Destroyer of Worlds

 THE DAY AFTER TRINITY (1981)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Los Alamos. J. Robert Oppenheimer. Atomic bomb tests. Those three singular sentences should have never have coalesced yet, nevertheless, they did. Watching Jon Else's powerful, intrinsically fascinating and terrifying documentary "The Day After Trinity," it all hinges on how everyone involved in the infamous Trinity atomic bomb test thought that maybe the atomic bomb shouldn't have happened.  

Oppenheimer was not a man cultured in world news or politics, at least not in the beginning of his youth. He was principally a man of physics and mathematics that yielded a discovery by way of Albert Einstein and led to Oppenheimer's vision of an atomic bomb. After the horrific Pearl Harbor tragedy of 1941 and the worsening Nazi holocaust, it was rumored that Germany was building an atomic bomb so this ignited a patriotic charge in Oppenheimer. The rumor proved false since Germany failed to build that weapon yet the determined physicist took the best minds in the field of physics from around the world to the desolate desert of Los Alamos, New Mexico to build this bomb. It was in this expansive area that they were test the force of the bomb and to see just how destructive it could be. To say they were nonplussed and amazed by its sheer power would be an understatement; Oppenheimer himself was pleased it was not a "dud."

The rest is history as the bomb was tested on human lives, destroying two Japanese cities - Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The human toll was astronomical yet it led the Japanese forces to surrender and it is a historic chapter in World War II that either you bemoan or celebrate - the last war that America won otherwise known as the Great War. 

I am not sure "The Day After Trinity" is an anti-nuclear weapons film or anti-nuclear arms race film - Oppenheimer struggled with the government to end this race which he opined should never have proliferated the day after the Trinity atomic bomb test. It was too little and too late and Oppenheimer was attacked by Senator Joseph McCarthy at the time for being a possible Soviet spy and for his past Communist leanings. Oppenheimer's Atomic Energy Commission security clearance was expunged and he was never the same person ever since. (Note: As of December 16, 2022, United States Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm vacated the 1954 revocation of Oppenheimer's security clearance.) Robert's brother Frank Oppenheimer, a particle physicist, feels quite a bit of sorrow through his constant body language of seemingly covering his head in shame - he feels what his famous brother might have felt. That sense of regret is carried over to interviews of other scientists and collaborators leading to and during the days of the Trinity test. 

"The Day After Trinity" is scary and at times pulsates with a nervous energy, as it truly opens one's eyes to the enormity and scale of destruction of such a weapon. Oppenheimer might have seen the awesome destruction and beauty of such a "marvelous" weapon yet he felt that a discussion of war as a principle measure of destruction and violence could have carried something meaningful in the future. It didn't yet, ironically, he was still the destroyer of worlds.