Maartje (00:14)
Welcome back to Rosie the Reviewer. This week we are discussing Oppenheimer, which came out in 2023. It was written and directed by Christopher Nolan. It’s based on a 2005 biography, American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, which won a Pulitzer Prize. It is the true story of the life of theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, or the father of the atomic bomb. It was nominated for thirteen Academy Awards and won seven of those, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor. And I watched three documentaries because I’m crazy. I watched one called Oppenheimer: The Decision to Drop the Bomb, which came out in 1965. I watched The Day After Trinity, which came out in 1981, and I watched The Trials of J. Robert Oppenheimer, which came out in 2008. And today we are joined by guest co-host George, and it’s been a while, so welcome back, George.

George (01:20)
Thank you. It’s good to be back. Missed you.

Maartje (01:22)
Missed you too. And Sam and George both read the book. As you know, I didn’t. That’s why I watched all these crazy documentaries. But I think we should start by just our general impressions, so I will put you on the spot, George, and ask you what you thought of the movie.

George (01:39)
So I really like this movie. I did see it in the Barbenheimer same-day double bill, like a lot of other people. And I think I watched it the right way around, where I watched Oppenheimer first and then Barbie to sort of cleanse the palate of all of that heaviness. I remembered really liking the film the first time I saw it, and then I watched it again recently for the pod, and I really liked it again. I think it’s a really beautiful film — visually absolutely stunning — and then it’s got some of my absolute favourite people in it.

Maartje (02:08)
Who are they? Tell me about your favourite people, please.

George (02:11)
Who are they? Obviously you’ve got Cillian Murphy, who’s one of the finest actors ever to exist. And then it’s got everybody in all of the roles. You’ve got Scott Grimes from Band of Brothers, whom I so love. Jack Quaid as Richard Feynman, who I was obsessed with as a child for some unknown reason. And then Rami Malek turns up — like, everybody is in this movie. And it’s absolutely incredible that it’s quite difficult to see them as themselves. Like, everybody’s doing an incredible acting job as well.

Maartje (02:39)
I’m going to take it from there because I also want to say I thought Robert Downey Jr. was really good as sort of the villain of the story. And he looks kind of ridiculous, but he plays it so well, so I thought he was really good as well.

I really liked the movie as well. I liked it the first time I saw it. I did see it in the cinema. Didn’t see Barbie at the time. Was kind of attacked by a wall of noise in the cinema — I didn’t like that very much. But I did like the movie then, and I did like it again when I watched it for the pod, so it holds up really well. Even knowing all the sciency things from documentaries and things you read, and all the context, I think the context almost makes it better even the second time. So I enjoyed that quite a bit. How about you, Sam?

Sam (03:27)
Yeah. I think that Christopher Nolan is one of the great filmmakers of the age for a reason. A lot of the actors who worked in this movie took a substantial pay cut to be in it, and you can tell they’re all acting their arses off. They all really want to be there. I saw it in the IMAX, so when the big explosion happens, it just filled the room. It was huge. And this movie was a whole cultural phenomenon. I think deservedly — I think it did deserve to win those Academy Awards as well.

We talked last week a little bit about how we found that Pressure played it kind of safe and was a bit bland in terms of making an artistic film. I don’t think that’s the case here. Nolan is really good at putting a story together, and they made great use of the New Mexico desert — these really stark, beautiful landscapes. And yeah, I think it’s a classic Nolan film. It’s sort of gritty and dark, but really well made. And yeah, I’m sure many people have seen this movie and I’m sure most people enjoyed it.

Maartje (04:22)
Tell me a little bit about your experiences with the book, if you please.

Sam (04:26)
Yeah, so the book is pretty long with appendices and everything. I think it’s over eleven hundred pages. Before all the appendices, it’s about 900 pages. So you will get a super in-depth look at Robert Oppenheimer’s life, which I think is good because he was a very complex person, and I enjoyed it. I quite liked especially the post-war parts where there was quite a deep dive into American politics. Unlike the Turing biography that I read a while ago, it didn’t focus too much on the nitty-gritty of the physics, which I appreciated. You got just enough information to kind of understand what was happening, but it wasn’t like, you know, you have to understand how they split the atom and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, good biography, quite a long one. I took some little breaks from it here and there, but super, super thoroughly researched.

Maartje (05:18)
Go — how do you think the movie overall translates from the book? Do you think it does a good job?

Sam (05:24)
Yeah, I think it’s a fair adaptation. And I think the way that Nolan put it together, where we get the Strauss Senate confirmation hearing depicted in black and white, and then we get the earlier timeline depicted in colour, does a really good job of pulling the narrative together. I mean, so much of what the remainder of Oppenheimer’s life was like was coloured by his political affiliations before the war — you know, his accomplishments ended up overshadowed in many ways. So yeah, I think it’s a pretty good adaptation. What about you, George?

George (05:56)
Yeah, one thing I really liked about the film, which I only really appreciated on the re-watch, was how well some of the relationships that we don’t focus on were drawn. And they are obviously expanded and given a lot of detail in the book. So for instance, Frank Oppenheimer — Robert’s brother — and his wife Jackie, and the way Robert’s relationship with them worked. That’s given some attention in the movie, but obviously there’s a whole history there that’s in the book. And I just thought that was very cleverly done, even as we were focusing on quite small periods of Oppenheimer’s life. The film to me feels like a trek through somebody remembering a whole bunch of stuff, which is a really interesting way to do it, whereas the book takes it a lot more linearly. And so yeah, I think it’s a very good adaptation of what was a dense biography.

Maartje (06:39)
I think with the long movie ahead of us we should get into the plot.

Sam (06:43)
Let’s do it.

We get a brief first look at a young J. Robert Oppenheimer played by Cillian Murphy, and the explosion that would make him famous. And then there’s an opening card that says: “Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to man. For this he was chained to a rock and tortured for eternity.” So yeah, Christopher Nolan does not want us to miss the allegory there.

Maartje (07:13)
I really like the practical way they show the special effects around the explosions, which were all done practically. And it’s so neat to not have that kind of explosion done in CGI. So I really appreciate that about Nolan as a filmmaker, and his love for all things practical.

So the film is told through three separate plot lines. We get one which happens circa 1954, in which Oppenheimer is at a hearing about the renewal of his government security clearance so that he can continue his work as a consultant for the Atomic Energy Commission, the AEC. And in another through-line — the black-and-white one, which happens around 1959 — we see former AEC Chairman Lewis Strauss, not to be pronounced “Strauss” as he likes to remind us in the movie, who’s played by Robert Downey Jr., as he’s facing a Senate confirmation hearing after his nomination by President Eisenhower to the role of Commerce Secretary. So this is a nice parallel to Oppenheimer’s hearing. And in this hearing he will be asked about his conduct during the Oppenheimer hearing — so he’s being questioned about his role in it. And there’s another plot line in which we follow Oppenheimer’s life from his days as a student through the period after dropping two atomic bombs on Japan in 1945. It’s a lot.

Sam (08:45)
Yeah, it’s definitely covering a long period of time. I think they did that pretty effectively.

Maartje (08:49)
Yeah, I think it’s quite amazing that it doesn’t really get confusing anywhere. It’s told out of order, clearly, but it’s quite clear wherever we are in the film. I think it’s quite nice.

George (09:02)
I think the visual styles of the three periods — obviously the black and white is very obvious — but they’re different enough that I think you can place yourself. And I did notice as well, there are lots of close-ups on newspapers throughout the film. You know what date anyone’s talking about when it’s important.

Maartje (09:14)
Yeah.

Sam (09:18)
Yes. And the fact that Oppenheimer is not physically present in the 1959 plot line, but he is present in every other possible way — the way that Strauss handled their relationship overshadows everything, even though he’s not there.

Maartje (09:33)
Yes, it’s really clever. And I remember when I was seeing it the first time, I got kind of confused about the black and white because obviously that’s the latest timeline, and for some reason the first time my brain wasn’t braining. I was like, this must be the earliest place in the timeline we have, because it’s in black and white — which isn’t the case. But of course —

George (09:56)
It’s logical, though.

Maartje (09:57)
Is it?

George (09:58)
It’s logical. I can see how your brain did it.

Maartje (10:00)
Yeah, well, thanks. But now knowing all the actual details of whatever’s going on, it makes much more sense.

Sam (10:07)
I had read that Nolan considered the black-and-white timeline — the 1959 hearing — as “here is objectively what happened,” whereas the earlier colour timelines are more subjective because we’re getting them from Oppenheimer’s point of view.

Maartje (10:22)
Interesting.

George (10:23)
And that makes sense as to why, like I said earlier, it feels so much like a man going through his memories. And I think the way it jumps around feels like that too.

Maartje (10:32)
And they are literally coloured by memory in that way. Yeah.

George (10:35)
Exactly. Yeah.

Sam (10:37)
Oppenheimer has a difficult time mentally while studying experimental physics at Cambridge, in England. He at one point attempts to poison his professor, physicist Patrick Blackett, played by James D’Arcy. This is also the period when he meets the famous Danish theoretical physicist Niels Bohr, played by Kenneth Branagh, who recommends that Oppenheimer go to Göttingen in Germany to study theoretical physics with the best of the best. So I enjoyed seeing this in the film because in the book you learn that Oppenheimer was not necessarily on a trajectory to become a theoretical physicist. He studied chemistry in his undergraduate years. He was a polymath who spoke multiple languages. He was really into music and art and literature and all that kind of stuff. And he sort of drifted into theoretical physics simply because he was not good at doing practical lab work on the experimental side.

