In “And So We Thought,” Daniel Xu ’29 explores creative works, both in their content, but also in how they relate to broader media and societal ecosystems. 

Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.

I remember first watching Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” on a flight back to China. I was stuck in the middle seat on a United flight, the air conditioning was running overtime despite the thick wool blanket I had draped across my lap, and the man in front of me — with his shoes and socks splayed gloriously in the middle of the aisle — had no concept of personal hygiene. 

Despite the atmosphere, or perhaps because of it, “Oppenheimer” felt masterful. From the gorgeous palette of muted grays and sharp oranges to the crisp intensity of its star-studded cast and masterful character study of its leading man — all framed by composer Ludwig Göransson’s haunting and at-times gorgeous composition — Nolan’s creation is nothing short of a cinematic masterpiece. With seven Oscars and just under one billion dollars to its name, it’s hard to argue that “Oppenheimer” isn’t an explosive success by almost every metric imaginable. 

But if “Oppenheimer” is the star-studded celebrity of the family, then the book it adapted is the older sibling with his own brand of quiet wisdom. “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer” is a chronicle of intellectual and moral development. Through letters, declassified FBI files, interviews with contemporaries and the now infamous security clearance hearing, authors Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin paint not just Oppenheimer, but also those who orbited his life, as persons of genuine richness — individuals with lives beyond their contribution to the American atomic project.

Those who watched “Oppenheimer” are familiar with Oppie’s struggles with depression and guilt, which represents one of the film’s primary conflicts. But what movie-goers might not know is that he was also a charismatic leader, someone who, according to David Hawkins ’34 M.A. ’36, “was a good politician … [who had] a great talent.” And while Nolan captures Oppenheimer’s love of New Mexico, what might be less obvious is his passion for sailing (Oppie spent many an adolescent summer in a home off Bay Shore, Long Island), his love of literature (he was a particular fan of Ernest Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises” and wrote his fair share of poetry that was, dare I say, quite brilliant in his own right) or his childhood interest in mineral collecting. Did you know that he named his Los Angeles ranch “Perro Caliente?” Probably not.

Are any of these details inherently necessary to “Oppenheimer?” Perhaps not. The film was, after all, marketed with the tagline “The world changes forever.” From the contours of Göransson’s music to the emotional intensity of its characters (the moment when Niels Bohr rasps, “This isn’t a new weapon. It’s a new world,” comes to mind), Nolan clearly designed his film as a fast-paced dramatization of its titular character’s life. And to be sure, there’s clear benefits to that approach: this sleeker, simpler version of Oppenheimer is easier to understand, more marketable, more straightforward in his sins and salvations, more Greek god than American man. 

Still, I can’t help mourning what’s been lost. I am reminded of that age-old joke about freshman introductions on the Farm: “What’s your name? Where’re you from? What are you majoring in?” Nolan’s Oppenheimer might answer with, “J. Robert Oppenheimer. Los Alamos. Atomic theory.” But I would wager that Oppenheimer — not the father of the atomic bomb, nor the American Prometheus — but J. Robert Oppenheimer as an individual, as we get to know him through the pages of “American Prometheus,” would offer a much more interesting answer. I can imagine him quoting a Marxist line on the nature of names or struggling to distinguish home between his childhood New York and defining Los Alamos residence. I can see him describing himself, in his typical Oppenheimer-esque wit, as a poet and unwilling politician.

At a place like Stanford, it’s easy to associate and become associated with a series of distinct titles: Cross-country runner. Startup founder. Cellist. Mech-E Major. And it’s even easier to see Oppenheimer — the father of the atomic bomb, the man who gave us the power to destroy ourselves, the original American Prometheus — as the culmination of that tendency. But by including his life’s most innocuous details, Bird and Sherwin remind us that Oppenheimer, in all his nuance, and messy humanness, was more complex American than tortured Prometheus.