Infidelity
Throughout the film, viewers see Oppenheimer on more than one occasion engage in extra martial affairs. In real life, Oppenheimer had affairs with countless women. However, in the film, viewers only see two affairs: with Jean Tatlock and Ruth Tolman. Additionally, Oppenheimer had an affair with his wife, Kitty, while she was married.
Oppenheimer met each woman through his work. He became acquainted with Tatlock (played by Florence Pugh) while she was a student at University of California at Berkley and he was a professor. He met Tolman because of his work on the Manhattan Project and met Kitty at Berkley. Each relationship was turbulent in one way or another; they each were marked by periods of intense instability and betrayal. Not only does this reflect the slippery morality related to affairs, it shows that infidelity can have a profound impact on everyone's lives, including people not directly involved in the affair. Infidelity seismically changes people and their relationships (often for the worse).
Innovation
At the core of Oppenheimer is the race to build a first-of-its-kind atomic weapon, the destructive power of which had never been seen before. Atomic bombs carried the same destructive power as millions of tons of dynamite. To create such a weapon, scientists needed to innovate and create new technology which would allow them to split atoms, enrich plutonium and uranium, and build the weapon. This research and innovation, which was hurried along by the overwhelming feeling that the Nazis would build a weapon before anyone else, thereby ending the war and taking control of the world. This feeling, coupled with the practicalities of building the bomb, resulted in the Manhattan Project.
Those in power thought that the mere existence of such a weapon would prevent future wars from happening. But after two bombs were dropped—one on Hiroshima and another on Nagasaki in Japan—the world saw the destructive power of the new weapon. And for many, the result terrified them. Progress and innovation can bring profound positive things, but they also can bring negative things, too.