Maartje (11:29)
He also wrote terrible poetry, which is mentioned in one of the documentaries, and it just made me unimpressed. I was like, okay, finding something that’s not impressive about J. Robert Oppenheimer. Everything else is impressive, but not his poetry.

George (11:43)
I think I remember texting you at the time I read it in the book. I was like, hmm — one thing he was not good at. Not a poet.

Sam (11:49)
Well, he’s got to get those feelings out somehow, I guess.

George (11:52)
Okay.

Maartje (11:52)
I want to know about the poisoning of the professor, because in the movie he almost ends up poisoning Niels Bohr accidentally. Did this actually happen?

Sam (12:04)
So he did not accidentally poison Niels Bohr — that was some artistic licence there. He was extremely depressed during this period. A lot of his friends were saying that they didn’t think he was doing well. And then when he tried to poison this professor, I believe he did go back and get rid of the apple that he had poisoned, so it didn’t end up happening. But somehow I think he had told — he was in therapy at the time — when he told his therapist that he had tried to poison the apple, and the therapist wasn’t sure whether that was actually true.

Maartje (12:36)
Hmm. I mean, it’s pretty dicey either way.

Sam (12:39)
Yeah, for sure.

Maartje (12:40)
So for the sake of this podcast, we are not telling the movie plot lines in order of the movie — we’re trying to get through this and it’s quite complex. So don’t expect us to be linear in terms of the movie. But at Strauss’s Senate confirmation hearing in 1959, he states that he and Oppenheimer met at Princeton in 1947, when Strauss recruited Oppenheimer to be the director of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, as well as chairman of the General Advisory Committee at the AEC. This is also the time when Oppenheimer encounters Albert Einstein, played by Tom Conti, and Strauss gets pretty upset because he thinks that Oppenheimer and Einstein were talking about him and that Einstein soured on him because of that. And we find out later that that’s not exactly the case. Strauss at his hearing is asked what he knew about Oppenheimer’s past at the time when he hired him in 1947, including any possible involvement with the Communist Party before the war.

Sam (13:49)
There was a long chapter in the Oppenheimer biography about whether or not he was ever a card-carrying member of the Communist Party. And it just got to the point where I was like — I mean, obviously I don’t live in the context that they lived in — but I’m like, who cares? You know, this is the Great Depression, where capitalism has taken a massive face-plant. They’re seeing many of their countrymen out of work and unable to feed their families. So a lot of people are asking, is this the best possible system that we can live under? And then during the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s, a lot of people were on the side of the anti-fascists, and they would donate money to them via the Communist Party. So being a member of the Communist Party in the 1930s, I think, was quite different from being a member of the Communist Party during the Cold War, when a lot of people perceived that if you were a member of the Communist Party, then you necessarily must be allied with the Soviet Union. Yeah, there was quite a lot of discussion in the book about whether or not he actually joined the party.

Maartje (14:48)
Hmm. Apparently the FBI couldn’t find anything on that, so I’m guessing he wasn’t.

But yeah, just in terms of filmmaking again — this scene with Einstein is one of Christopher Nolan’s little magic touches where you don’t know what’s been said as a viewer, and you kind of have to wait until the very end of the movie to figure that out. And it’s just the kind of thing that Nolan does that creates a mystery you almost forget about for the rest of the movie, and then at the very end he reminds you that that was a little thing still hovering over everyone’s head. And I love that about Nolan.

Sam (15:24)
Yeah, I like the inclusion of Einstein too, because he did live at Princeton for a while and Oppenheimer did know him. It was this strange era of overlap where Einstein was obviously quite famous for the theory of relativity, but a lot of the newer physicists viewed him as a bit out of touch because he didn’t believe in quantum physics — because you couldn’t prove it. And so a lot of the younger guys — the Oppenheimers of the world — were like, yeah, we respect Einstein, but we think he’s really behind the times.

Maartje (15:55)
Yeah. Oppenheimer became his boss, I think, for a while — which is a funny thing to think about if you’re Einstein, the biggest name in physics, and then Oppenheimer becomes your boss.

Sam (16:07)
At Oppenheimer’s security clearance hearing in 1954, he explains how in the 1930s he met Isidor Isaac Rabi, played by David Krumholtz, a fellow physicist and lifelong friend who would go on to work as a consultant on the Manhattan Project and defend Oppenheimer at his hearing. Oppenheimer also describes how he met Werner Heisenberg, played by Matthias Schweighöfer, who would go on to work on the German atomic energy project during the war. Oppenheimer soon starts to teach physics at Caltech and Berkeley in California. And he was essentially the person — or one of the people — who brought theoretical physics to America. He essentially started that department.

Maartje (16:46)
I just want to call out David Krumholtz. I think he’s great in this movie, and he’s such a gentle voice compared to all the very serious scientists — and he feels like a real friend to Oppenheimer, compared to everybody else.

George (17:00)
Yeah, he’s a wonderful actor. I think he’s been very underrated in his career.

Maartje (17:03)
Yes. Another thing about the hearing scenes in general — Oppenheimer is so deflected throughout this whole storyline. It’s such a clear distinction from the time he’s working on the atom bomb to then being at this hearing where his life is being picked apart, and he’s kind of letting it happen in a way. And I think his wife Kitty also kind of accuses him of letting it happen and being like, “Are you trying to punish yourself?” And it’s so well acted — Cillian Murphy’s great.

Sam (17:36)
One of the things that I think is wild too is that you might see this movie and him meeting all of these well-known famous physicists and be like, they’re just including these people because they’re famous — but it’s like, no, he did know all of these people, he did work with them all.

Maartje (17:48)
And they all have a Nobel Prize.

Sam (17:50)
They all have a Nobel Prize except him.

Maartje (17:52)
Another thing really quickly — if you want to learn more about Werner Heisenberg, we did mention him in another episode called —

Sam (18:00)
The Catcher Was a Spy.

Maartje (18:01)
So we talk about him there. So if you want to learn more, there’s more on that.

Oppenheimer meets physicist Ernest Lawrence, played by Josh Hartnett — if you ever wondered where he went, he showed up for this movie — who works on the practical, experimental side of the physics department and is building an electron accelerator. We see Lawrence’s political colours very early when he insists to Oppenheimer that he keep politics out of the lab. Oppenheimer has been hosting gatherings for his students and faculty around labour organising — gatherings that are clearly being surveilled by the FBI, as are many other things. And Oppenheimer has also been sending money to anti-fascist fighters in Spain.

Sam (18:43)
Yeah, it’s pretty wild to think about how much of Oppenheimer’s life he spent under surveillance by the FBI. They were certainly watching him at this point. Throughout the entire post-war period of his life, his phone was tapped, he was followed. The FBI was just determined that they were going to ferret out all of these communist sympathisers.

George (19:04)
And I think too — like you mentioned his passivity in the later scenes — that was something that a lot of people observed about him, according to the book, in real life. He was becoming almost withdrawn, passive, letting things happen — when, you know, throughout his younger life you can see him really heavily involved in politics. And I think if you’ve been surveilled for so long, I imagine that takes a huge toll on even feeling like, what’s the point in me trying to say anything? Everything I’ve done, everything I will do, will be picked apart. I mean, there are lots of other reasons we’ll probably get into that went into that, but I can’t imagine the psychological burden of being under watch for so long.

Maartje (19:44)
And something you said just now triggered a thought, because he was politically quite active, yet he thought of himself as not being politically motivated or involved for a long time — which I thought was an interesting thing to say, being Oppenheimer and doing the things he was doing.

George (20:02)
I think there are a lot of people who would draw a distinction between not being politically engaged — as in, I’m not directly involving myself in politics, not being a card-carrying member of anything, not committing to organisations — and being politically involved in supporting causes, involving myself in organisations and things, but not saying “I’m a member of this organisation,” rather than “I support their ideals or I support their activities.”

Maartje (20:29)
That makes sense.

George (20:29)
And I think possibly that’s the distinction we’re talking about here.

Maartje (20:33)
What also surprised me — and I got this from the documentaries, I’m sure it’s in the book — is that he didn’t read newspapers and didn’t really engage much with the outside world until later in life. I was like, that sounds familiar, that sounds like me. I didn’t care very much at all until I was older. But I would have almost expected Oppenheimer to be very engaged with the world, but he really wasn’t until later in life.

Sam (20:57)
Yeah. And there’s also the fact that the most significant thing he did in his life is deeply political. The fact that he developed the atomic bomb fundamentally changed the existence of humankind forever in so many different ways. And to say that you’re not political when you’re the man who started the atomic age —

When we covered Empire of the Sun, the author of that book described the dropping of the atomic bomb as the slow start to World War Three. And so everything that Oppenheimer did has shaped the subsequent eighty years and will continue to shape global policy in myriad ways.

George (21:28)
Mm-hmm.

Maartje (21:36)
Yes. Sam, I don’t know if you have a quick answer to this, but can you explain for listeners what it means for him to be sending money to anti-fascist fighters in Spain?

Sam (21:48)
Right, yeah. During the late 1930s in Spain there was a war between the anti-fascists and Francisco Franco’s fascists for control of the country. And many people — Americans and people who weren’t Spanish — got involved in the Spanish Civil War. We talked about this in our episode about Gellhorn and Hemingway, because Martha Gellhorn and Ernest Hemingway were both war correspondents during the Spanish Civil War and also communist supporters at different moments of their lives. And the anti-fascists were supported in many ways by the Russians. So a lot of Americans viewed people who had fought in the Spanish Civil War, or who had contributed to anti-fascist causes during it, as “premature anti-fascists” — and if you were an anti-fascist during that era, then you were potentially secretly a communist, potentially secretly siding with the Soviets. And so Oppenheimer, in sending money over there to support the anti-fascist cause, is doing something that a lot of us today would see as a good thing, but it definitely was something that came up later when his pre-war conduct was being reviewed.

