Day One

This is a very good film on the Manhattan Project, the building of the atomic bomb. It is especially a faithful adaptation of the book, DAY ONE, by Peter Wyden. Other reviews here have done a good job of description--I will add that it is far superior to the Paul Newman film on the same topic: FAT MAN AND LITTLE BOY.

In addition, this film is a good teaching tool. I used to show clips from the movie to my U.S. History classes, particularly the latter portion of the film where multiple viewpoints are given of the reasons for and against the dropping of the bomb, whether or not it was necessary, and what would be the moral consequences if such a weapon was used. These viewpoints, from the military and civilian leaders in Washington and at Los Alamos, are not conjured up from the mind of some scriptwriter--they are historically accurate.

"Day One" feels like a portrait of the longest pre-meditated murder in the history of mankind. There are the killers, the unwitting accomplices, and the witnesses. It's all so well-documented, so perfectly arranged. This is the coldest kind of tale imaginable. Given the opportunity to put a distance of emotion and miles between the countless innocent dead and some perceived military victory, a country at large was deceived into believing that some great good or justice was being served.

In spite of how you or I might see the results of the design, construction and eventual detonation of the first nuclear devices, this film doesn't take sides. Brian Dennehy and David Strathairn (two of my favorite actors) create incredibly believable characters. Michael Tucker, who looks very much like Leo Szilard, is excellent as well. I enjoyed Joseph Sargent's directorial work, a sort of off-hand realist quality he brings to nearly all his films. It serves the story well. "Day One" is a good film, just not the most engaging or tightly woven one. Your interest should depend directly on your familiarity with the subject matter.

I am usually suspicious of docudramas, but from the books I have read and the documentaries I have seen on the topic of the making of the atomic bomb, I would say that this movie does not veer too far from the truth. There is very little of "certain events have been changed for dramatic effect." In reading histories you often get bogged down in details and do not have clear visual images of the people or environments, and documentaries usually try to piece together fragments of interviews and archival footage. I found that this movie was able to supply a coherent narrative while presenting the major players and events. No fancy cinematic effects, just straightforward story telling. It's a major undertaking to tell this story and this is a quality production.

I thought the choice of actors was quite good. Brian Dennehy makes a good general Groves and Michael Tucker is almost a dead ringer for Leo Szilard. Of course there is only one Oppenheimer, but I thought David Strathairn does a good impersonation. They kind of went overboard on Einstein's hair, that wig must have weighed several pounds.

It probably helps to have a little background on the topic before seeing this, since there are a lot of players. The whole effort had a cast of thousands, and this movie has a cast of several dozen. One thing I thought could have been better was an easier identification of the initial appearances of various people, maybe even subtitles. For example, Patrick Breen is listed as playing Richard Feynman, but I missed catching his appearance even though I was looking for him.

I thought the movie was particularly good in presenting the back-room discussions about the decision to drop the bombs. That will be debated for all time I am sure, but you come away from this thinking that it was a mistake. In that you would be in agreement with Generals Eisenhower and Marshall as well as Truman's Chief of Staff Admiral Leahy. Were over 200,000 people sacrificed in order to make a statement to the Russians or to prevent their taking a part of Japan? How many U.S. lives were saved by the bombings? Once there was the bomb, was it inevitable that it be used? Could not a demonstration have been scheduled? And so on.

For a complete history the book, "The Making of the Atomic Bomb," by Richard Rhodes is good. I found the 1981 documentary, "The Day After Trinity," to be excellent. It has archival footage, but most importantly it has interviews with many of the major players.

I think this movie makes a sincere attempt to tell the story, within the limitations of a normal movie run-time, of one of the defining events in the history of mankind.

TV Movie about the creation and use of the atomic bomb in World war II, that is impeccably well researched, detailed, inteligently made and graced by an All-Star collection of secondary actors.

Unlike many north American movies and docs, Day One avoids patriotism (in fact it tilts against the use of the bomb) or the temptation of proposing Oppenheimer as a martir. Instead, Oppenheimer's real life ambiguity is represented perfectly. He doesn't want to betray a friend that was investigated for communism but he does it. He thinks about using the bomb as a demonstration at some point but turns into the opposite side: arguing that it may fail or give the Japanese a chance to prepare for an eventual attack. History will never fully understand the person that was Oppenheimer.

Another key figure is Leslie Groves. He's a perfectly efficient militar who runs every possible detail of what happens in Los Alamos. He's the force behind the making of the bomb and he makes it sure that it will be used. Brian Dennehy portrays Groves' old fashioned strenght, intelligence and single-mindness perfectly.

