The Day After Trinity

Jon Else's 1980 documentary is about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist who led the team that built the atomic bomb. It rests on interviews with scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project and on archive footage kept secret at the time. The question at its centre is whether scientific curiosity is responsible for its own consequences: some of those speaking still defend the work, others spent the rest of their lives with it. The conversation with Oppenheimer's brother Frank is the most honest passage. The narration is calm and does not dramatise. The imagery is heavy in places. Who it's for: viewers interested in the history of science and twentieth-century politics. Who it's not for: anyone wanting a dramatic narrative, or avoiding the subject of nuclear weapons.