Maartje (22:54)
Yeah, so another thing the FBI would have been looking at — and that’s also going to come up again during his hearing.

Sam (23:02)
Yes.

We’re introduced to Oppenheimer’s brother Frank, played by Dylan Arnold, who will also later find himself in hot water over communist affiliations. I believe both Frank and his wife were card-carrying members of the Communist Party, which dramatically impacted Frank’s career. After the war, he had a hard time getting teaching jobs. He ended up running a ranch for a while just to get away from all the surveillance and everything that was happening around his brother.

And we also meet psychiatrist Jean Tatlock, played by Florence Pugh, who was an enduring romantic flame for Robert even after his later marriage. And we are also introduced to the New Mexico Desert — a place for which Robert had an enduring affection and which he would later recommend as the location for the Manhattan Project.

George, do you want to talk about how the people who already lived at Los Alamos were not consulted about the location of the Manhattan Project?

George (23:52)
You know that I do. I think they mention it a couple of times in the film — I think there’s a line about the local Indians performing burial rites there, or something like that. But there were people living there. There were people who had rights there. There was a school there. There were obviously the local Native Americans. They were displaced. And I think some of them got compensation later, but I believe that compensation was, one, not great, and two, there’s a big disparity in who got it. And I know that when the film came out there was a large and quite rightful outcry that this was just so completely glossed over — that we didn’t spend any time on it.

To give it more detail — in 1942, the families were given like two days to pack up and leave. Can you imagine the military turning up at your door and saying, “Get out, we’re not telling you why”? And then you just leave your homes and your lands, and then you are never allowed back — which is what happened. And then actually the thought of leaving your home and later finding out that something so massive and so horrific has been happening there — again, compensation notwithstanding, the psychological toll that must take on your families. That’s wild to think about.

Sam (25:15)
Yeah, there’s a line later on in the film, I think, where Oppenheimer is asked what he thinks is going to happen to Los Alamos now, and he says, “Well, I guess we’ll give it back to the Indians.” And they’re like, “Actually no, we’re going to keep building bombs down there.” So —

Maartje (25:28)
In the documentary they talk to one of the school children, who just talks about the day when a bunch of bulldozers showed up and no one knew what was going on. And they also later talk to a rancher whose ranch was used as one of the shelters for the Trinity test. He was also moved, and he said they didn’t tell them why — they just had to go. So yeah. In some of the documentaries you can listen to these people talk if you want to. I’ll put all the documentaries on the website, by the way — they’re all on YouTube.

Sam (26:02)
How do we think Christopher Nolan dealt with the character of Jean Tatlock?

Maartje (26:07)
I think in general Christopher Nolan and women aren’t the best combination, maybe. I didn’t hate it. I was glad that she was given some dialogue. I did read up a little bit about Jean Tatlock and her relationship with Robert Oppenheimer, and apparently it was a very tumultuous relationship, which I did get sort of from the movie. But she was kind of used in the movie as something for Oppenheimer to cry about, and I’m not sure I like that.

George (26:37)
No. I don’t think, to be fair, the book gives her a lot of credit either. And it’s really clear how closely Nolan was focused on the book’s portrayal in some ways. I think Florence Pugh did a lot with not very much — I think she gave Jean a depth I’m not convinced is there in the writing. But yeah, as you’re right — to me, Jean felt like a vehicle for Robert’s emotions. And I think that was really borne out by the slightly controversial scene in which she gets him to read, and he reads the “I am become death” line in the middle of a sex scene. Which I actually don’t hate — I think it actually works in the context of the scene, and then it comes back obviously later on during the Trinity test. But to me it also felt like the “destroyer of worlds” — “I’ve destroyed this woman.” And it sort of gives you the sense that her only purpose in life was Robert, which I don’t think is true. And I think the film does that a little bit with Kitty as well. Because, you know, she has quite a throwaway line about her previous husband. And it’s sort of implied that Kitty didn’t support — was quite dismissive in the movie — of his involvement in the Spanish Civil War, whereas in real life she was desperate to be out there with him. She was absolutely heartbroken when he’s killed. And in the movie, it feels like her life begins only when she meets Robert. And to me, both women are not well served.

Sam (28:01)
Yeah, and a lot of people came away from this movie thinking of it as the Florence Pugh tits-out movie, because she’s just — they’re just out a lot. And I’m like, this woman was a doctor. Can we give her some sense of grounding and gravity, and some sense of her as a person outside of Robert? I don’t know.

George (28:20)
Impossible. She’s still a woman — that’s the only characterisation they get.

Maartje (28:24)
I wonder if part of that is because it’s told so thoroughly through Oppenheimer’s perspective that it becomes harder to take anything away from him and see it as a singular thing rather than what Oppenheimer thought of these women — if that makes sense. I’m not saying that’s an excuse for it, but I do wonder if that’s in part the reason for it.

George (28:49)
I think that’s a really charitable reading, when I’m not convinced that Nolan knows what to do with women at all. Any of his movies that I’ve seen —

Maartje (28:55)
Ha ha ha.

George (28:56)
— he just doesn’t.

Maartje (28:57)
I mean, that’s fair. I can agree with that. There is a little bit about Jean in one of the documentaries again, and in the movie it kind of seems like she ends her life because of Robert Oppenheimer — but it’s not that. And the documentary is a little bit more honest about why that happened. It happened six months after she last saw him. In the movie you’re going to feel like it happens in quick succession — but it does not. So to give her a little bit more credit: her life was not all about Oppenheimer.

Sam (29:34)
Yeah. And they were both people who had longstanding mental health issues. So I don’t know that their relationship was helpful, but at the same time she was battling depression, and a lot of that had nothing to do with him.

Maartje (29:46)
I feel like Oppenheimer attracted — or looked for — people as troubled as he was in a way. Like they kind of reinforced it within each other as well.

Sam (29:57)
Yeah. I think our perception of Oppenheimer after the war is not really what he was like in his early life. I mean, he had a fairly happy childhood. His parents were fairly well off. He went to good schools. He was able to visit New Mexico every summer and stay at the ranch of a wealthy friend and go horse riding, and then he was able to go and study in Europe. So I don’t know that he had that difficult a life before he kind of started battling those mental health issues when he was away at university.

Maartje (30:30)
Yeah, I don’t know. I got the sense — again from documentaries, which obviously also have a point of view and tell you a certain story — but I got the sense that he was kind of sickly as a child and he was kind of awkward. And I think he suffered from being a very smart child as well. I think if you’re that smart you always kind of suffer socially, maybe. So I wonder if that also played a part.

George (30:54)
Yeah. One thing that Cillian Murphy does brilliantly in this movie is show Oppenheimer’s very magnetic personality without him necessarily being a charismatic personality. So it’s got that little contradiction, but yeah — he’s got these women who are into him, he’s got circles of friends, he’s doing all of this stuff, but there is still this strange sort of solitariness and awkwardness about him at the same time. It’s really hard to get a read on what his actual personality was like because he seemed to be so contradictory in so many ways, which is absolutely fascinating.

Maartje (31:23)
Yeah. It also surprised me, I think, that people described him as being so magnetic and that people just wanted to be around him. What I saw of him in the documentaries made me feel a little uneasy — but obviously I was not there, so I can’t really tell. Sometimes people just have that kind of aura that pulls people in, I guess.

George (31:46)
I think sometimes when people are super intense, there’s this element of, I want to see what happens next. That’s really appealing.

Sam (31:52)
Yeah. We talked about this when we talked about Lee Miller too — sometimes the people most fascinating to us, especially after their deaths, is the fact that we don’t understand them very well, and we want to.

Maartje (32:03)
Yes.

1938 is when Germany splits the atom for the first time, and this causes quite an uproar. The American scientists are able to replicate this using Lawrence’s particle accelerator, so they know this is a big deal. They also manage to verify it themselves. And then instantly every physicist knows that it is now possible to build an atom bomb. And around the time World War II begins, Robert meets his future wife — we’ve talked about her already — Kitty, played by Emily Blunt. And he soon has to tell Jean that he’s gotten Kitty pregnant and that he intends to marry her, and he goes to see her and says, I want you to hear it from me.

Sam (32:45)
At Oppenheimer’s hearing in 1954, he explains that he was against neutrality in the war initially, since the Soviets were fighting the fascists largely all on their own on the Eastern Front. At the time he was also helping to try and unionise the lab workers, which Lawrence informs him will only serve to keep him off the project. And wartime Oppenheimer resolves to reduce his involvement in left-wing causes so that he can join work on what he knows to be the atom bomb.

Maartje (33:13)
This is when all the trouble begins, everyone.

Sam (33:15)
Yes. There is a part of the movie where Oppenheimer briefly mentions to someone, “It’s not your people they’re putting in the camps,” and that’s I think maybe the only reference we get to Oppenheimer being Jewish. And I think it’s interesting — in the biography he really didn’t identify heavily with Judaism. His parents sent him to a sort of Jewish high school, but he never really wanted to make that a prominent part of his identity. And then of course a lot of the scientists he’s working with are Jewish. And actually I do think they mention at one point the fact that in Germany they’re going to have a harder time because Hitler won’t rely on any Jewish scientists, and he views quantum physics as the “Jewish science.”

