Complete listed story — includes the ending
Memento
The film opens with a sequence, played in reverse, where a man fatally shoots another in the head and takes a Polaroid photo of the dead man. The film continues as a non-linear narrative presented as an alternating series of black-and-white and color scenes.
The black-and-white scenes begin with former insurance investigator Leonard Shelby in a motel room speaking to an unknown caller. As a result of an attack by two men, Leonard has anterograde amnesia and is unable to store recent memories. He explains that he killed the attacker who raped and strangled his wife Catherine, but a second clubbed him and escaped. The police did not accept that there was a second attacker, but Leonard believes the attacker's name is "John G" or "James G". Leonard investigates using an elaborate system of notes, Polaroid photos, and tattoos to keep track of the information he discovers.
Leonard recalls Sammy Jankis, another anterograde amnesiac, from his insurance industry days. After tests demonstrated Sammy's inability to learn tasks through repetition, Leonard believed that his condition was at best psychological and denied his insurance claim. Sammy's distraught wife repeatedly asked Sammy to administer her insulin shots for her diabetes, hoping he would remember having given her a shot. However, Sammy administered each injection, giving her a fatal overdose.
The color scenes are presented in reverse order. In the story's chronology, Leonard self-directively gets a tattoo of John G's license plate number. Finding a note in his clothes, he meets Natalie, a bartender who initially mistakes him for her boyfriend Jimmy Grantz, whom she expects to meet. After offering to help Leonard, she provokes him into assaulting her and exploits his condition by blaming her bruises on Jimmy's associate Dodd. She explains that Dodd has been aggressively pestering her for money that Jimmy took to a meeting he never returned from. Leonard volunteers to confront Dodd and Natalie provides him with Dodd's address.
Dodd finds Leonard driving and questions him about his car, but Leonard escapes after Dodd attempts to shoot him. Leonard ambushes Dodd in the latter's hotel room and calls his contact Teddy, who helps drive Dodd out of town at gunpoint. Teddy advises Leonard not to trust Natalie, but Leonard finds a note warning himself not to trust Teddy. Feeling pity for Leonard, Natalie returns his favor by running John G's license plate through a database and provides him with the driver's license for a John Edward Gammell, Teddy's full name. Confirming his information on "John G" and his warnings, Leonard drives Teddy to an abandoned warehouse, leading to the opening sequence where he fatally shoots him.
In the final black-and-white scene, prompted by the caller, Leonard meets with Teddy, an undercover cop who has found "John G", Jimmy, and directs Leonard to the abandoned warehouse. When Jimmy arrives, Leonard strangles him and takes a Polaroid photo of the body. As the photo develops, the black-and-white transitions to the final (chronologically earliest) color scene. Leonard swaps clothes with Jimmy before hearing him whisper "Sammy".
Suddenly doubting Jimmy's role in his wife's murder, Leonard confronts Teddy when the latter arrives. Teddy explains that he helped Leonard kill the real attacker a year ago, which Leonard has no memory of. Since then, Teddy has cyclically exploited Leonard's condition and search for "John G" to bust drug deals and profit off them. Teddy reveals that Leonard's wife survived the assault and was diabetic. It was actually Leonard who overdosed his wife, and he had repressed the memory into Sammy's story to escape his guilt.
After hearing Teddy confess, Leonard burns the photograph of the dead Jimmy and the photo Teddy handed him that documented his successful revenge from a year ago. In a monologue, Leonard explains that he is willing to lie to himself to be happy and believe that his actions are meaningful. He targets Teddy, who revealed that he too has a "John G" name, by ordering a tattoo of Teddy's license plate number and writing a note that Teddy cannot be trusted. Leonard drives off in Jimmy's car to a tattoo parlor.
The Prestige
Note: Though the movie contains multiple flash-forwards and flash-backs throughout, the story is told here in chronological order.
In 1890s London, Robert Angier, Alfred Borden, and Angier's wife, Julia, work as magician's assistants under the mentorship of John Cutter. During a water tank trick, Julia drowns after Borden, seemingly, incorrectly ties her wrists. Angier blames Borden, and the two men become bitter rivals.
Both men pursue separate careers in magic. Borden, a gifted inventor of illusions, marries a woman named Sarah, with whom he has a daughter named Jess, and hires an enigmatic assistant, Fallon. Angier, whose strength lies more in showmanship, continues working with Cutter and takes on a new assistant, Olivia. The feud escalates as Angier and Borden visit and sabotage each other's acts. Borden loses two fingers after being shot by Angier during a pistol trick, and Borden violently thwarts Angier's bird act in front of a live audience, harming an attendee.
Borden next debuts a spectacular illusion, The Transported Man, in which he appears to teleport from one side of the stage to the other almost instantly. Angier becomes obsessed with discovering the trick's secret and, with Cutter's help, roughly recreates the act using a lookalike named Root, a failed actor. Though Angier's version is successful, he resents remaining hidden beneath the stage while Root takes the applause. Desperate to outdo Borden, he sends Olivia to spy on him. Olivia, however, falls in love with Borden and defects, though she still passes Borden's coded diary to Angier.
