Why Oppenheimer’s Ending Felt So Devastating

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About this video essay:
Exploring the deeper meanings of the ending to Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer

0:00 Introduction: Troubling Reverberations
1:31 I. The Tragedy of Oppenheimer
2:11 II. Converging Timelines
4:13 III. Character Motivations
5:18 IV. The Great Paradigm Shift
8:54 V. Destroying a World
11:57 VI. Tortured for Eternity
14:09 VII. Beyond Prometheus
18:25 Epilogue: Apocalyptic Filmmaking

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Further Reading:

[LikeStoriesofOld]

For an even more extensive discussion on the work of Christopher Nolan, check out my 3-part series covering his entire filmography:

[loganmoody]

The best thing I’ve seen about the end of this movie was a tweet asking if there was a post credits scene. Someone replied and just said, “you’re living in it, baby.”

[ushnishbhattacharyya]

The fact that the last scene connects the two timeline is genius level filmmaking

[luckysteel]

can I just say that, for me one of the biggest thing was to see people like einstien and bohr and heisnburg in person and not as constants or theoroies. So much of our knowledge about these people come from the ideas they presented to us and so little is known about them in the process. One often forgets that they were people once. People like us who had hopes and fears

[boo]

I did the barbie/oppenheimer double feature with a bunch of friends and after the first part ( oppenheimer ) i kind of felt like the only person who was so deeply troubled by it at the end. I don't usually cry in movies and I don't think I was supposed to cry but the final scene had me so morbidly distressed that i was tearing up and seeing that nobody else seemed to have that reaction made me feel like such a freak ... but hearing that this movie was expected to affect ppl in different ways makes it better

[donventura]

When I left the theater, I couldn't help but visualize the surrounding area being razed. It's such a sobering film because we are living in the aftermath of Oppenheimer's decisions.

[kyletucker]

I felt so uneasy coming out of this film. I almost immediately went back to find a clip of the final scene. In my mind i was scrambling for some kind of tangible conclusion to the events. I couldn’t. I think that was the point, to leave you with an uprooting sense of uncertainty that terrorizes you and plagues you with a will to find some redeeming truth in it all. A familiar disassociation falls over me and i’m left with the question; What will i do now?

[squirlmy]

during the film, I was very struck by Oppenheimer's wife asking him was he was not defending himself, why he was playing a martyr. And it wasn't just himself, the investigation hurt his wife and friends deeply. But, I think he reassured himself that these people in the US government and military were going to invent nuclear weapons AND use them. It was obvious the Nazis would have done it, but would the US have done it without his work? And it wasn't about Hiroshima, he wasn't particularly guilty about that (at least in rl interviews, although he wouldn't totally justify it, either). It was the Cold War itself, and I think he satisfied himself that these vicious bureaucrats were always going down this road, .It was a type of reassurance, the more vicious and ugly accusations against him, the more obvious it was, the more he may have felt redeemed. I'd also add to those who think his naivete obvious, The Geneva Gas Protocol was signed in 1925, banning poison gas. The world had come together to ban a weapon of mass destruction. It wasn't so naive to think it might happen again with nuclear weapons. One more thought, concerning the last video about showing the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, even using real footage; that would have made the film more about those particular bombings and their morality, while this movie, and Oppenheimer himself, was more concerned about the future. The moral questions in the wake of the attacks on Japan. It's the questions we are still faced with in this day. By keeping nukes around, aren't we just making it inevitable that they will be used someday? This includes India, Pakistan and North Korea now, too.Will we ever stop collectively holding a gun to our heads?

[venixkasi]

The ending of the movie back when I watched Oppenheimer in the cinema, there was no clapping, wooing, or scream positive, but silence as I exit the cinema. Truly terrifying uneasy event.

[davecorry]

One small point in the book on which the film was based, that was not in the film, but which adds wonderfully to the pettiness of Strauss, is that Oppenheimer's security clearance (as were everyone's) was periodically renewed, and was set to expire one day after the "trial" ended. In other words, if the trial hadn't taken place and no one had done anything, then Oppie's security clearance would have expired naturally (as countless others' had) and no one would have blinked an eye. But Strauss wanted to have it *revoked*. Just to make a point.

[stoianborissov]

I can't not think of Caboose: "Time... line? (scoffs) Time isn't made out of lines. It is made out of circles. That is why clocks are round."

[fredflux]

The war destroyed so many people- even our heroes came back cursed.

My great grandfather was a B29 pilot, he told me stories about what it was like in the pacific theater. After the bomb dropped, he said he felt a feeling that he could never describe- feeling relief and also feeling like he returned from the dead.

My grandpa was a very kind and warm man, but he always felt distant. It was something I could never explain; he was at peace but he also felt like he hid things (which was strange because he told me all the stories about the war that I asked). Now that I’m older, it seemed he paid a penance for what he was involved in and what he saw- the stories were as a warning for my future.