Maartje (33:58)
At the Strauss hearing in 1959, Strauss is asked why Oppenheimer’s so-called communist past wasn’t an issue earlier — when Oppenheimer initially received his security clearance to work on the atomic bomb, and then again when he went to work for the AEC.

Strauss tries to pretend that he doesn’t have any beef with Oppenheimer, but we see Oppenheimer making him look very stupid during the war in a hearing about exporting isotopes to Norway — a slight that Strauss clearly never really got over or forgot. This is a man with a really bad grudge.

Sam (34:35)
Yeah. And it’s interesting that all of Oppenheimer’s supposed communist involvement happened either before the war or very early in the war. So when they were doing his background checks for him to work on the bomb and for him to go work at the AEC, they knew about all that stuff and they were like, yeah, it’s fine — and they gave him the clearance anyway. So the movie really draws out that question of: okay, well, all this stuff had already happened the last time you guys cleared him, so why did it become a huge issue when his clearance was up for renewal in 1954?

George (35:08)
I think it goes back to what you were saying about reading and ending up thinking, I don’t care if he was a card-carrying communist or not. Even the narrative almost makes that point, because it’s like, well, at this point, what is the purpose of dragging all of this out? Who is benefiting from putting Oppenheimer through this? And obviously the book and the movie have a very clear answer: Strauss is the one who’s benefiting, and it’s a very vindictive thing. I don’t know enough about all the other reasons why this was happening, but I do think it’s interesting that this is very much the personal angle on it — it’s Oppenheimer being targeted because somebody got really angry with him.

Maartje (35:51)
I also wonder — it’s got to have something to do with his opposition to the hydrogen bomb, right? And a general call for legislation and control, with America not wanting any control because they want to have all the control to themselves.

George (36:08)
There’s an interesting section in the book where they were talking about Oppenheimer having been targeted in this way — it sent shockwaves through the scientific community, because it was really a marker of like, a scientist who, in expressing his views, has been so damaged and attacked and vilified by the government and by these hearings that it’s changed the way scientists will always interact with the government and on projects of this scale. It’s almost put a fear into them — like, I can’t speak out about what I believe is true because I will not be able to work anymore. And I think we see that borne out in so many of the scientists who did speak out. They were denied jobs. Those who were still under contract were gotten rid of in various, let’s say, completely legitimate ways — I’m sure. I’m not sure. That’s very sarcastic. Yeah, it’s a dangerous time to just express a view.

Maartje (37:02)
And what is science if not about the truth, and proof? What is it if not that?

Sam (37:09)
Yep. Oppenheimer would not have been dragged through the mud in this way if he had shut his mouth and gone home after the war. So it’s very much like, you want to continue to be involved in politics — then you will pay.

Kitty gives birth to their son Peter. It’s clear she’s having a difficult time. She’s drinking quite heavily. I think it’s made clearer in the book that she emotionally abused Peter in many ways, and he went on to have a difficult life as a result. Oppenheimer even tries to offload their son on friend and fellow Berkeley professor Haakon Chevalier, played by Jefferson Hall — and this is an important character who will come up later.

Maartje (37:48)
What a terrible time to have a child in general, just as you’re working on a terrible, dangerous project in a war that’s terrible and dangerous. That’s not easy to begin with. And then also, as a baby, being treated so poorly by — I think — both your parents, because I don’t think Oppenheimer was a particularly present father. He couldn’t really be, given everything he was going to do. Yeah, it just makes me sad.

We meet General Leslie Groves, played by Matt Damon, who is of the US Army Corps of Engineers. He recruits Oppenheimer to be the director of the Manhattan Project — which is funny because all of Oppenheimer’s friends had said about him that he could not be trusted to run a hot dog stand, and now he’s called on to direct this huge project.

Oppenheimer goes on to choose Los Alamos as the location where the lab will be built. He also attempts to build a team. And his friend Rabi tells him, as he is asked to join: “I don’t wish the culmination of three centuries of physics to be a weapon of mass destruction.” So Rabi knows what’s up.

Sam (38:59)
Yeah, I did think it was funny that Oppenheimer was known for being a terrible administrator, and then he actually acquitted himself pretty well in that department when he went to Los Alamos — like he figured it out. But I also don’t think you could have made anyone else the director and had Oppenheimer working there, because he was —

Maartje (39:15)
Ha ha!

Sam (39:15)
— just a guy who had to be in charge, you know. I don’t think he would have liked anyone else being in charge.

Maartje (39:21)
Probably not. In the documentary that came out in 1965, we get to see Groves. He speaks in that documentary, and it just made me absolutely hate this man. He shows no remorse about anything to do with the atomic bomb — not once. Unlike all the other people also interviewed, who all have nuance and speak about things with reflection, this man just doesn’t. I was talking to Sam about this before the recording, and Sam very aptly said it was like a military man with a mission — and it was very much like that. Groves was apparently also the one who pushed really hard for Oppenheimer’s security clearance to be granted. So that’s also perhaps one of the reasons why he got it as quickly as he did — thankfully, because he needed it obviously to be able to work on this project.

Sam (40:16)
There really was this distinction at Los Alamos between the army guys and the scientists. And even after the atomic bomb was dropped on Japan, there’s an anecdote in the book about how all the army guys are celebrating — getting roaring drunk and having a party — and meanwhile outside, one of the physicists is throwing up in a bush because he’s sick over what they’ve done.

Maartje (40:38)
Yes.

George (40:39)
Yeah. I think that line from Rabi — “I don’t wish the culmination of three centuries of physics to be a weapon of mass destruction” — is possibly the most powerful statement, or one of the most powerful statements, in the movie. And what really struck me reading the book was this sense of excitement around pushing the boundaries of what physics can do. There are new discoveries, things going on. And then you can see different physicists at different times really realising what was happening — what they were doing. And you know, the shift from the theoretical and the ideation, this exciting new kind of science that’s happening, to actually, I am going to be responsible for this massive bomb. And it’s absolutely fascinating. Obviously, some of them went on and were quite vehemently vocal about, we don’t want this to happen, we don’t want to be involved. And others were like, well, this is the thing, this is what we’re doing, this is the outcome of it — it’s not my problem almost. We’re not the policymakers, we’re just doing the thing. And I find that very hard to stomach. But also I’m not a physicist in this field at this time, with all of these pressures going on. I imagine it was just such a heady soup of emotion and — curiosity is not a strong enough word — excitement, maybe.

Maartje (41:55)
I think it’s drive — a drive to push the boundaries — but it’s also sticking your head in the sand quite a bit. Being like —

George (42:02)
Mm-hmm.

Maartje (42:03)
— look, I’m only responsible for the science part. The rest is up to other people. It’s not my fault.

George (42:09)
Yeah, that sticks in my craw.

Sam (42:11)
Yeah, and a lot of people justified it to themselves as, we have to get the bomb before the Germans do, because whatever they do with it is going to be worse than what we do. And I’m like — would it have been? I don’t know, after we saw what the Americans did in Japan with the atomic bomb. It’s just really interesting, the mental gymnastics that people will go through to resolve this cognitive dissonance and try to absolve themselves of responsibility.

Maartje (42:35)
You know what I find possibly the worst thing about it all? Because for instance the incendiary bombing that the Americans did on Japan was also terrible — but they knew the result and they knew the limit of the damage that would do. But for the atomic bomb they had no idea what exactly would happen. And that’s perhaps the worst thing about it — taking the risk of dropping that bomb on a country, taking the responsibility that they could possibly just commit genocide, just thinking it was worth the risk to drop a bomb not knowing what it would exactly do. It’s just extraordinary.

Sam (43:15)
At least earlier in the war, a lot of people would say to themselves, well, at least we’re trying to bomb military targets, and if we kill some civilians then that’s collateral damage. But there’s no military target big enough to drop an atomic bomb on where you’re not going to cause significant civilian casualties.

Maartje (43:35)
I have some more to say about this later on. I have some thoughts, because the documentary called The Decision to Drop the Bomb — I would recommend you watch it, by the way, it’s interesting — but it just makes me incredibly angry. Because there were also people pushing for: let’s do a demonstration first. Let’s drop the atomic bomb on a mountain, show people what it does, but keep it away from civilian populations. And then it was Oppenheimer who said no, that’s not going to scare the Japanese into submission. And I was like, if you’re going to do it on a populated area, can you not first at least try a test and try to scare them and see if that works? It’s just so frustrating.

Sam (44:20)
Yeah. And the ultimate result of them dropping it on Japan — effectively they had scheduled their land invasion of Japan for November, but if they’d waited that long, they would have had to share the victory with the Soviets. And you can’t win a pissing contest with the Soviets unless you drop an atomic bomb on some people and show them what it can do. And it really just wasn’t even about Japan at all in many ways. The whole thing is very monstrous — it’s hard to take it all in and understand what was going through these guys’ minds when they worked on this project.

Maartje (44:48)
Maybe that’s why the 1965 documentary is so interesting, because the Soviets are not mentioned in that one — probably because of the time it was made in. And you’re just saying, look, we predict that if we go to mainland Japan, a million people will die in that ensuing battle. But obviously I hadn’t even considered the politics of the Soviets and having to share the victory with them. They’re not mentioned in the documentary. But wow.

Sam (45:19)
We’re introduced to Edward Teller, played by Benny Safdie, who will go on to be the father of the hydrogen bomb after the war. Teller informs the team that he’s calculated that there’s a possibility that an atomic explosion could ignite the atmosphere. Oppenheimer has an inconclusive meeting with Einstein about this. Einstein is like, well, you’d better find out, and then when you find out, tell the Germans so that they also stop. Ha!

