christian movie review of oppenheimer

Skip to main content
Skip to secondary menu
Skip to primary sidebar
Skip to footer

Catholic Review

Inspiring the Archdiocese of Baltimore

Movie Review: ‘Oppenheimer’

NEW YORK (OSV News) – If writer-director Christopher Nolan’s impressive but uneven portrait “Oppenheimer” (Universal) is anything to go by, famed theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer was a highly complex man. As portrayed by Cillian Murphy in a layered performance, he was at once charismatic yet naïve, by turns a champion and victim of his times.

Just as its protagonist had his highs and lows, so Nolan’s three hour-long film has its strong passages and weaker chapters. The depiction of Oppenheimer’s collaboration with the U.S. Army’s hard-driving Lt. Gen. Leslie Groves (Matt Damon) in the race to develop the atomic bomb during World War II, for instance, is compelling.

So too is the recounting of his far more complicated relationship with former patron-turned-critic Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.). A wealthy businessman who reached the rank of admiral during his time in the Navy, in the late 1940s Strauss served on the newly established Atomic Energy Commission alongside Oppenheimer — and the two came into conflict.

Strauss’ eventual opposition to him contributed to the travails the left-leaning Oppenheimer faced once anti-Communist sentiment became prevalent during the early stages of the Cold War. These troubles culminated in a hearing to see whether Oppenheimer’s temporarily suspended security clearance should be permanently revoked.

Less intriguing than the sequences devoted to these subjects are those detailing Oppenheimer’s early career and his murky personal life. Though in some respects devoted to his feisty, bibulous wife, Kitty (Emily Blunt), a biologist, Oppenheimer doesn’t hesitate to comfort his troubled psychiatrist ex-girlfriend, Jean (Florence Pugh), by carrying on an affair with her.

Needlessly frank scenes of their erotic interaction, both before and after Oppenheimer’s marriage, not only prevent endorsement of this biography for youngsters but constitute material that even some mature viewers may wish to avoid. That’s a shame because, as an absorbing historical retrospective, the movie might have had considerable educational value.

If its treatment of bedroom behavior is questionable, “Oppenheimer” is on firmer ground in its balanced approach to the morality of war. Enigmatic and noncommittal, its namesake wavers between rejoicing over Japan’s belated surrender and meditating on the horrors required to bring it about.

It may never be definitively established how many soldiers and civilians would have died in an American invasion of the Japanese homeland. But it is safe to say that hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people alive today would never have been born had their forebears fallen in that struggle.

As one of the figures primarily responsible for averting such a catastrophe – at however great a price – Oppenheimer, who died in 1967, aged 62, has left a weighty legacy. While this extensive profile of him may have its flaws, it’s an immersive and thought-provoking experience that touches on both the best and worst in human nature.

The film contains strong sexual content, including graphic activity and recurring upper female nudity, an adultery theme, brief gruesome sights, about a half-dozen profanities, a couple of milder oaths, several rough terms and occasional crude and crass language. The OSV News classification is A-III – adults. The Motion Picture Association rating is R — restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

Home viewing roundup: What’s available to stream and what’s on horizon

Movie Review: ‘Here’

Movie Review: ‘Wicked’

Martin Scorsese’s new saints docuseries opens with Joan of Arc

Movie Review: ‘Red One’

Movie Review: ‘Heretic’

Real Life. Real Faith.

Catholic Review Media communicates the Gospel and its impact on people’s lives in the Archdiocese of Baltimore and beyond.

Our Mission

Catholic Review Media provides intergenerational communications that inform, teach, inspire and engage Catholics and all of good will in the mission of Christ through diverse forms of media.