[tragerec]

Movies like this are so rare now. Leaving the theater and thinking about it for hours and days later. So powerful. Thank you for this essay, which allowed me to self reflect a bit more about the reasons why.

[HotlineKM]

The ending of this movie left me mentally distressed. I specifically saw it again with other friends so i could experience it again. The thought of nuclear armageddon has always been a dark thougt in my mind but this movie actually visualized it. Shook me to my core and i feel like i was the only one of my friends who felt this way. A masterpiece of filmmaking. I hope this never becomes a reality but you just never know...

[IvyKatherineSouter]

I have never seen a movie that made me feel this way and I don’t think I ever will. The sense of existential dread that I felt leaving the theater. The underlying anxiety that never felt like it came to a climax and there was no resolution to it. Unlike most movies that create fear or anxiety there is usually an ending to it. The slow realization that I was living the next part of the movie didn’t allow my anxiety to go away.

[carlossaraiva]

The thing that resonated the most with this movie was seeing Nolan embracing surrealism for the first time in his entire career. While he has been a mostly realistic filmmaker, this movie was half of it surrealist. And he is SO GOOD AT IT. Most times its directors at their youngest years that go surrealistic but Nolan went surreslistic in his early middle age. Thst's fascinsting. Its as if the older he gets the younger he is as a filmmaker. This movie is the kind of movie a 25 years old would do, not a 53 years old man.

[THEMATTHIAS]

Vent post: I did 8 years of DoD work despite being significantly against the MIC. 6 years Active Duty and 2 years as a contractor. I enlisted for the reasons most people do (college didn't work out, I was in a ton of debt, I needed something to give me career experience to prevent sliding into the poverty that pervades my family). I was an IT guy in the Navy, so most of my time was spent making emails work and setting up servers for people that make decisions, I never really "made" or "shot" anything. I was more so the grease in the gears of the war machine that outdates us all.

But in the last year I had a real moral dilemma where I didn't wanna be part of it anymore. I was lucky, I don't have any major physical or mental injuries, and I had enough skills and stability provided to me by my service and work to transition to higher education IT work, where now I support students instead of MIC executives and Generals fighting for a political appointment. There's still a guilt there where I can't shake that my comfortable middle class life is drenched in blood. And it is, there's no shaking that, but I struggle with whether whatever distance I interpret from that blood is selfish or realistic.

Sometimes I think of the times where I put my foot down on my morals regarding simple things, like privacy, the health and wellbeing of the sailors who worked under me, calling out leadership etc. But the reality of the things I was part of only get worse. The ships get more deadly and the bombs become more profitable. It feels ridiculous the amount of familiarity I felt watching Oppenheimer, and that final scene was so powerful I bawled my eyes out in the theatres while the credits rolled.

Maybe I'm a moron for being so conflicted in a way that anyone could've predicted. Maybe my guilt is just a shield from responsibility. Maybe I'm a overly-sensitive dork for equating my participation in the War Machine as an E5 and computer guy with the creator of the Atom bomb, but this is at least a commentary for how good Nolan was at capturing those feelings that I don't think tons of people go through.

[StrawHatsAreFashionable]

I don't watch films. Like, ever. But this one intrigued me and I went to see it with two friends at the cinema. When I came out, I didn't even feel like the same person anymore. This movie both resonated with me, made me scarily conscious of what we have and how it could all disappear in the blink of an eye and made me pensive like nothing ever had before. I could barely sleep the night after seeing it, picturing what the world would look like if we hadn't gotten lucky, if it had all gotten out of control. I felt really strange that my friends seemed to have had a chill experience whilst I could barely hold my tears back the entire car ride home, it was truly one of the best stories and pieces of media I've ever consumed in my entire life.

[booksandmanga]

I saw Oppenheimer for a fourth time today. This film deeply affected me. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it for weeks. Devastating, captivating, a masterpiece. I hope Oppenheimer wins as many Oscars as it deserves (and gets acknowledged for its superiority after the barbie hype dies down lol)

[bluegreenglue]

Three times in my life (so far) I've burst into tears as end-credits begin rolling. Oppenheimer successfully built an inexorable tension between what happened and what we wish would not have happened, and watching the protagonist do what he had to but what we wish he wouldn't have done is terrible. "The lens between wishes and fact" is turned upon us as the audience as it seems to have done to him. The film builds with great genius an emotional tension, using beautiful audible and visual effects to allow us an insight into the magnificence of particle physics (I'm an accountant, but I am in love with the sciences) that we can't help but ride the train of consequence with him. Devastating. Brilliant. Art at its best. (and thank you for bringing Satantango to my awareness)