But by the time Oppenheimer gets back to Los Alamos, the director of the theoretical physics component of the lab, Hans Bethe, played by Gustaf Skarsgård, tells him that Teller is very likely wrong. He’s like, yeah, it probably won’t ignite the atmosphere — don’t worry about it. It’s ultimately difficult to get Teller to work on the calculations he’s been asked to do for the atomic project, because he’s so focused on this hydrogen bomb thing. So Oppenheimer gives him the opportunity to focus on the H-bomb instead. And after the war, the two of them will ultimately be at loggerheads about this.

Maartje (46:14)
Again, so many grudges. Teller, even after Oppenheimer’s hearing, continued to badmouth Oppenheimer in scientific papers, and he pretty much made sure Oppenheimer never set foot in another physics lab again. And I don’t think he ever did any physics after his hearing.

Sam (46:34)
Yeah. Oppenheimer seemed to be one of those polarising figures where the people who did not like him viewed the people who did as kind of his followers — like, these people are in the cult of Opie, sort of thing.

Maartje (46:47)
By the way, the nickname “Opie” is such a chummy kind of nickname that doesn’t quite fit his character at all. You’re like, this is too cuddly for this person.

Sam (46:58)
Yes. I believe it comes from one of his Dutch friends calling him something like “Opie,” and then it just got anglicised into “Opie.” So we can blame the Dutch for that one.

Maartje (47:11)
No, I’m sorry.

Sam (47:13)
Ha ha!

I just also wanted to add that Teller is so sweaty in this movie.

George (47:18)
He’s so shiny. My goodness.

Sam (47:20)
And I’m like, they’re in the New Mexico desert, he’s probably really hot, but man, he’s really sweaty.

Maartje (47:25)
We’re back at the Oppenheimer hearing in 1954. Oppenheimer is called to explain something that happened between him and Chevalier: when they were having dinner at Oppenheimer’s house, Chevalier mentioned that there might be someone willing to give information to the Soviets if Oppenheimer wanted to pass any on. And Oppenheimer reminds Chevalier that that would be treason, and that’s where that conversation ends. But it won’t end for either of these two gentlemen, because it will haunt them for the rest of their lives. Meanwhile, at Strauss’s hearing, he learns that they are bringing in scientists to testify, and he’s worried about who that will be and what they will say. Knowing that he alienated many in the scientific community through his involvement in the Oppenheimer hearing, we very slowly start getting the sense that maybe Strauss isn’t as friendly with Oppenheimer as he pretends to be.

Sam (48:30)
Yeah. I think the whole thing with the Chevalier incident also became even more important in the eyes of the J. Edgar Hoovers of the world who were surveilling him, because Oppenheimer was quite open about suggesting that the Americans should share their atomic knowledge with the Soviets, because they were allies. And the fact that he was quite open to the idea of passing this information along — he was like, yeah, we should do it through the correct channels — and they said, well, we shouldn’t do it at all. So the fact that he was quite outspoken about that, I think, made this incident look much more sinister.

Maartje (49:05)
Yes. And I also didn’t necessarily realise that when Oppenheimer talks to the security officer about this, that conversation is being recorded and transcribed in real time as they’re having it.

Sam (49:22)
When Oppenheimer was having his security clearance hearing later, the reason why he wasn’t charged with treason and they didn’t have an actual criminal trial was because all the evidence, so-called, that they had against him was from illegal wiretaps — and none of that is admissible in an actual court.

Maartje (49:36)
Yeah. So it was a kangaroo court instead.

Sam (49:40)
Kitty arrives in Los Alamos along with the other scientists’ wives. They’ve built this whole little town around the base, and all the wives are working as clerks and doing data entry and all that kind of thing, because they already have the security clearance — so why not? The atomic bomb team discuss the Halifax Explosion — a Canadian reference — which was until that time the largest man-made explosion in history. And they discuss the merits of plutonium versus uranium versus hydrogen for the makeup of the bomb. All of the plutonium and uranium will have to be processed, which will take some time. So they have these two bowls that they put marbles in — every time some plutonium or uranium is processed, they throw another couple of marbles in, and once the container is full, they’ll know they have enough material for a bomb.

George (50:24)
As someone who took Latin instead of science at school, I really appreciated that visual. I can understand that bit.

Maartje (50:30)
Ha ha ha ha! I also can understand that bit. It does make it scarily playful though — looking at it in terms of marbles in a bowl and all of them cheering when a marble gets added. It gives me a weird feeling.

Sam (50:47)
Yeah, yeah.

George (50:47)
I think that’s good. I think that’s quite powerful. Because I think — and I’m going to trust Nolan here — that’s exactly what he wanted to evoke, right? The fact that this is not real until it very much is.

Maartje (50:58)
Yeah. I have a question for you both — how old do you think you have to be to appreciate this movie? I wonder if you’re like seventeen, you would understand exactly what this movie is trying to do.

George (51:11)
It’s been a really long time since I was seventeen.

Maartje (51:14)
I know, same. But I feel like if I’d watched this when I was seventeen, I would not have understood just how creepy it all is.

George (51:23)
Looking back, you know, when you sort of review your own life and the things that you were thinking and feeling at seventeen, and then putting it in context — a lot of these guys were quite young as well. And thinking, you know, what decisions did I make at that age, and how could I actually justify those decisions to myself? You know, was I mature enough? Was my understanding of life expansive enough to really understand everything I was doing? I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s a question of whether a seventeen-year-old could understand it, as opposed to a different kind of appreciation for what’s happening at different points. And I think some of the best movies you do revisit at different points in your life and find something new in them every time. And I actually genuinely think Oppenheimer might be one of those movies. I’d be really interested to see it in twenty years’ time when I’m older.

Maartje (52:14)
If we’re still here — if we haven’t blown ourselves up by that point.

Sam (52:18)
Yeah. Yeah. If we haven’t all faced Oppenheimer’s legacy by then.

Maartje (52:22)
And it’s an interesting point you make, George — because a lot of the lead scientists in this were the Nobel Prize winners, but a lot of people working under them were just recently graduated physicists. And they were like twenty-two or even twenty-one. So you’re like, are you even capable of grasping the consequences of what you’re doing? I doubt it, really.

Sam (52:45)
Yeah. And I mean, they’re working in a field that’s largely theoretical. Most of them haven’t done anything like building a bomb before.

Maartje (52:52)
No.

George (52:53)
If you think as well — because of all the secrecy around Los Alamos, they are physically removed from the world at large whilst this is all going on. So again, the perspective shifts when you are divorced from the world. I keep saying it, but psychologically there are so many fascinating things about what was going on here. What does your mind even take from what you’re doing when you’re in that situation?

Maartje (53:21)
Yeah. I bet there is a real great sense of community too, because you’re all working with these brilliant people and there’s one great cause, and it’s exciting and new, and you know you’re doing something that’s supposed to be patriotic and that’s exciting. But yeah, I agree — it must be such a mindfuck too, especially afterwards, when you have to go back to real life. How do you even go back to normal life after that?

George (53:47)
And I think that’s something we often ask ourselves about the military in wartime — you know, how war changes you, the mindsets that people who are fighting go through. And this is a chance for us to think, well, they aren’t military, but they are so directly involved in it. What are they thinking, feeling, going through? What changes them? And it’s that single same question that I think is why we all get so fascinated with war films, war stories, and war history.

Sam (54:15)
Yeah. They spent some time in the book talking about how initially Groves wanted all the scientists at Los Alamos to enlist — he wanted them to actually be in the military. And we see that briefly in the movie, where Oppenheimer is wearing a military uniform and one of his friends says, you know, take off that uniform, you’re a scientist, not a soldier. Is the difference really that binary in a project like this?

Maartje (54:36)
No. I would say no.

George (54:37)
Well — is it something protective? If you are not in uniform, you can tell yourself, “I’m not political” — air quotes.

Maartje (54:44)
Back at the Strauss hearing, the topic of Oppenheimer’s ultimate opposition to the hydrogen bomb comes up. Strauss remembers the disagreements he’d had during a 1949 meeting with Oppenheimer after the Russians tested their first bomb.

Sam (55:01)
However big the explosion was for the atomic bomb, the explosion related to a hydrogen bomb would have been many, many times as big. And Oppenheimer is now in a place where he has been wrestling with the fact that he is the father of the atomic bomb for four years since it was dropped on Japan, and now the US military is going bigger, better — we’re going to get this huge, massive super bomb, and that’s going to be the answer. And it’s like, well, you guys thought the atomic bomb was going to be the answer.

Maartje (55:33)
Yeah. I think we can sort of conclude that no bomb is ever going to be the answer to anything.

Sam (55:39)
Right. Like in the nineties there were those bumper stickers that said, “Fighting for peace is like f***ing for virginity.” You’re never going to be able to coerce and enforce world peace with ever greater acts of violence. It just doesn’t work that way.

Maartje (55:54)
No.

George (55:54)
And we’re trying it all over again.

Sam (55:56)
Yes. We’ve never stopped.

Maartje (55:56)
Yes. No.