Catholic Review 320 Cathedral Street Baltimore, MD 21201 443-524-3150 [email protected]

Social Media

Judge strikes down Wyoming abortion laws, including abortion pill ban
Kenyan Catholic Church rejects President Ruto’s financial donation
Franciscan Father Vincent de Paul Cushing dies at 90
Pope approves simplified rites for papal funeral, burial
Laity, women do not ‘rank’ last in the church, pope says at general audience
Pope: Interreligious dialogue key to peace, youth education
Pope meets Ukrainian first lady, decries war as ‘shameful tragedy’
Pope says he’ll canonize Acutis, Frassati, host meeting on child’s rights
Report examines ‘persistent racial disparities’ in federal death penalty use

Catholic Media Assocation

Maryland-Delaware-DC Press Association

The Associated Church Press

Notice: All forms on this website are temporarily down for maintenance. You will not be able to complete a form to request information or a resource. We apologize for any inconvenience and will reactivate the forms as soon as possible.

DVD & Streaming

Oppenheimer

Biography/History , Drama

Content Caution

In Theaters

July 13, 2023
Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer; Emily Blunt as Kitty Oppenheimer; Matt Damon as Lt. Gen. Leslie Groves; Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss; Macon Blair as Lloyd Garrison; Josh Hartnett as Ernest Lawrence; Florence Pugh as Jean Tatlock; Jefferson Hall as Haakon Chevalier; Josh Zuckerman as Rossi Lomanitz; David Krumholtz as Isidor Rabi; Guy Burnet as George Eltenton; Kenneth Branagh as Niels Bohr; James D’Arcy as Patrick Blackett; Dylan Arnold as Frank Oppenheimer; Tom Conti as Albert Einstein; David Dastmalchian as William Borden; Dane DeHaan as Kenneth Nichols; Christopher Denham as Klaus Fuchs; Benny Safdie as Edward Teller; Casey Affleck as Boris Pash; Gary Oldman as Harry Truman

Home Release Date

November 21, 2023
Christopher Nolan

Distributor

Universal Pictures

Movie Review

“Truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown,”Jesus said in Luke 4:24

That can certainly be said of J. Robert Oppenheimer, too. The theoretical physicist is called a prophet among physicists in the field. But despite his advancements in quantum mechanics and nuclear physics, very few people in America seem to like him.

In fact, when Lt. Gen. Leslie Groves comes to Oppenheimer’s classroom, looking to recruit him for a secret experiment called the Manhattan Project, Groves tells him as much: People around him see Oppenheimer as a “dilettante, womanizer, suspected communist.”

“Oppenheimer couldn’t run a hamburger stand,” Grove quotes.

Oppenheimer smirks. “I couldn’t,” he admits. “But I can run the Manhattan Project.”

From a technical standpoint, Oppenheimer’s selection as the director of the Project was an obvious choice. His awards and accolades made him the perfect man for the job.

But from a political standpoint, Oppenheimer garners a lot of suspicion.

That’s because while Oppenheimer might never say that he’s a Communist sympathizer, he’s sure got a lot of friends and family who are. And sure , maybe the Russians are technically fighting on the same side of World War II as the Americans, but that doesn’t mean the two superpowers truly see each other as allies.

So when someone leaks information to the communist-dominated country, it’s not long until the finger points at Oppenheimer. And that’s only the tip on an iceberg of evidence against the man.

And those accusations about his character and conduct will threaten to sink the father of the atomic bomb professionally in the years to come.

Positive Elements

The dropping of an atomic bomb is not an easy topic. Characters debate the morality of such an action. Someone warns that the creation of the atomic bomb will result in the deaths of many innocent people. “You drop a bomb,” he says, “and it falls on the just and the unjust.”

In one scene, officials argue about whether the bomb would result in fewer deaths on both sides of the conflict than a ground invasion of Japan. And so those involved continue to press forward with their grim “gadget” because they believe an invasion would be deadlier for all.

Characters furthermore debate the morality of creating a bomb itself. Some feel that such a weapon will force countries to get along, since people will finally realize that a future war could now end the human race with a single button push. And when physicists theorize that the bomb could ignite the world’s atmosphere in a chain reaction, some push to share the findings with Russia and the Nazis in order to warn them about that potentially world-ending consequence.

Though the film’s depiction of Oppenheimer tends to sit more towards the middle of the political spectrum, unwilling to fully commit one way or another, such a mentality makes him a prime suspect during the Red Scare. Indeed, many of Oppenheimer’s family members and friends sympathized with the Communist party, and the government fears that Oppenheimer might leak information to the Russians. But when Oppenheimer comes under fire for his alleged beliefs, many people, including those who disagree with him, stick up for him, expressing that they believe he’s loyal to the country.

