After releasing my full movie breakdown for
Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, there were still many things to address surrounding the
events and adaptation of the story that the director
has adapted for the big screen. From Lewis Strauss's motivation, to Jean Tatlock's
death and Ernest Lawrence not testifying against Oppenheimer, I'm going to be answering some
of the biggest questions from the film in the aim
to help those who haven't read the book that inspired this film and discover things that
were missed. This analysis will contain spoilers, so
if you do happen to be someone who hasn't seen the film yet, then I would recommend
watching this video after you've seen it. Also, a lot of things I discuss continue from
what I explained in my full breakdown the other day,
so if you're wondering why some things aren't in this video, that's because I talked about
them in my previous one, which is linked in the
description below. Before I get into it though, if you want to
keep up to date on any of my upcoming content for Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, then
don't forget to support this upload by giving it a like rating, subscribing
to the channel and turning on your notifications. But without further a do, lets dive straight
into some of the biggest questions from Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer explained. So one of the big questions by the time we
reach the end of Oppenheimer lies with the motivation surrounding Robert Downey Jr's
Lewis Strauss in his scheme against the main character. As Nolan's film shows, Strauss hated Oppenheimer,
and we find out that the reasons for this were both personal and political. We know that Lewis was a conservative and
Oppenheimer was on the liberal side of the political aisle
and had connections to those within the communist party. Another thing to note, and this is something
that isn't touched on too heavily in the film, is that Strauss didn't like that Oppenheimer
didn't really advertise his Jewish connections, giving him just another reason to despise
him. But the two main things that the film
does address, surround both a previous testimony that left Strauss humiliated and a internal
feeling from Lewis that Oppenheimer had turned the scientific community against him. Oppenheimer's testimony had challenged and
mocked Strauss's position on exporting radioactive isotopes and after Oppie showed during this
moment that he had much more expertise, it fueled Strauss's personal vendetta against
him. On top of this, as seen in the film, Lewis
thought that Oppenheimer had said something to Albert Einstein at the Institute Lake,
soon after they first met, but as we learn, this
was fueled by his own paranoia because the two scientists were not discussing him at
all. Einstein did mention that Oppenheimer would
be attacked by his country, and that turned out
to be very true when considering what Strauss eventually did. Strauss did a lot to damage Oppenheimer's
public reputation, following Oppie pushing for more openess between both the
U.S. and the Soviets when it comes nuclear weapons. Oppenheimer tried to highlight that researching
and developing more Hydrogen bombs would result in an escalated nuclear arms race,
which as we know, did turn out to be true. So with Strauss opposing this view and having
a personal vendetta, he put a lot of effort into
bringing up Oppie's past, which involved communist connections, communicating with them and supporting
causes like the spanish war effort using the party's influence. He destroyed
Oppenheimer's reputation to the point where his security clearance was revoked, as shown
in the movie's trials. Eventually, Strauss lost the trust of the
scientific community because of his push against Oppenheimer, and as highlighted
before, it was all too personal. But I will go into that scientific retaliation
against Straus a bit more towards the end of this
video too. Coming to the next detail, this one isn't
as clear as the motivations for the assault by Strauss, because it involves a testimony
that we never see. I'm talking about Ernest Lawrence
and the testimony that he was going to give against Oppenheimer in those trial scenes. We learn quite close towards the end of the
film, that alongside his affair with Jean tatlock,
Oppie had also slept with close friend Ruth Tolman while he was married to Kitty. Now Ruth isn't in the film that much, but
when she does appear, it does hint at that relationship, which
is described a bit more in the American Prometheus book. Before Oppenheimer is brought on to direct
the Manhattan Project, he's with Ernest Lawrence and Ruth's husband,
Richard, and the meeting involves the Project itself. Because doesn't have his security clearance
at this point, he's asked to leave the room and while he does so, he tells Ruth's