Sam (55:58)
A British contingent of scientists arrives at Los Alamos during the war, including Klaus Fuchs, played by Christopher Denham. This is relevant because Fuchs will later be discovered to be a Soviet spy. So this obviously comes up during Oppenheimer’s hearing and what he might have known, et cetera. In the 1949 meeting after the Soviet bomb testing, Major General Kenneth Nichols, played by Dane DeHaan — he’s the deputy district engineer and head of security on the Manhattan Project — brings up the security issues at the Manhattan Project. So Oppenheimer’s own security clearance had been delayed. They were bringing on people to the project with so-called questionable political pasts. There was this lack of compartmentalisation that they didn’t like — the army obviously wanted to keep these guys working in different silos, and the scientists couldn’t work like that. In this meeting, Oppenheimer wants arms talks with the Soviets, but Strauss is convinced that only by developing a super-bomb can the Americans, quote-unquote, stay ahead of the Soviets.

Maartje (56:53)
So the first time I watched this movie I didn’t understand what was happening at the table during those talks. The second time I did. So that’s your cue, I guess, to watch it again if you didn’t understand it the first time.

Sam (57:07)
Yeah, this is when it starts to get all political, I suppose.

Maartje (57:10)
Yes. It does help to look some things up as you’re watching the movie, or before, just to get a sense of what was going on politically — because if you don’t know, it’s really quite confusing.

George (57:22)
I have to say, watching the movie again having read the book, being able to name who these people were and their relationships with each other — which the movie obviously can’t go into because it’s a three-hour movie, not an eleven-hundred-page book — really changed a lot of my understanding of it.

Sam (57:40)
Yeah, I agree.

Maartje (57:41)
For the people who don’t like reading — if you watch the three documentaries I watched in succession —

George (57:46)
Yeah.

Maartje (57:47)
— you also get a good idea of what’s going on.

Sam (57:50)
And you know what — Dane DeHaan plays such a good, weaselly, mean-eyed little man.

Maartje (57:55)
Oppenheimer visits Chicago where Enrico Fermi, played by Danny DeFerrari — what a great name — and Leo Szilard, played by Máté Haumann, are working on a self-sustaining nuclear reaction, which is also part of the Manhattan Project.

Sam (58:10)
Szilard is one of the scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project and was quite vocal about his opposition to actually using the bomb. And this part is also notable because Groves hits the roof when this happens, because this is Oppenheimer violating the compartmentalisation protocol again. He’s not supposed to go to the Chicago lab, he’s not supposed to know what’s going on there.

Maartje (58:30)
I almost wish that Szilard was given a slightly bigger part in the movie, because you kind of almost forget him, I think — I had kind of forgotten this scene even, even though he’s such an important voice against the bomb. It would have been interesting to give him a bigger part. And is he also the one we see with Rami Malek at the petition later?

Sam (58:55)
Yeah, that’s him.

Maartje (58:56)
That’s him, right? Yes. Right. That’s what I mean — I’d already kind of forgotten who’s who because there are so many.

Sam (59:02)
Oppenheimer sees Jean for the last time in 1943. Shortly thereafter she dies by suicide. I think the way they depicted this was really effective. Oppenheimer also mentions the Chevalier incident to military intelligence officer Boris Pash, played by Casey Affleck — which turns out to be a mistake, because Pash is like a dog with a bone about that thing.

Maartje (59:21)
He is also freaking terrifying in this role. I don’t know — I thought he was completely unnerving. I think that’s kind of the point. And this is where Oppenheimer makes the mistake of trying to be very vague and then making up a complete fabrication to sort of make it a believable story. In the documentary about the trial, you hear his words as he explains why he did it, and he calls himself an idiot for doing it — because once you start lying, the bigger the story you tell, the harder it is to get out of it, and it just makes it bigger and bigger. And obviously this was recorded and transcribed and would come back to hurt him later.

Bohr arrives at Los Alamos — but not to help with the bomb. He’s concerned about what comes after. In 1949, Oppenheimer tries to convince Strauss of the need for world cooperation on atomic energy. Back in 1945, the war ends with Germany, and some of the scientists are unconvinced that they should continue to work on the bomb. But Oppenheimer believes it is the path to permanent world peace. Versus it’s not, as we’ve just discussed.

Sam (1:00:33)
Yeah. It’s just such a wild thing to think — you know, if we’re going to develop a weapon so big and bad that no one will ever start a war again, and it’s like, do you not think the fact that you have a weapon that big and bad will be the cause of a war?

Maartje (1:00:45)
And there is a scene where we see some of the scientists organise a bit of a meeting about whether or not they should continue to build the bomb. And Oppenheimer attends this meeting — and this happened in real life as well. This was an actual meeting. The fact that Oppenheimer attended it put a lot of pressure on proceedings and maybe made people afraid to say what they really thought about it. So not great.

George (1:01:11)
With the war with the Germans sort of coming to an end, that was another point where people really got confronted with what they were doing. Because if you’re compartmentalising by saying this is going to stop the Germans, this is what we’re doing — and then suddenly that moment has passed. What happens now? And it introduces a whole new set of uncertainties you have to grapple with. And even if Oppenheimer is thinking ahead, the others have got to sit there and try and figure out what he’s thinking. And I did get the sense from some of them that they weren’t always sure what his position would ultimately end up being on any of this. And that held true later as well, where they would think, okay, Oppenheimer understands my position — because he was very good at understanding and synthesising your position — and take that as a natural sign that he is supporting it. But actually he wasn’t supportive, and in his communications with the government and with the military he would be more in favour of their point of view. And I think a lot of the scientists would be beginning to grapple with that understanding as well.

Sam (1:02:13)
He definitely became quite conservative. He was far and away not the most vocal Los Alamos scientist after the war. And as you say, a lot of the scientists would approach him with their concerns and he would be like, yeah, yeah, I hear you — but then he would go and have a meeting with government higher-ups and that would not be the position he would express.

I got the impression from the book that he was very concerned about remaining a Washington insider. He really wanted to continue to have input into the atomic energy projects. And in order to do that, he had to toe the party line in a lot of ways. And it even came to a point where he’s being interviewed by the FBI and he is name-dropping former students as communists — you know, he’s so desperately still trying to stay part of this inner circle.

George (1:02:55)
And that’s a fantastic example of why he’s so polarising. Because you can take a very charitable view of it: if he’s not on the inside, then he’s on the outside, and he has no say, no chance of stopping anything, no chance of swaying anyone. But also there’s the other view, which is that he’s being incredibly self-serving — making sure he’s on the inside by throwing all these other people under the bus. And I imagine the truth is somewhere within those extremes. But you can see why it was so easy for both his friends and his enemies to construct their own narratives of who Oppenheimer was.

Maartje (1:03:28)
And isn’t that also the most almost cynical thing — no matter how hard he tried, no matter who he threw under the bus, in the end he was on the outside and he wasn’t allowed to influence anything anymore. So it’s easy to say with hindsight, really, but he was never going to be able to stop the progression of those bombs.

Sam (1:03:51)
The scientists begin preparations for the Trinity test. This is where they’ll be testing the atomic bomb for the first time. Oppenheimer brings his brother Frank out to help. Szilard tries to get Oppenheimer to convince Henry Stimson, played by James Remar — the Secretary of War — not to actually use the bomb on the Japanese. But Stimson insists that the Japanese won’t surrender otherwise. And this is the great post-war narrative about the whole situation: yeah, if we didn’t drop the bomb on Japan, we would have had to invade and it would have cost a lot of American lives. And there is quite a lot of documentary evidence that that was not necessarily the case.

Maartje (1:04:27)
Even if that were the case, even if there were clear evidence that a lot of Americans were going to die — you’re also saying in the same breath, well, okay, so American lives are more important than Japanese citizens’ lives. Like, they are less than us. So we can just bomb them and that’ll be that.

There’s also a really interesting question: would the Americans have dropped the bomb on Germany, on Europeans, versus the Japanese, who are Asian people?

Sam (1:04:57)
Yeah.

George (1:04:58)
I wasn’t sure I was feeling brave enough to ask that question. It’s a really difficult one because you still get people today saying, “We had to do it, we had to do it, and Japan hasn’t apologised enough for what they did in the war.” And I think you cannot have an open discussion of what would have happened without a lot of active racism colouring it.

Maartje (1:05:18)
I also think it’s an impossible question to answer, really, because we are never going to know. But we do know there was a lot of hatred towards the Japanese that was rooted in racism, and it did make me wonder — and I thought it was an interesting exercise for myself, at least — to think about: would this have happened in Europe? A lot of countries surrounding Europe are obviously allies, which also complicated things. But I think the racist angle is the most pressing one in that question, and I don’t expect us to know the answer. But I did want to ask it.

Sam (1:05:57)
There very much was a racial hatred component of the war in the Pacific that didn’t exist in the war with the Germans. A lot of people viewed Germans as people who look like them, people who have cultures similar to theirs, and so it made it easier for people to imagine German civilians as people in a way that I don’t think they did with the Japanese. And as we said, a lot of the reason why the Americans dropped the bomb on Japan was to show the Soviets what they could do. And you know, that’s a lot of people to make into collateral damage just to get a message across.

Maartje (1:06:33)
Despite some last-minute issues, including the weather for one, the Trinity test is successful. Oppenheimer is in the bunker with his brother. And it’s very quiet, and then all he says is, “It worked.” And it’s very effective. Also the explosion is very effective from a filmmaking standpoint — it’s very frightening. And I think it was very frightening for people in real life. And Oppenheimer begins to realise at this point that what happens with the bomb now is no longer in his hands. And I think even at the point of the Trinity test in real life, the bomb is already moving out of Los Alamos on its way toward wherever it was going — so they didn’t even know it was moving. And not to forget — at this point, as they’re doing this test, they could still be igniting the atmosphere, and they were still placing bets on whether or not they would.

