Oppenheimer in a new light: Documentary arrives ahead of feature film

By Scott Wyland swyland@sfnewmexican.com
Apr 12, 2023

Gen. Leslie R. Groves, right, and Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, who cooperated on the development of the atomic bomb, on Sept. 9, 1945 survey the area in Alamogordo where a tower once stood before the Trinity Test bomb exploded.In a blinding flash, the world changed forever, as did the lives of all those involved in developing the atomic bomb detonated at the Trinity Site in south-central New Mexico 78 years ago.

None more so than J. Robert Oppenheimer, the renowned physicist put in charge of designing the nuclear device for the Manhattan Project with the aim of ending World War II.

After the plutonium bomb dubbed The Gadget lit up the morning sky in a mushroom-shaped cloud, the successful test led to the U.S. dropping two of these secret weapons on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing an estimated 200,000 people and inflicting radiation poisoning on much of the populace.

The horrendous attack ended the war. Then came the aftermath, which is where a new documentary on Oppenheimer begins.

Filmmaker Larry Sheffield discussed the upcoming premiere of Oppenheimer After Trinity during an online news conference Tuesday, with the film set to debut April 22 at the SALA Los Alamos Event Center. The movie seeks to cast a fuller picture of Oppenheimer, revealing a complex man ambivalent about the destructive power he helped unleash and put at humanity’s fingertips — a feat for which he still is both celebrated and reviled.

“We really try to get into the mind of Dr. Oppenheimer,” Sheffield said.

The release of his documentary comes amid a larger reexamination of the physicist, known as father of the atomic bomb.

In some ways, 2023 is the year of Robert Oppenheimer — nearly eight decades after the end of the war and 56 years after his death from cancer in 1967.

The Department of Energy announcement in December it had reversed a decision made nearly 70 years ago by the former Atomic Energy Commission to revoke Oppenheimer’s weapons security clearance in what officials now call a “flawed process that violated the commission’s own regulations.”

Following an investigation, the Energy Department determined the decision that ended Oppenheimer’s national security career was aimed at discrediting him in public debates over U.S. weapons policy. The review detailed numerous procedural flaws, concluding, “the system failed … [and] that a substantial injustice was done to a loyal American.”

Hollywood, too, took new interest in the Manhattan Project and Oppenheimer, with the expected release in July of a major feature film by Christopher Nolan. The movie, titled simply Oppenheimer, filmed in 2022 around Santa Fe and Los Alamos, using some of the historic buildings where the physicist lived and worked. It stars several A-list actors, with a cast including Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr., Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh, Kenneth Branagh, Jack Quaid, Gary Oldman, Casey Affleck, Rami Malek, Bennie Safdie, Michael Angarano and Josh Hartnett.

Sheffield, through a blend of old footage, declassified documents and other research, let the late physicist be the storyteller of his documentary as much as possible, he said, adding this method helped him as both a filmmaker and historian.

“When you can find their own words, and they’re telling the story, it kind of resonates and connects all the dots,” Sheffield said.

Oppenheimer After Trinity is the second installment in what will be a trilogy spanning the period before, during and after the Trinity test that marked the dawn of the Atomic Age.

The first was a 28-minute documentary titled Alamogordo, Center of the World, Trinity 1945. It was originally set to be released in 2020 to coincide with the 75th anniversary of the Trinity blast, but the COVID-19 pandemic caused a delay, Sheffield said.

That film centers on Sheffield’s hometown of Alamogordo, not far from the Trinity Site, and chronicles the events leading up to the first atomic test.

The Oppenheimer biopic is the next chapter, looking at the man and the events surrounding him, from the end of a world war to the start of the Cold War.

“It gives the audience a really deep perspective,” Sheffield said.

Oppenheimer became wedged between his sense of patriotic duty and opposition to the escalating arms race in which more powerful nuclear weapons were being made in greater number, Sheffield said.

Oppenheimer fell out of favor with political and military leaders when he spoke against developing the hydrogen bomb. He was discredited through accusations of consorting with Communists and, in turn, stripped of his security clearance.

The military establishment that once revered him then spurned him.

Allan Saenz, owner of the SALA center, said with Nolan’s Oppenheimer — a dramatization — coming out soon, it’s important to have a documentary that tells a factual story.

Nolan’s film probably will lead to an increase in people visiting Los Alamos, which is at the heart of the debate over nuclear weapons, Saenz said.

