I'm still thinking about how the film starts with Oppenheimer staring at raindrops creating ripples in a puddle of water. Then the film ends with him staring at ripples in the lake - symbolizing the ripple effect and the chain reaction caused by the creation of the bomb. Bringing everything full.

The things I'm having the most trouble with justifying are two of the sex scenes. The one that included the Bhagavad Gita was... weird? It just felt like a bizarre and contrived way to include the famous line somewhere prior to Trinity, and it felt off. But the thing that I'm really having trouble justifying is that one sex scene during the security hearing, which I'm surprised nobody's mentioned (or maybe they have and I just missed it). Frankly, reading the transcript of the hearing, it is uncomfortable seeing Oppenheimer confess to his affair with Tatlock while Kitty is in the room right behind him, and I hoped, if Nolan included that scene, that it would be appropriately uncomfortable. But this seemed like too much, and it almost took me out of the film completely (as soon as the camera panned behind Robb to unveil a naked Oppie, you could hear chuckles and mild laughter from the rest of the audience); Emily Blunt's acting alone was enough to sell the emotions of that scene, so I'm not sure why Nolan went overboard. Genuinely really curious what people thought of that scene, since it's really the only major thing I can't justify.

Everything else here I'll mention is just me nitpicking, or just specific stuff about my experience with the film.

The first third of the film was extremely fast-paced. I was wondering how Nolan would manage to fit forty years into a three hour film, and that first third showed me exactly how he did that: by skipping through every bit of his life in rapid sequence, not giving the audience a chance to breathe at all. I personally wonder if that's because I'm familiar with the history enough that every single line of dialogue felt loaded with information, but some of the other folks I was with thought that, if they hadn't known at least some of the history beforehand, the first third would be impossibly fast to follow along. Very curious what people experiencing this story for the first time through this film think.

The Trinity test scene was interesting. Everything about the build-up and the immediate aftermath was damn perfect... except for the fact that it was so painfully obvious that the shots of the explosion and fireball were of a chemical explosion much smaller than a nuclear one. On the one hand, duh, they didn't film a nuclear explosion, obviously. But on the other, it made the explosion feel less threatening than it should have been, in my opinion. The cinematography, the editing, the score, the acting, it was all perfect during that scene; it was just that the explosion felt small. I wish that they didn't hype up this scene in the promotional material, because it's important for audiences coming in to recognize that the impact of this film comes from the intimate character study and the political drama, not from a "cool explosion." (Speaking of cool, I'll just say I loved how Nolan prepared us - visually and auditorily - for the Trinity test by first showing a test of an explosive lens, then the 100-ton test, then Trinity itself, with each explosion being louder, more visually spectacular, and having a more noticeable delayed sound in each iteration. It was good filmmaking!)

Now... that divisive last third of the film. I personally really liked it, but I can understand why one might have problems with it. It felt, for lack of a better word, jumbled, as if Nolan took the scenes of and relating to the 1954 hearings, put them all in a blender, and strung them together as they came out. Maybe it felt jumbled because I know roughly the chronological order of which witnesses testified when, maybe it's because everyone always uses Teller's testimony as the dramatic climax of the hearings and Nolan put that testimony in early, maybe it was something else, but it definitely felt like the film became a bit unfocused. Maybe it was because the film almost completely skipped the period between 1946 and 1953 and I kept waiting to return to those years (the H-bomb debate was so short, Project Vista was omitted completely, and Oppenheimer's call for candor was one scene!), so perhaps it'll feel more natural on a second viewing, knowing in advance how quickly the film jumps from 1945 to the hearings.

I personally didn't find the detonation scene small by any means. I was absolutely engulfed in the visuals, it looked awe-inspiring.

Don't let that crybaby back in here