George (1:07:30)
The whole sequence is stunning.

And I really want to shout out the soundtrack at this point. Right from the beginning of the movie, the soundtrack is absolutely incredible in drawing you into the tension. I just saw a play called Cleansed, and they did a very similar thing where there was so much tension just in constant, uncomfortable noise. And they do that when Oppenheimer is dissociating, I think, almost — or going back into his memories — in a lot of scenes. You can feel his tension, his anxiety. And then during this test it’s silent. Complete silence for a while, and you only hear his breathing. And that is so powerful, because it gives you that absence — like, this is the only thing that is happening. You’re not processing anything, you’re not doing anything. It’s just you and your body. And then it slowly comes back in, and you get the realisations of what’s happening, and then the aftermath, and so on, and you can come back into it. But that moment of silence is phenomenal.

Sam (1:08:35)
Yes, and it makes the ensuing sound wave crashing down on them so much more violent, almost. And it really does make that long moment of silence feel like the deep breath before the storm.

George (1:08:48)
Mm-hmm.

Maartje (1:08:48)
Yes. Another thing you mentioned about the soundtrack — it uses something called the Shepard tone, which is a scale that creates the illusion of sound perpetually rising or falling in pitch when it really isn’t. It’s an audio illusion, and it’s incredibly unnerving. And that’s what’s used in the soundtrack throughout. It’s most famously, I think, in the opening when we meet young Oppenheimer, but it’s really effective in making everything feel really tense and uncomfortable.

Soon after — and as was Oppenheimer’s fear — he keeps calling Groves and asking to be kept informed about what happens, but he no longer gets informed. Because soon after, the first bomb is dropped on Hiroshima. After which Oppenheimer gives a strange speech at Los Alamos to his scientists, and they all start stamping their feet. And Oppenheimer once again dissociates and starts seeing the victims of his bomb, and it’s absolutely terrifying.

Sam (1:09:55)
Yes. And we have heard the feet stamping before in the movie, but we didn’t necessarily have context for it. We heard the stamping when Jean Tatlock died by suicide and at a few other moments that were really emotionally impactful for Oppenheimer. And it’s an unsettling sound — it reminds you of an oncoming train, just picking up speed, going faster and faster. And you know, this is the part of the movie where things are out of his control now.

Maartje (1:10:22)
The speech kind of starts and people are like chanting his name — “Opie, Opie, Opie!” — and it turns into people screaming, as obviously that would have been the sound of people dying.

Sam (1:10:33)
And as we’ve sort of touched on, the apocryphal story of Oppenheimer supposedly quoting a verse from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita — “I am become death, destroyer of worlds.” There’s sort of a story that he said that at the Trinity test, but that is not really what happened. He kind of mentioned it in a letter later, or something, and someone was like, wow, that’s incredible — imagine if he said that at the Trinity test. But anyway.

Oppenheimer had actually studied Sanskrit so he could read the Bhagavad Gita in its original format, which I think is very telling about what kind of person he was.

Maartje (1:11:00)
And he also knew how to speak to pretty much every scientist in their own language, which I think is another testament to that.

Sam (1:11:08)
Oppenheimer has a meeting with President Harry Truman, played by Gary Oldman. Truman is convinced the Russians will never get the bomb. Oppenheimer makes a sort of emotional plea where he says he feels like he has blood on his hands — and after that, Truman calls him a crybaby. It basically destroys any relationship they were going to have.

Oppenheimer begins to advocate for transparency — he calls it candour — with the Soviets about nuclear energy, especially after Stimson admits that Japan was effectively defeated when the bombs were dropped. And at the 1954 hearing, Oppenheimer is asked about his post-war opposition to the development of the hydrogen bomb, which is viewed as suspicious, as we’ve mentioned. And there is a moment at the Strauss hearing where they’re having a little meeting — it’s Robert Downey Jr. and a couple of his associates — and one of those associates is sitting there just eating a bowl of soup, which made me laugh out loud when I first watched the movie. I was like, what undignified meeting food. And then I realised that was Scott Grimes from Band of Brothers. And I was like, hell yeah, Scott, eat that soup.

Maartje (1:12:09)
It’s fantastic. I wonder how that moment ended up in the movie — whether it was from real life or just a happy coincidence. I just want to know.

Sam (1:12:20)
My god, was Scott Grimes’ character known for being a meeting soup eater?

Maartje (1:12:24)
Ha ha! I’m definitely going to tag Scott Grimes in a post about this when I eventually do it on Instagram, and be like, Scott, tell me all about this scene.

Sam (1:12:32)
Yeah. Well, what kind of soup was it? Like, we need to know the details.

Maartje (1:12:36)
Was it good?

To no one’s surprise at this point, it turns out that Strauss was the one who instigated the security clearance hearing against Oppenheimer in order to destroy his credibility so he wouldn’t be able to influence atomic policy anymore. It’s a great shitty move. We see the moments that clearly indicate the inherent unfairness of the Oppenheimer hearing, including how Teller and Groves were guided into saying they wouldn’t approve his security clearance today — that is to say, on the day of the hearing. Kitty appears at the hearing and acquits herself really well. She’s kind of a badass, to be honest. Einstein tries to tell Robert to just quit the whole AEC advisory committee rather than putting himself through all this, but Oppenheimer in a way seems almost convinced that he needs to suffer somehow. So he does.

Sam (1:13:26)
Yeah, and it also really feels like an ego thing. He could make this stop at any time just by resigning from the AEC, and he won’t do it because he’s determined that he’s right, and people are going to see that he’s right.

Maartje (1:13:38)
Funny — I got the real sense that he wanted to be punished for the horrible things he’d done.

Sam (1:13:44)
Yeah, maybe. It’s because I read the book, but I’m unconvinced that Oppenheimer regretted building the atomic bomb. I think that in some ways he wrestled with it, but I also think that he liked being part of that moment in history and he liked being so renowned for it.

Maartje (1:14:04)
Yeah. I can also see this being just really well acted on Cillian Murphy’s part. Like, it’s so resigned. He’s going through all this — and I think the only one with some nerve in this situation is Kitty.

Sam (1:14:19)
Yeah. And I also just think that in his mind he needed to stay connected to the AEC. He needed to stay involved, because once he’d had a taste for having that kind of power — for having people listen to what he had to say — he didn’t want to give it up. And so he didn’t want to simply resign from the AEC. He wanted to stay involved if there was any possibility for him to do so.

Maartje (1:14:41)
Interesting. Obviously I haven’t read the book. I’m sure it would feel the same way if I had. I also really enjoyed — though I didn’t completely understand what happened — the fact that Lawrence was supposed to be there to testify against him, and then ended up not showing up, possibly to save him.

Sam (1:14:59)
Yeah. In the book he gets ill the night before, so I don’t know — I can’t say that he didn’t show up for Oppenheimer’s benefit, or whether he genuinely was ill.

Maartje (1:15:09)
Maybe it was just a lucky coincidence. I did really enjoy seeing Josh Hartnett in something again in 2023. I was like, hey, I remember him — where has he gone? He’s good. He’s good in a serious role. I’d only ever seen him in films like Pearl Harbor and things like that.

Sam (1:15:25)
Your favourite film?

The tables have turned in 1959, because now it’s Strauss who has to be anxious about who will testify against him. A nuclear physicist named David Hill, played by Rami Malek — by the way, when I first saw this movie and I’d heard that Rami Malek was going to be in it, and then he appears in like the last twenty minutes, I was like, what is happening? Anyway, he appears at the hearing and begins to articulate the damage that Strauss has done.

Strauss is furious, telling his associates all about Oppenheimer’s supposed lack of regret for the bomb — trying to justify how he behaved towards him.

Maartje (1:15:58)
I don’t know if I’d registered that we’d seen Rami Malek earlier at the petition signing. And I also wondered later whether he’d have thought Oppenheimer was a bit of a so-and-so, since Oppenheimer had slapped the petition papers out of his hand. I was like, he’s lucky this scientist is even here speaking on his behalf at this meeting.

Sam (1:16:19)
Yeah. I think Hill is very representative of the way a lot of scientists felt — which was, as we were kind of saying earlier, that what happened to Oppenheimer was a canary in the coal mine for scientists having their freedom of speech very much reduced and restricted. And, you know, even if he personally perhaps had minor issues with Oppenheimer, it was really more about what his case represented to the scientific community.

Maartje (1:16:44)
Oppenheimer’s security clearance is denied at the 1954 hearing. However, Strauss’s cabinet nomination is also denied, so they both get absolutely nothing. And there was no way Oppenheimer’s security clearance was going to be reinstated anyway — he was set up to lose this one.

Sam (1:17:06)
Yeah, for sure. And Strauss really — he got the FBI heavily involved. He perhaps misrepresented the truth when he told Eisenhower about all of Oppenheimer’s activities. He really seemed to have it in for Oppenheimer, and so the way he behaved was very transparently vindictive to others. Many people saw what Strauss was up to, and the fact that this whole crusade against Oppenheimer was kind of a witch hunt.

Maartje (1:17:33)
Yeah.

Sam (1:17:34)
We flash back to the moment when Oppenheimer spoke with Einstein in 1947. And Einstein says to him, “Now it’s your turn to deal with the consequences of your achievement.” We see Oppenheimer receive a presidential medal late in his life — the Enrico Fermi Award. And actually, he was supposed to receive that award from JFK, but JFK was assassinated a couple of weeks before it was to happen, so he ended up receiving it from Lyndon Johnson instead. And this award indicates a kind of changing of public opinion towards him — obviously the US administration has softened towards him. But we see him say, in response to Einstein’s remark about destroying the world: “I believe we did” — meaning they did destroy the world.