“Larry’s documentary will be able to provide more information,” he added.

Sheffield said a salient period in the film is 1945, the year the war approached its finale and the groundwork was laid for reshaping the world order.

A pivotal event is the Potsdam Conference, he said, referring to the two-week summit where U.S., British and Soviet leaders met and agreed to demilitarize Germany and carve it into four occupation zones.

“There’s a lot of behind-the-scenes things that we learned that will be in the film,” Sheffield said.

A parallel between the 1940s and now is the debate about when new technology is going too far, Sheffield said. The nuclear threat has intensified with multiple powers armed with the weapons, making this film relevant to the current times, he said.

“It’s even more prevalent today in the argument: ‘How did we get here, how are we facing potential annihilation?’ ” Sheffield said. “It affects every human being on the Earth.”

Greg Mello published comments:

It is important add that one regional economist -- a former senior military officer, Pentagon economist, and at the time an academic department head, having studied the northern New Mexico economy and the negative economic consequences Los Alamos has brought -- remarked to me in one of our many interactions over the years, that northern New Mexico would never thrive until there was a shared understanding that "The Bomb was a mistake." That is the core of the transformation required. If northern New Mexico is ever to ever thrive it will be necessary to reject nuclear weapons. Will the good people at this newspaper do this?

Orwell: "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past."

In that light, let us be realistic. First, no film, or film experience, can substitute for thoughtful study of this history. Second, grownups with experience in the Los Alamos community know that Oppenheimer -- such a useful patron saint -- cannot be objectively seen there. Ask, who or what "controls the present" in LA? Social ostracization awaits any who deviate from the social consensus that maintains so many careers, life stories, and which has created so much personal and family wealth. It can come suddenly and fiercely, as whistleblowers have told me. One remarked, "I knew that people had a fear threshold, and that I would lose friends. What I didn't know was that threshold was often zero. I lost my all friends, even close friends."

Finally, let us take up the casual lie repeated by the reporter and editors of this story, who say that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war. That is not what U.S. military leaders said at the time, or what all but a few historians say today, after declassification and review. Creation of that myth was a conscious project of some of the leaders of the Manhattan Project -- Conant, then Stimson with help from a young McGeorge Bundy, who later played a role with others of the "best and brightest" group to create and justify the horrific debacle of Vietnam. The number of books which could be cited here are too many; perhaps Alperovitz is the best overview. Again, we come back to the need to actually learn about this, before repeating propaganda.

Finally, we need to think about what Groves said, at dinner in Los Alamos in late 1944 and later in official testimony at the Oppenheimer trial: that the real purpose of the Manhattan Project was to subdue the Soviets. As he said in the latter, (quoting from memory), "There was never any doubt in my mind, from about two weeks after taking over the project, that the real enemy was Russia [or the Soviet Union], and I organized the project on that basis." The Bomb, and the 1945 bombings, were many things of course, and in the center of these things was a shared understanding by right-wing cabal of Russia as the real enemy, Japan and Germany having already been subdued. The timeline of activity at Los Alamos shows that Germany was already in retreat by the time Los Alamos ramped up. Project Alsos showed there was no German bomb program. Leading scientists like Bohr and Rotblat -- the latter heard Groves talk about Russia as the real enemy one night at a dinner party -- knew that there could be no enemy atomic bomb programs, from their own monitoring of publications and simple common sense. So Rotblat quit.

The program went on however. Of current interest, a new plutonium pit factory was built starting in January 1945, which could not and did not come on line until October 1945, well after the end of the war. It was about Russia, not Japan, and control of what Henry Luce, right-wing publishing titan, had already called the coming "The American Century." Humanists like Vice President Henry Wallace knew exactly what that meant: American Empire.

Fast-forward to today. The lie repeated in this article, that the Bomb ended the Pacific War and was therefore justified, serves as the foundation myth for a project that has gravely harmed the world -- and citizens in this country. According to a recent analysis correlating a) fallout patterns (as expressed via contamination levels measured in marketed cow's milk), with b) death rates for U.S. counties during the atmospheric testing years, at least as many Americans were killed by post-war nuclear testing as were Japanese killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That is only the tip of the iceberg of damage that this myth has caused. The entire political structure of the US has been corrupted by the imperial ambitions unleashed at that time. We are now paying the price, and it will be horrendous.