The Trials of J. Robert Oppenheimer

J. Robert Oppenheimer was brilliant, arrogant, proud, charismatic - and a national hero. The two-hour film traces the course of Oppenheimer’s life: his rarefied childhood, his troubled adolescence, his emergence as one of America’s leading nuclear physicists, his leadership of the Los Alamos laboratory, and his tragic humiliation.

Under his leadership during World War II, the United States succeeded in becoming the first nation to harness the power of nuclear energy to create the ultimate weapon of mass destruction — the atomic bomb. But after the bomb brought the war to an end, in spite of his renown and his enormous achievement, America turned on him, humiliated him, and cast him aside.

"The Trials of J. Robert Oppenheimer," featuring Academy Award-nominated actor David Strathairn ("Good Night and Good Luck," "The Bourne Ultimatum") as Robert Oppenheimer and produced by multiple Emmy Award-winning producer David Grubin ("RFK," "LBJ," "Abraham and Mary Lincoln: A House Divided"), includes interviews with the scientist’s former colleagues and eminent scholars to present a complex and revealing portrait of one of the most important and controversial scientists of the twentieth century.