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COMMENTARY: The Academy Award-nominated film serves as a cautionary tale for students of science today.
The scene of the Trinity nuclear bomb test, from Christopher’s Nolan’s film Oppenheimer, has already become a memorable moment in film history. After the laboratory personnel wait in harrowing suspense during a final countdown, the darkness of the New Mexico desert is suddenly illuminated by the fearsome explosion of the plutonium bomb.
As J. Robert Oppenheimer gazes in awe at the terrible power which has been unleashed, he quotes the Hindu sacred text: “Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds...” Shortly before, when asked to give a name to the atomic test, the director of Los Alamos Laboratory responds by making use of the poet John Donne’s invocation of the Christian God: “Batter my heart, three-person’d god.”
Such religious language was a significant way by which the famed physicist sought to understand the terrifying power which the new technology had introduced to the world. Oppenheimer recognizes that science is not enough to grasp the new reality which he had helped bring about. And so, among the many other noteworthy aspects of the film, Oppenheimer allows us to reflect anew on the relationship between science, religion, and ethics. Indeed, apart from the skilled direction, acting, and cinematography, the movie stands out for grappling with some of the most profound moral dilemmas of our time. Even if viewers decide to skip the scenes with mature content — a possibility made easier with the current technologies — the film gives us much to ponder.
Continued below.
www.ncregister.com
The scene of the Trinity nuclear bomb test, from Christopher’s Nolan’s film Oppenheimer, has already become a memorable moment in film history. After the laboratory personnel wait in harrowing suspense during a final countdown, the darkness of the New Mexico desert is suddenly illuminated by the fearsome explosion of the plutonium bomb.
As J. Robert Oppenheimer gazes in awe at the terrible power which has been unleashed, he quotes the Hindu sacred text: “Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds...” Shortly before, when asked to give a name to the atomic test, the director of Los Alamos Laboratory responds by making use of the poet John Donne’s invocation of the Christian God: “Batter my heart, three-person’d god.”
Such religious language was a significant way by which the famed physicist sought to understand the terrifying power which the new technology had introduced to the world. Oppenheimer recognizes that science is not enough to grasp the new reality which he had helped bring about. And so, among the many other noteworthy aspects of the film, Oppenheimer allows us to reflect anew on the relationship between science, religion, and ethics. Indeed, apart from the skilled direction, acting, and cinematography, the movie stands out for grappling with some of the most profound moral dilemmas of our time. Even if viewers decide to skip the scenes with mature content — a possibility made easier with the current technologies — the film gives us much to ponder.
Continued below.
‘Oppenheimer,’ Science and Religion
COMMENTARY: The Academy Award-nominated film serves as a cautionary tale for students of science today.