Early in the movie, Oppenheimer and many of the scientists he recruits to his team seem particularly motivated by the plight of the Jews in Germany. Oppenheimer himself is Jewish, though not particularly devout. But he and many of his peers are primarily motivated not just by the desire to beat Germany in the production of the atomic bomb, but to save Jews and to keep Hitler from potentially using the invention upon them should his scientists succeed first (which they don’t).

Not all of those German scientists, we learn, want to serve Hitler’s research, and at least one of them is liberated from Nazi-held territory and then encourages Oppenheimer’s team.

Spiritual Elements

Oppenheimer is compared to an Old Testament prophet by another Jewish man, and the man warns Oppenheimer that such a title means he can’t be wrong—not once. He’s also compared to Prometheus, a Greek deity who stole fire from the gods to give it to humanity.

Oppenheimer also has a few visions or hallucinations. While some of these visions are depicted as something like traumatic moments of PTSD for the physicist, others show Oppenheimer seemingly looking into the cosmos to divine deeper meaning.

We additionally hear some other brief mentions of spirituality. Oppenheimer’s famous quote, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” comes from the Hindu sacred writing the Bhagavad Gita and is spoken there by the Hindu god Vishnu.

A passing comment references Albert Einstein’s objection to quantum physics: “God does not play dice.” A man is described as the “son of a Russian Orthodox priest.” When thinking about the code name for the nuclear test, Oppenheimer offers “Trinity,” referencing a poem by John Donne. “Batter my heart, three-person’d God,” Oppenheimer recites.

After Oppenheimer’s wife, Kitty, learns of one of her husband’s affair, she tells him that he doesn’t “get to commit a sin and have us all feel sorry” for him. A thermonuclear reaction is described as “a terrible revelation of divine power.”

Sexual & Romantic Content

Oppenheimer is described as a “womanizer,” and we endure some scenes of his escapades. In several scenes, Oppenheimer has sex with a woman. They’re both naked, and her breasts are visible, as are sexual movements. There’s also post-coital conversation afterward in which the woman’s breasts are again visible.

In one case, when a board questions Oppenheimer’s visits to a woman who was a known member of the Communist party, he suddenly appears naked in the room as the woman has sex with him there in front of everyone. The scene is meant to artistically symbolize how Kitty feels betrayed while she listens to Oppenheimer discuss the moment.

And on the subject of Kitty, the two initially meet at a party, and Oppenheimer continues to flirt with her despite discovering that she’s already married. The two engage in an affair (something we’ll hear is a relatively common thing for Oppenheimer). Kitty soon reveals that she’s pregnant, and she resolves to divorce her husband and marry Oppenheimer before the pregnancy begins to show. And even after Oppenheimer marries Kitty, we see him have an affair with another woman, and we hear of another that is spoken about during the testimony against him.

Someone crudely and sarcastically references doing violence to a man’s male anatomy. When a male scientist argues with a female scientist regarding how radiation exposure might affect her reproductive system, she quips, “Your reproductive system is more exposed than mine.” Two people kiss in celebration of the bomb’s success. Oppenheimer and Kitty kiss as well.

Violent Content

As Oppenheimer and his team cheerfully celebrate the successful dropping of the atomic bomb, Oppenheimer has a disturbing vision of sorts in which he imagines the people in the audience suffering the effects of the bomb: One woman’s skin begins peeling from her face, and Oppenheimer accidentally steps into the chest cavity of a charred corpse. We later hear reports of the bomb’s gruesome effect on the Japanese people. We’re also told of a firebombing which killed an estimated 100,000 people, “mostly civilians.”

The number of casualties ultimately reported by the atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki are perhaps bigger than what had been estimated, and we have the sense that at least some of the Manhattan Project team members are struggling to come to grips with the violence that they they’ve unleashed.

When Oppenheimer tries to articulate a sense of responsibility for those deaths in a conversation with President Harry Truman, Truman himself chides the scientists and says that he was the one who’ll be remembered as responsible for those casualties, not Oppenheimer.