husband that he'll visit her soon. While earlier in the film this seemed like
just a nice comment, once we got to those later trial scenes it could actually be looked
at as sly attack by Oppie. In the film, there's a moment between Ruth
and Oppenheimer at a party and it briefly indicates that they may have had an affair,
as it reflects both his first meeting with Kitty and Jean. That affair is then later confirmed at the
trial. So while we know that it did happen, the other
question that stemmed from this was to do with the cancelled testimony
of Ernest Lawrence. It was mentioned that Lawrence had Colitis,
but as we see at the end when Oppie is sat outside of the trial room, Lawrence briefly
shows up and then leaves. We know
that he was unhappy to find out that Oppenheimer had an affair with Ruth and this was one of
the things that caused his turn. He also had professional reasons like with
Oppie being against the hydrogen bomb. But him being there and then leaving before
Oppenheimer could see, was something that appeared to be done for this particular adaptation. The fact that he saw
a defeated Oppenheimer sitting there, likely made Lawrence not want to testify, especially
with it being someone who was once his good friend. However, while a mysterious case of
colitis prevented him from testifying at the hearing, it's known that in interviews with
Oppie's prosecutors, he did state that he "should never again have anything to do with
the forming of policy." So his position, the testimony of Edward Teller
and many others is all the prosecution needed to remove Oppeheimer's security clearance. Moving on, one of the other questions that
people had surrounding a smaller character in the film, involves the person who later
stood up for Oppenheimer and was apart of Strauss's
hearing. In particular, some viewers have raised the
question surrounding why Rami Malek's David Hill stood up for Oppenheimer at that confirmation. Well, David Hill was one of many
scientists who eventually signed the Leo Szilard petition, which was something that urged president
Harry Truman to not use bombs on Japan. In the film he tries to get Oppenheimer to
sign this, and at that time, he ends up knocking the clipboard out of his hands. While Oppie didn't support the petition and
believed that the bomb needed to be used, years later, David
Hill stood up for him at the Strauss hearing. And of course this was in a time where Oppenheimer
had stood up against the government in building more powerful bombs and going against
that idea of openess that he and Kenneth Branaugh's Niels Bohr believed in. After the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
David Hill alligned himself with a group that were dealing
with implications of the bombs in society. So the atomic scientists spoke up and they
believed that there was a responsibility amongst them to ensure that no more bombs would be
developed. And as we see in the film, David Hill was
one of the main scientists that testified at Lewis Strauss’s confirmation hearing,
accusing him of turning Oppenheimer’s trial into
a personal vendetta. And this leads us onto the next question,
one that has powerful and emotional resonance for the end of the film too. And that is, why did Oppenheimer not fight
back during his trials? Well, while Oppie didn’t regret the role
he took on in building the atomic bomb and he also believed that is should have been
used in Japan, he eventually felt all the guilt surrounding
what had been unleashed and often spoke out about how a Hydrogen bomb should never be
used. Oppenheimer wanted the US to share their work
with the other nations and push for more communication so that this knowledge and development
of atomic weapons didn't turn into that mentioned arms race. While he was for the initial usage of them
to demonstrate the power and to essentially stop this from ever happening
again, he also felt guilty after the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in Japan. And he immensely worried about the future
of atomic weapons and how it could mean the end of all
of us if they are used in the future. So when it came to that trial, Oppenheimer
let himself fall and he took the unjust punishment that was
thrown his way. Kitty wanted him to fight back, but he never
did. Of course, Oppenheimer and Einstein had a
quite similar path and the final scene really does bring light to that. Oppenheimer realised that he’d started a
chain reaction, not in creating an atomic weapon, but actually an arms race that accelerated
afterwards. The atomic bomb's creation led to
something more worriying, and as highlighted in the film, he no longer had any control
over it, just like we have no control over it being used today. Einstein’s theory of relativity
led to quantum mechanics, which became a foundation for the atomic bomb, and as Tom Conti's character
