Stephen Arnell

Moral dilemmas on screen: from Oppenheimer to Passengers

  • From Spectator Life
Image: Shutterstock

‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’

Father of the Atomic Bomb Robert Oppenheimer once claimed that these words from Hindu scripture’s Bhagavad Gita raced through his mind when he witnessed the first nuclear weapon detonate on July 16, 1945.

Much of Oppenheimer’s life and work are seen through the lens of the moral dilemma he faced in leading the Manhattan Project that developed the deadly bombs (dubbed ‘Fatman’ and ‘Little Boy’) which destroyed the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki less than a month later.

Director Christopher Nolan has chosen the scientist as the subject of his next film, the follow-up to the underwhelming Tenet (2020). Nolan regular Cillian Murphy (Inception and the Batman trilogy) plays Oppenheimer with support from Emily Blunt (as his wife Kitty) Robert Downey Jnr (Lewis Strauss, the Atomic Energy Commission chairman who suspected he was a communist sympathiser) and Matt Damon (Lt. Gen. Leslie Groves, who oversaw the Manhattan Project).

This won’t be the first time Robert Oppenheimer has featured as a character on screen; he was also played by Daniel London in the WGN series Manhattan (2014-15), Dwight Schultz (The A-Team’s ‘Howling Mad’ Murdock) in 1989’s Fatman & Little Boy, (which I’ll discuss later) and by Sam Waterson in BBC2’s Oppenheimer (1980). This BBC version is currently free to watch on YouTube.

As we begin the long wait for the release of Oppenheimer in July 2023, here are ten motion pictures where we also see protagonists confront life-changing moral challenges.

Let Him Go (2020) Amazon


‘Touching’ and ‘Neo Noir’ are two words not usually associated with each other, but Thomas Bezucha’s (The Family Stone) Let Him Go proves a bittersweet pleasure.

Montana, 1961: taciturn former lawman George Blackledge (Kevin Costner), wife Margaret (Diane Lane), son James (Ryan Bruce), spouse Lorna (Kayli Carter) and their toddler Jimmy live an unexceptional life on their ranch. James dies when thrown by his horse and things rapidly take a turn for the worse.

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