I thought Oppenheimer presented an interesting take on the "great man" archetype thats been ubiquitous throughout all of American film history. Think Citizen Kane, The Godfather or There Will Be Blood. The more the men in those films thirst for and accumulate power and wealth, the more corrupt and depraved and robotic they become. Oppenheimer reaches the pinnacle of his field, but instead of pushing for never ending growth in it, pushing for the creation he helped steward into reality to more readily available for warfare. To be pushing for more powerful atomic bombs, or to his later misfortune, a hydrogen bomb. Instead, he speaks his conscience, whatever it may have been at that moment and of his guilt. In a sense, Nolan has taken a story about the 20th century and made it about the 21st- about a man without strong convictions or beliefs, who pushes the technological envelope to its breaking point and is forced to deal with the fall out by attempting to mitigate the completely foreseeable consequences of his creation after its too late. Essentially, Oppenheimer does the opposite of the characters in those other movies but the end result is the same. He he won, but at what cost?
I thought it was very engaging, quickest three hours I can remember in a theatre. What is with the music in these films though? So loud. The musical cues in All Quiet last year almost ruined the movie for me, and that was at home.