LORD OF THE FIRE

J. Robert Oppenheimer through the eyes of his biographer  

- ANJULY MATHAI

There is one question that haunts many viewers of Christopher Nolan’s film on the creator of the atom bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki—J. Robert Oppenheimer— which swept the Oscars this year. Did Oppenheimer endorse the use of the bomb on an essentially defeated enemy? And if so, how can we hail such a man as a hero? One of the reasons he endorsed it might be because of his ego. He had spent three years building the bomb with his team at a secret facility in Los Alamos, New Mexico, and now he wanted to see the consummation of his efforts. Greatness was within his grasp. Also, he reasoned that the bomb’s power would ensure the end of all wars in future.

But the truth might be more complex than this, and encapsulated in a scene in the film right after the Trinity test, when the bomb was first successfully tested on the plains of the Alamogordo Bombing Range. While giving the victory speech to the thumping cheers of his colleagues and friends, Oppenheimer (played by a brilliant Cillian Murphy) blanks out and in the flash of a blinding light, he sees a woman’s molten skin. As he walks out, he imagines stepping on the ashen remains of a corpse.

“Oppenheimer knew the exact human suffering that his bomb would Bird, who co-wrote American Prometheus, the theoretical physicist’s biography on which Nolan’s film is based. “Yet this is the same man who gave instructions on the altitude at which to drop the bomb in order to inflict maximum damage.” Bird was speaking at a session of the Jaipur Literature Festival in February.