Maartje (1:18:12)
Very strong ending to a movie, I thought. It gave me chills the first time I heard him say it. And still did the second time.

George (1:18:21)
I think I’ve seen a lot of people say this is a very pro-Oppenheimer movie, but I do think it asks a lot of questions and leaves them open.

Maartje (1:18:30)
It wasn’t really for Oppenheimer or against him — it was kind of in the middle.

I really liked the fact that Kitty was the only one who refused to shake Teller’s hand, because Teller came to the ceremony for Oppenheimer’s medal, and Oppenheimer shook his hand — as he did at the hearing — and Kitty refused. And I was like: yes, Kitty, get it.

George (1:18:56)
Excellent jaw acting.

Sam (1:18:58)
Yes, and that’s the impression I got from the real Kitty as well. She did not suffer fools — particularly Oppenheimer’s opponents — very well. And even though she obviously had a bit of a troubled life, and their marriage was troubled at times, they were both extremely supportive of each other.

Maartje (1:19:16)
So we have some notes.

Sam (1:19:26)
So a postscript about the main characters. Oppenheimer died of throat cancer in 1967. He was an extremely heavy smoker — even after he was diagnosed with cancer and was getting radiation treatment, he gave up cigarettes but would still smoke his pipe. So yeah, made some questionable decisions. I believe he was sixty-two when he died, so not an extremely old man.

His wife Kitty died five years later of an embolism, and their daughter unfortunately died by suicide five years after that. His son went on to live a long, somewhat reclusive life in New Mexico. I believe he was divorced a couple of times. I think both children had fairly unhappy childhoods.

George (1:20:04)
Yeah. I mean, it sounded to me from the book that both their parents were, in different ways, quite either neglectful or emotionally abusive to both of their children. And then to couple that — which is traumatic enough on its own — with this intense scrutiny where your own name has so much meaning to so many people. I am not surprised that his son took himself off to live a reclusive life. It’s sad that this was another disruption he was responsible for in some ways — not entirely on his shoulders, absolutely. But it did not sound like he was the best father.

Maartje (1:20:39)
No. It’s interesting to me that at least his son — Peter, I guess — went on to live in New Mexico, because apparently Oppenheimer did not really return to New Mexico again, not even to his beloved ranch. So I guess it rather soured for him.

Sam (1:20:55)
So he and Kitty started to spend quite a lot of time at a tropical island called Saint John. And their daughter lived with them there for a period of time, but their son never did. They went on to live this fairly reclusive life on a beach — went sailing, hosted parties. But once Oppenheimer was out of the limelight, he was out.

Oppenheimer’s persecution for his one-time communist beliefs reflects the anti-communist hysteria in the United States at the beginning of the Cold War, known as the Red Scare. The famous figurehead here is Senator Joseph McCarthy. He became well known in 1950 for alleging that there was a Soviet spy ring within the US government, attacking politicians and other public figures, even the president. He was also the prime instigator of the Lavender Scare, wherein gay public servants were persecuted and removed from their jobs.

He was ultimately censured by the Senate for his behaviour in 1954 — one of the few US senators ever to be censured. Strauss actually went out of his way to ensure that Oppenheimer’s hearing stayed well out of McCarthy’s hands, because he believed that McCarthy’s involvement would turn the event into a circus that might garner public sympathy for Oppenheimer.

George (1:22:02)
You are too much of a cartoon villain for my villainy.

Sam (1:22:04)
Exactly.

Maartje (1:22:05)
Mm-hmm.

Sam (1:22:06)
I’m trying to be a low-key villain. We can’t be having this cowboy out here.

George (1:22:08)
Mm.

Maartje (1:22:09)
I guess that brings us to the end of our episode for today. We do have to rate this movie, if we possibly can.

Before we start rating it, I would like to remind you that you can follow us wherever you get your podcasts, and you can send this episode to a friend.

Sam (1:22:24)
Every time you send this episode to a friend, it gets just a little bit less weird to eat soup in a meeting.

Maartje (1:22:29)
And now we have to rate it.

Sam (1:22:30)
Let’s rate it pork-pie hats out of ten, because Oppenheimer was known for wearing those.

George (1:22:34)
I love it.

Maartje (1:22:35)
Can I go first?

I will rate this movie — hmm — eight-point-nine pork-pie hats out of ten, because I think it’s a fantastic movie and I would like to watch it again having seen all the documentaries. Then I will have the full knowledge and understanding, and having heard all of your smart commentary, I think I will have a next-level understanding of Oppenheimer. So, yay this movie. I thought it was really good. I really enjoyed it. Someone else go. Knocks.

George (1:23:06)
Yeah, well, me too. I really enjoyed it. I’m going to give it nine pork-pie hats out of ten. I think it’s a great movie. I think it’s one of Nolan’s best movies. I think it’s one of Cillian Murphy’s best movies — although I don’t think there’s any time I’ve seen him give a poor performance in anything.

It feels to me a lot more nuanced and challenging than I think it’s sometimes given credit for as a biopic of Oppenheimer. I think it raises a lot of interesting questions about morality, about regret, and also about narrative — and the way we remember things and the way we share things and the way we talk to people about things, and the pictures we paint of ourselves and our own histories. So it gets a point off because I don’t think the women are treated very well in this film. But nine I think is a good score.

Maartje (1:23:55)
It raises so many questions. It makes us think about things and talk about things, and it’s good.

Sam (1:24:01)
Yeah. I think the scene where he’s making that speech to the scientists at Los Alamos is kind of eerie and unsettling because he’s talking about it the way that an army general would give an inspiring, rousing speech to his troops — you know, “the Japanese didn’t like it” and that kind of stuff. And the way that the sound from that scene — the stamping of the feet — has recurred at so many of the most difficult moments in his life. And the way that we immediately get the sense that he is having to grapple with what he’s done, but his public-facing persona requires him to put on this other face. Because if I admit that what we did is monstrous, then how does anybody else grapple with it?

To be honest, I think Nolan made the best movie that you could make about Oppenheimer — gave us as much understanding as you could possibly get of this man in a film. And so I will also give it nine pork-pie hats out of ten. I do wish that Nolan wrote better female characters, but I also think the entire rest of the movie is really a masterclass in filmmaking.

Maartje (1:25:04)
I would like to backtrack and also make mine a full nine, because why am I giving an eight when they’re both giving a nine? What’s the point?

George (1:25:11)
You can go your own way.

Sam (1:25:12)
Yeah.

Maartje (1:25:13)
I’ve got no reason for there to be a decimal off that nine. So anyway — would anyone like to talk about anything they are reading, or are we done with this episode?

Sam (1:25:28)
I’m reading a book called God Forgives, Brothers Don’t: The Long March of Military Education and the Making of American Manhood by Jasper Craven. And so far it’s super interesting — I feel like I’m getting some insight into why America is the way it is.

Maartje (1:25:42)
Yeah.

George (1:25:43)
That’s going immediately on my list.

Maartje (1:25:46)
I will reshare that reel that we found this book on — on our feed — because I feel like everyone needs to see it, because it’s just so funny. Basically it’s the subway-takes guy, and this man saying, “There’s nothing more gay than the American military,” and in the comments everybody who was ever in the military is agreeing. So it’s a really wholesome comment section.

George (1:26:13)
That’s cool.

Maartje (1:26:13)
George, are you reading anything?

George (1:26:15)
Of course I am. So I am reading a book called Velvet Revolutions: An Oral History of Czech Society, because I know very little Czech history. And so this book is capturing oral testimonies and viewpoints from farmers, office workers, and so on about the Velvet Revolution of the late 1980s. In short, it was a series of demonstrations and protests that brought about the end of the communist regime in what was then Czechoslovakia.

Maartje (1:26:44)
Ooh, politics.

I’m still reading Project Hail Mary — I’ve talked about this already. I’m also reading another book which is in Dutch, and it’s from my book club, and I hate it. So I just wanted to complain about it for a second.

It’s by this author and it’s on lots of prize lists and everybody thinks it’s wonderful, but there’s something about the writing that just rubs me the wrong way — because this is a person who can only talk in analogies and never say what they actually want to say, and it’s driving me insane.

But anyway, I’ll stop being a Debbie Downer about books. And I want to thank you so much, George, for being back on with us to discuss this movie at length.

George (1:27:23)
Thank you for having me again. Yeah. This was a lot longer than — I tried to be quite quiet this time.

Maartje (1:27:28)
We didn’t hire you to be quiet, George.

George (1:27:31)
Yeah.

Sam (1:27:32)
Yeah, we didn’t hire you at all. You’re here for free.

George (1:27:34)
That’s true.

Maartje (1:27:34)
Ha.

George (1:27:35)
When am I getting paid for this?

Maartje (1:27:36)
You’re going to be paid in stickers.

George (1:27:39)
Yeah. No, I love it. I love it. And I’m so grateful to come and chat about this movie with you guys.

Maartje (1:27:44)
Okay. With that said, I’m going to close us off. Thank you again for listening to yet another episode of Rosie. You can follow us wherever you get your podcasts. Rate us five stars — please do follow us on Apple Podcasts and leave us a rating and a review. I will read them out if you give us one, I promise. You can follow us on Instagram at RosieTheReviewerPodcast, or you can visit our website to get all of these resources that we’ve talked about in this episode, and you can rate this movie with us as well. So please go visit the website, and we’ll see you next week.

Bye!