“I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

A verse from the Bhagavad Gita, spoken by Oppenheimer while viewing the successful test of the first bomb.

J. Robert Oppenheimer. A name forever burned in history and largely forgotten.

Japanese cities like Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the two cities our bombers destroyed at the cost of great personal angst, at the end of World War II, an event created largely by him.

I know the name Robert Oppenheimer because I lived through the times and visited Hiroshima in the ’50s. It was not pretty to see.

Christopher Nolan (“The Dark Knight Trilogy,” “Dunkirk”) gives us the dazzling story of “Oppenheimer,” available to stream Feb. 16 on Peacock.

It’s important because it’s about this historic, fated man, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and the equally important men and women who helped create the new, terrible, exciting and dangerous world we’ve been handed.

In the film we meet the people who created and unleashed the “atomic bomb” upon all of us, a thing that morphed into the hydrogen bomb, a Frankenstein’s monster that changed our world.

“Oppenheimer” is the man who did all that, who created a golem that may yet light the final storm.

Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” is a gift to a bevy of fine great actors, long out of work, who eventually will be grateful to have it on their resume: Josh Hartnett, Dane DeHaan, Casey Affleck, Rami Malek (who won best actor in 2018 for “Bohemian Rhapsody”).

Kenneth Branagh, Benny Safdie, Jason Clarke, David Dastmalchian, Alden Ehrenreich, Macon Blair, Josh Peck, Jack Quaid, Olivia Thirlby and Gary Oldman as Harry Truman. Yes, that Gary Oldman, looking very much like that Harry Truman who calls Oppenheimer “a big sissy.”

Cillian Murphy (“Peaky Blinder,” “Dunkirk”) is Oppenheimer, who stands at the center of the film and does his best work ever. Most critics think he’s a cinch for best actor.

He shares important scenes with a stunning and resilient Robert Downey Jr., who plays his senatorial enemy. Emily Blunt gives her best foot forward as Oppenheimer’s tortured alcoholic wife. But then who wouldn’t drink if they were married to the man who invented the atomic bomb?

Florence Pugh (Amy March in Greta Gerwig’s “Little Women”) who plays his old lover whom he can’t seem to shake, moves and breathes like a ghost.

Matt Damon, who will be forever known as “Jason Bourne, ” successfully takes on the role of Gen. Leslie R. Groves, a no-nonsense career officer who is one of the central creators of the Los Alamos test site. He was well chosen.

Each player is important to Oppenheimer, and to the story.

Among the cast is a completely different Josh Hartnett, who left Hollywood for England.

Hartnett has just restarted his career, and Gary Oldman, who has a paragraph of a few lines that only he could voice, is Harry S. Truman. You won’t recognize him.

To list everyone who put their creative talents and expertise into Nolan’s amazing work would take this writer longer than the three hour run time.

Every great epic film had its flaws, and every great director has had theirs.

One scene stands out, a vivid sex scene between Oppenheimer and Pugh, which may shock the darkest hearts. I should also alert you to the one sex scene imagined by Blunt in the middle of a board room investigation.

J. Robert Oppenheimer was a rare human being, smart, gifted and tortured, a modern Prometheus who stole fire from the gods and changed the entire world, its images and vocabulary, and who created a “golem” that may yet light the final fire.

And like Prometheus, he found himself to be chained to a rock by men, once his devoted friends, who envied him, and even won medals for destroying him.

Nolan’s film is a riveting three-hour history of the creation of what many learned men and women consider the “match” that could and may yet end the world.

Oppenheimer streams on YouTube Apple TV and Amazon Prime Video.

 

J.P. Devine of Waterville is a former stage and screen actor.

 

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