The third most important person here is Szilard, a physicist whose ideas were key for the development of the bomb but who turned against it's use against Japan (or any other nation) asking President Truman not to deploy the bomb over Japan. He's perfectly captured by Michael Tucker who even resembles the real Szilard. Szilard proposed a demonstration (deploy the bomb without killing anyone to show it's power) that was rejected.

The movie poses the debate: Should the US of the time be accountable for the use of the bomb?

I myself see arguments for both sides:

On one hand, the atomic bomb had to happen. It was a natural conclussion of the ever inspiring scientific and physic discoveries at the start of last century. Also, throwing it as a demonstration would have indeed been risky if it failed. The Japanese military was scattered and divided at the time, and it's difficult to negotiate with a bubble of voices. Civilians (kids and women) are killed with other weapons too. They were in Dresden for example. The bomb ended the war.

On the other hand the bomb had cost too much money not to use it. They wanted to know what was it's devastation power. They didn't try a serious effort to negotiate a surrender with Japan. They picked cities where the devastation could be bigger. The Japanese were weak at the time, they may have been defeated by other medium.

The movie also offers some curiosities as Kyoto not being one of the bombed cities due to the fact that one military authoriy respected it's traditions and Arts too much and the division between the Navy wanting to give fair play to the Japanese (with at least some hours-long warning) and the Army just wanting to bomb the hell ouf it.

Day One by far is the best and most accurate full-scope portrayal of the events and people who ushered in the then-fantastic dawn of nuclear warfare. Perhaps it is the best portrayal merely because it is the most accurate and wide context picture of the what happened behind the scenes from 1933 to 1945. I was 11 years old and a schoolchild in Chicago that early August day 1945 when the world learned of the nuclear explosion over Hiroshima, to be followed up by the relatively forgotten "afterthought" atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki a few days later. Now, at 66, I can look back on 1933-1945 and the age of cold war-enhanced nuclear terror that followed it in some broader and clearer perspective.

Day One is actually three sequential and somewhat overlapping stories. The first story could be labeled "the Nuclear Theoreticians and Dreamers". It is essentially the story of Leo Szilard, Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller and a few other academics, mostly European Jews who fled to the west as refugees from the Europe that Adolf Hitler was taking over and threatening. Their interest was essentially a nuclear weapon that could be used to counter the one they expected Hitler to develop.

Almost from the moment the United States government began taking a serious interest in their work, just prior to the Pearl Harbor attack in December 1941, commenced "the Project". With this commenced a series of major experiments in applied science and industrial engineering for purposes of creating the raw materials of atomic weapons -- Plutonium and Uranium 235 -- and for designing and building the actual bombs and trigger mechanisms needed to turn scientific theory into nuclear explosive reality. This succinctly describes the Manhattan Project, code name for the biggest and best kept secret in history, operated at a vast, hidden desert facility near Los Alamos, New Mexico under control of the brilliant Dr Robert Oppenheimer and the hard driving US General Leslie Groves.

From about the time Harry S Truman succeeded the dead Franklin Roosevelt as US president in April 1945 -- three months before the day of Trinity -- codename for the first atomic bomb test in New Mexico in the early morning hours of July 16, 1945 -- the project came under full control of the civil and military leadership of the wartime United States: Truman himself, secretary of state James Byrnes, secretary of war Henry Stimson, chief of staff George C Marshall, Fleet Admiral William Leahy and a few others, formed into a committee to decide national policy for the use of the shortly expected super weapons. General Groves and Dr Oppenheimer were members of this select committee, and their suggestions drove the policy that committed the United States to actual use of the bombs against Japan, which still fought on after the death of Adolf Hitler and the complete destruction of National Socialist Germany. But the true controlling power was in the hands of Byrnes and Truman himself. They were determined to end the bloody war against Japan -- and gain diplomatic mastery over Josef Stalin's Soviet Union -- through use of the most overwhelming weapons in human history. Besides, they argued, how could the Truman administration justify to the United States Congress spending the then-princely sum of $2 billion and deploying scores of thousands of manpower, developing a weapon that we could never dare use against a real enemy -- at a time when there was one American combat casualty for every two Japanese on every island that this country had invaded over the past two years? The horror of it is that it is still a compelling argument even today, 55 years later. So, against the futile arguments of some of the early nuclear theoreticians, the ultimate weapons were used -- for the first and so far only times -- twice in one week in August 1945 and thereby instantly ended World War II

Day One is told in the remorselessly cold and nondramatic style of documentary history. The dialogue from the meetings presided over by Byrnes and Stimson was taken direct from the released historical records. The color film of the Trinity explosion in New Mexico was real, not re-created. The film of the flight of the Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber that released the Hiroshima bomb, was the authentic black and white film made during the flight. The voices over the plane's intercom -- "My God, what have we done?" -- are all real. The utter reality of it all has glued me to my seat and riveted my attention through three or more viewings.