Kai Bird is a historian, journalist and author. In 2006, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for ‘American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer’, a biography of the famous theoretical physicist.
Bird has seen Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” just last week, and he has nothing but praise for the film:
“I am stunned and emotionally recovering from it. I think it is going to be seen as a stunning artistic achievement and I hope it will spark a national conversation about the issues Oppenheimer was desperate to talk about: how to live in the atomic age, and about McCarthyism — what it means to be a patriot, and what is the role of a scientist, in a society drenched with technology and science, to speak out about public issues.”
You can catch his thoughts at the 20 minute 30 second mark.
“Oppenheimer” is based on Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s 2005 book, so it’s not surprising he’s one of the first people to have seen Nolan’s film.
There have been some press junkets for the film, very few, and the film has been seen by only a handful of journalists. Nolan and Murphy have been doing interview rounds for magazine cover stories, but, otherwise, critics have been kept out of the loop.
The “Oppenheimer” embargo, for now, doesn’t lift until July 19, which is two days before the film gets released. Universal have been very secretive about this film, which is 3 hours, some of it in black and white, and Rated R.
The film stars Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr and Florence Pugh.