states in the film, he no longer had the ability to truly understand what he
started. So it's quite a sad reflection betweeen them
and one that links into why oppenheimer didn't fight back in his trials. He wanted to take the punishment and again
felt extremely guilty for what he helped let loose. They didn't have a choice at the time, but
the guilt from the bomb's creation afterwards never went away. So to wrap up the questions surrounding those
trials in the movie, I thought I'd briefly explain the timeline of them and some of the
important details that I missed out in my full
breakdown the other day. In terms of timeline, the Oppenheimer security
hearing, which actually was more of a trial, took place in 1954. In November 1953, the FBI director J. Edgar
Hoover was sent a letter by William Borden, who's played by David Dastmalchian in the
movie, and it concerned Oppenheimer's security file. In his opinion, that file was based on years
of study and classified evidence that indicated Oppenheimer as an agent of the Soviet Union. The file include a decade of surveillance
after his office and home were bugged, his telephone wiretapped and his mail looked at. On top of this, army officer and engineer
on the Manhattan Project, Dane DeHaan's Kenneth Nichols, gave Oppenheimer his clearance, but
was later providing testimony against him at his
1954 hearings. He believed that Oppenheimer was a communist
and untrustworthy, and this fueled the Atomic Energy Commision’s decision to
strip him of his security clearance. Nichols said that he was a Communist in every
sense except that he did not carry a party card. He also said that the Chevalier incident showed
that he was not reliable and that his false statements about that, which were to protect
his friend, meant that he was likely involved with the party. Nichols notes were not
provided to Oppenheimer's lawyers or even made clear publicly and as we see in the film,
there was a lot of information that wasn't shared. A lot of the prosecutors where under the
orders of Lewis Strauss and that fueled the absurdity of the positions and claims they
made. And eventually, Oppenheimer's lost security
clearance meant that his role in politics had
also ended, meaning that he couldn't stand up against the H bomb program or have any
influence. While he wasn't removed from the Institute
for Advanced Study, the place that Downey's Strauss introduced him to, he was cut off
and became exiled. So the new world he had helped create was
no longer in his hands, and that was extremely worrying. He still gave lectures
and spent his family time on the small island of Saint John in the Caribbean, but as indicated
he was never the same afterwards, and guilt had affected him and his family. As pictured
in American Prometheus, Oppenheimer was seen by many scientists as a martyr to McCarthyism
and he was was attacked by war-focused enemies. It was claimed that those such as Edward
Teller, Lewis Strauss and even Ernest Lawrence, helped usher in a more militarised focus,
and while scientists did continue to work for the Atomic Energy Commision, they no longer
trusted it. Lewis Strauss, Edward Teller, William Borden,
and Roger Robb would never escape the consequences though and in particular, Teller, the father
of the Hydrogen bomb, would crumble on a 1962 television interview, where
after being asked if he would restore Oppenheimer's clearance, he would be unable to answer that
question. This part was deleted from the
interview but people found out and it made all the headlines. Moving on to the nomination hearing of Lewis
Strauss, this occured on June the 19th 1959. Between 1925 and 1989, there was just one
rejection that occured and it was involving Lewis
Strauss. During and after his hearings, he was charged
with an attempt to decieve the committee and he exaggerated the importance of his role
in the development of the Hydrogen bomb, implying that he convinced President Truman
to support it. Truman didn't like this, and a letter that
he sent claiming that this was wrong eventually leaked and it led to his hearings. Strauss thought he could still convince Truman,
but as we see in the film, he had a lack of support and even scientists were brought in
to expose his involve in Oppenheimer's humiliating trials. So David Hill and the scientists went against
his confirmation and the rest was history. Another thing to note in this brief breakdown
of that timeline, is that like in the film, President John F. Kennedy was going to give
to Oppenheimer an award, in an effort to rehabiliate his public image. If Kennedy hadn't been assinated, he actually
would have been the one to present Oppenheimer with that award we see given to him at the
end of the film. Soon after Edward Teller nominated him for
