As Samuel Goldwyn apocryphally remarked in 1945: “This A-bomb – it’s dynamite!!” With 13 Bafta nominations, Christopher Nolan’s mighty historical bio-epic Oppenheimer continues its triumphal march through awards season. It stars Cillian Murphy as the wartime inventor of nuclear weaponry J Robert Oppenheimer, galvanised by America’s race to get the bomb before the Nazis, transfixed by the dark ecstasy of the successful Trinity test in the New Mexico desert, then agonised with his postwar burden of guilt and horror. The Bafta voters have responded passionately to the scale, ambition and seriousness of this work from this remarkable British director; its...