In moments of peace and the innocuous this was on people's minds, for Oppenheimer it consumes him. The film uses a clever objective/subjective dichotomy with colour and black and white scenes so when small details are left out of Oppenheimer's subjective view, they are replaced with the ticking of a bomb, or the whirl of hellfire. Life is a muddled backdrop to his Frankenstein apocalypto and even as the vultures of government tribunals peck at his liver daily it is only the fear and unheard wails of people painted evil that haunts him.

Nolan has directed a brutal biopic, with a fallout of Oscars pretty much guaranteed. The score was abrasively grand, the acting incredible and Hoyte van Hoytema's Tarkovsky inspired textured cinematography was grimy but gorgeous. In short bursts it may be overwritten with tedious tangents involving security clearances yet its effect on our understanding of the overreach of the human imagination is undeniable. After all the real arms race is between nuclear weapons and ourselves, as Martin Amis would put it, a scenario when we only know when a line has been crossed when the bodies pile up beyond it.

The end of the world are as high as the stakes get, but the guilt of a man responsible for it is as dramatic as it gets. Oppenheimer is another resounding success for Nolan, showing his range from delivering sci fi epics that boggle the mind, to a character study staring into the marble blue eyes of a man shaken by a plume of smoke. Peace hath no fury like that of the atomic bomb. Death, the destroyer of worlds inhibits the silhouette of a single man, an obloquy of history that is inescapable? Or rather a cabal of good intentions paving the way for destruction? A question answered by the tick of a Geiger counter.