A woman is briefly seen dead, her head submerged in a bathtub. She’s overdosed on pills and committed suicide by drowning herself. A man suggests torturing someone to death. Oppenheimer injects someone’s apple with potassium cyanide, but he intercepts it before a victim could eat it.

And, of course, we watch the test of the bomb go off.

Crude or Profane Language

The f-word is used eight times, and the s-word is heard four times. We also hear the occasional uses of “a–,” “d–n,” “h—” and “crap.” God’s name is used in vain six times, three of which take the form of “g-dd–n.” Jesus’ name is abused three times.

Drug & Alcohol Content

People drink an assortment of alcoholic beverages. Oppenheimer smokes cigarettes almost continually, and there’s smoking by him and others throughout the movie. Someone notes that the bar at Los Alamos is “always running.”

Other Noteworthy Elements

A man vomits. In a couple of scenes, Kitty and Oppenheimer neglect their children, who always seem to be crying. Both would say that they’re lousy parents; in fact, they ask a set of friends to care for their firstborn for several months so that Oppenheimer can focus exclusively on the Manhattan Project.

Robert Oppenheimer is a theoretical physicist. But, he admits, the problem with theory is that, until it’s tested, that’s all it’ll be.

The problem with actually testing an atomic weapon is that it risks the end of the world. Physicist Edward Teller suggested that such a weapon could (once again, in theory) cause a chain reaction that might destroy the world. His concern was that the bomb could produce temperatures so hot that it would cause the world’s hydrogen to fuse together into helium in an explosive way—similar to how our sun creates energy. This chain reaction would quickly envelop the whole world and end life as we know it.

Of course, we’re still here. Obviously, that theory didn’t immediately bear fruit. But Oppenheimer director Christopher Nolan suggests that when the first atomic bomb exploded, it did ignite a chain reaction—but not the one Teller theorized. The movie grimly suggests that nuclear annihilation is still a possible outcome, and perhaps even an inescapable one. It just hasn’t come to pass … yet.

That chain reaction is illustrated by some early scenes that show Oppenheimer averting a tragic outcome at the last possible moment. In a moment of wrath, Oppenheimer poisons his professor’s apple, only snatching it away once he realizes what he’s done.

But Oppenheimer cannot snatch away the atomic bomb. Because, as one character explains, the bomb “isn’t a new weapon. It’s a new world.”

Oppenheimer paints a bleak picture of the future of humanity. But let’s be clear: A bleak worldview isn’t why Nolan’s latest drama has an R-rating. That’s where the content comes in.

For a film set primarily during World War II, the violence of the bomb is only hauntingly hinted at here. Jean Tatlock’s suicide by drowning should also be noted.

But Oppenheimer ’s biggest content issues arise from its sexual content and crude language, the latter of which is due to the film’s many uses of the f-word. A couple of scenes contain explicit sex and nudity—most prominently when Oppenheimer has a nude conversation with his ex-lover, the camera showing off the woman’s breasts and barely hiding the two’s lower bits.

That’s not to say that Oppenheimer doesn’t provide some interesting and important perspective into a monumentous moment in American history. It definitely does. But prospective viewers will need to prepare themselves for a film that, while not world-ending, certainly leans into content that easily could have been suggested far less graphically.

Kennedy Unthank

Kennedy Unthank studied journalism at the University of Missouri. He knew he wanted to write for a living when he won a contest for “best fantasy story” while in the 4th grade. What he didn’t know at the time, however, was that he was the only person to submit a story. Regardless, the seed was planted. Kennedy collects and plays board games in his free time, and he loves to talk about biblical apologetics. He thinks the ending of Lost “wasn’t that bad.”

Latest Reviews

Wicked: Part 1

Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin.

Weekly Reviews Straight to your Inbox!

Want to stay Plugged In?

Our weekly newsletter will keep you in the loop on the biggest things happening in entertainment and technology. Sign up today, and we’ll send you a chapter from the new Plugged In book, Becoming a Screen-Savvy Family , that focuses on how to implement a “screentime reset” in your family!