the 1963 Enrico Fermi Award, which he had won the year before. And because Kennedy was assasinated, the award
was instead presented by President Lyndon B. Johnson and as we see
in the scene, Oppenheimer shakes Teller's hand, as he did years earlier in his trial,
but on the other hand, Kitty refused to. As indicated
before, she couldn't forgive what happened to both her and her husband, whereas Oppenheimer
maintained his Prometheus persona, someone who was still ridden with guilt and extremely
punished for his creation. As it was later known, Oppenheimer eventually
died of throat cancer on February the 18th 1967. So with the timeline and all the questions
surrounding the trial discussed, the last one that needs a bit more explanation is actually
one surrounding Florence Pugh's Jean Tatlock. And
specifically, the questions surrounding her death. Of course, Jean was a student at Berkeley
and she was romantically involved with Oppenheimer for many years, meeting him first at the
party we see in the film. However, we don't see the friendly relationship
he had with her father, who would later find his daughter dead in the bathtub. You may be asking why she was
sometimes rude to Oppie, threw his flowers away and also the reason for her death, as
the film does make it slighly unclear. To be honest though, I think that is the point. Jean was
skeptical of organised religion, yet she was a devoted communist. Of course, Communism was very deifferent at
the time she was involved and it did become more radical as the years past. Once her and Oppie's relations began, she
had introduced him to many of her friends in the Party and it started his involvement
with using the cause to give money to the spanish war
effort. But while their relationship was impactful
and justified, it was also claimed that it was very intense, and as the film suggests,
Jean had a lot of depression. She did tell him
to stop bringing her flowers, and shut down many marriage proposals that he gave. She did also get him into the poetry of John
Donne, which inspired the name of the atomic test site
trinity, and while it's unknown if she got him to read the bhagavad gita during sex,
it is known that he was reading Sanskrit during those years. But when it comes to her death, what
was known was that her father found her lying on pillows and her head submerged in the bathwater. He apparently went through letters and photographs
in the apartment, and while we don't know what they were, it is learnt that he
burnt them in the fireplace there. Her death was labelled a suicide with the
motive unknown and she had taken a number of drugs beforehand. She was depressed, struggling with her sexuality
and she also felt alone, which Oppenheimer blamed himself for. He visited her during the Manhattan project,
but his commitment to it and to his family meant that he couldn't see
her beyond that. In the film, we see Jean’s death played
out in different ways within Oppenheimer’s mind, one showing her commiting suicide
in the bathtub and the other involving someone drowning her. There's uncertainty surrounding it being a
suicide because chloral hydrate was found in her system and this was something
used by CIA units who would knock out those that they intended to kill, or in the case
of tatlock, drown. In the American Prometheus book, a doctor
is quoted saying, “if you were clever and wanted to kill someone, this is the way
to do it.” So overall, it's unknown whether it was suicide
or whether someone did it themselves and with all the communist investigations and
Oppenheimer and Jean being followed, it makes the situation quite blurry. It is known that one potential suspect was
Casey Affleck's Boris Pash, the officer who questions Oppenheimer
about his Communist connections and a man who also wiretapped Jean's apartment. In 1975, it was determined that Pash’s CIA
unit was responsible for assassinations and kidnappings, and
he denied that this was true. So we'll never know what happened Jean and
that's why in the film you see multiple versions of that suspected suicide. But that was my video discussing some of the
questions that arose from Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer. I'm sure there will be many other things that
pop up on rewatch and other examples which you guys may have picked out,
so don't forget to let me know down below in the comments section. Also, if there is anything else that you can
add to the topics I already raised in this video, then let me know as
it will be interesting to dissect the finer details as time passes. For more breakdown and topical videos on Christopher
Nolan's Oppenheimer, then subscribe to the channel and turn on your notifications. Also if you enjoyed this video remember to
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been Cortex and as always make some noise.