After Angier kidnaps Fallon, Borden reveals to Angier that the key word, TESLA, supposedly decrypts the diary and reveals his method. Seeking answers, Angier travels to Colorado Springs to meet the inventor Nikola Tesla. Believing Tesla built a teleportation device for Borden, Angier commissions Tesla to make one. Tesla eventually delivers a working machine but warns that it will bring only misery. When used, the device creates a duplicate of its subject while leaving the original person intact. In London, Angier uses the machine in a new illusion, The Real Transported Man, which earns him acclaim. Sarah, suspicious of Borden's secrecy and affair with Olivia, hangs herself.
Determined to uncover Angier's method, Borden sneaks backstage during a performance of The Real Transported Man and witnesses Angier fall into a water tank and drown. He attempts to open the tank and save Angier, but is arrested for Angier's murder, convicted, and sentenced to death. While awaiting execution, Borden is approached by a solicitor for a wealthy Lord Caldlow, who offers to care for Borden's daughter Jess in exchange for the secret behind the original Transported Man. When Caldlow visits the prison, Borden is horrified to discover that he is actually Angier. Borden passes Angier a note revealing the secret, but Angier tears it up, leaving him to hang. Cutter helps dispose of Tesla's teleportation machine, but is dismayed by Angier's intention of allowing Borden to die.
As Borden is hanged, a disguised visitor shoots Angier in the basement of his theater, revealing himself as Borden. The mortally wounded Angier learns the truth: "Borden" is in fact a pair of identical twins sharing one identity. One twin loved Sarah, the other Olivia; one lost two fingers, and amputated the twin's same two fingers to match; one has survived, while the other was executed. Together, they performed The Transported Man by switching places undetected, and whenever one twin was performing, the other hid using prosthetics and makeup under the identity "Fallon".
Dying, Angier confesses that each time he used Tesla's machine, it created a clone, one of whom drowned beneath the stage each night, and that he is no longer sure of his own identity. The surviving Borden brother reclaims his daughter, as Cutter narrates that the final act of any magic trick—the "prestige"—is the return of what was thought lost. Angier's death knocks over a kerosene lamp that sends his theater up in flames, revealing rows of water tanks holding the corpses of his many duplicates.
Dunkirk
While the film is shown in a nonlinear narrative, including the action of one week on the beach, one day in the rescue flotilla, and one hour of the air battle, the following is the chronological order of events that happen in the film.
In the summer of 1940, during the Battle of France, Allied soldiers retreat to Dunkirk. A British soldier named Tommy loses his squadmates and flees through the perimeter held by French troops to the beach, where thousands await evacuation. He helps another soldier, Gibson, bury a body and survive a Luftwaffe dive-bomber attack. They rush a wounded man on a stretcher onto a hospital ship at the single, vulnerable mole, overseen by Commander Bolton, available for embarking on deep-draft ships, but are ordered off again. Together, they hide underneath the pier in hopes of sneaking back on, but the ship is sunk by German aircraft.
Tommy saves a Highlander, Alex, from being crushed by the wreck of the sinking ship. Tommy and Gibson submerse themselves underwater and masquerade as some of the boat’s survivors in order to be let onto the next available ship. That night, the three board a destroyer, but it is hit by a U-boat torpedo before it can depart. Gibson saves Tommy and Alex while escaping the sinking ship by opening the door to below-deck, and they all return to the beach.
The Royal Navy requisitions civilian vessels in England for the evacuation. In Weymouth, civilian sailor Dawson and his son Peter set out in his boat Moonstone, rather than let the Navy commandeer her. Their teenage hand George joins them on impulse. In the English Channel, they save an officer, now shell-shocked after surviving a U-boat sinking. Realising Dawson is going to Dunkirk, the officer grows fearful and Peter locks him up. He escapes, urging they turn back, and tries to wrest control of the boat; in the scuffle, he elbows George, who falls down a staircase and suffers a severe head injury.
Three Royal Air Force (RAF) Spitfires fly towards Dunkirk to provide cover for the evacuation, limited to one hour of operation by their fuel supply. They engage in a dogfight with a Messerschmitt Bf 109. After shooting it down, one of the pilots, Farrier, has his fuel gauge smashed and cannot read how much he has left. He and the second Spitfire pilot, Collins, determine their leader has gone down and fly on with Collins radioing Farrier about their remaining fuel. The crew of the Moonstone witness the two RAF pilots protect a minesweeper from a bomber escorted by fighters: Collins's Spitfire is hit and he ditches. Initially trapped in his canopy as the plane sinks, Collins is saved by Peter.
Becoming increasingly desperate, Tommy, Alex and Gibson join Highlanders in a grounded trawler in the intertidal zone outside the perimeter, hoping the tide will float them home. After its Dutch sailor returns, Germans start shooting at the boat, and water enters through the bullet holes.
Alex, attempting to lighten the craft to keep it afloat, accuses Gibson (who has been silent the entire time) of being a German spy despite Tommy's defences and pleas. He turns the rest of the soldiers against Gibson, using the logic that he must either speak German, or can only speak English with a very thick German accent. Scared for his life, Gibson reveals he is actually French, meaning that he took on the identity of the buried soldier in hopes of being evacuated earlier.
During the scuffle to try to force Gibson out, all the soldiers are thrown to one side, which dislodges the ship and allows the tide to finally lift the trawler. The group has to eventually abandon the boat, as they cannot stop the intruding water after taking more hits. As they leave, Gibson is entangled by a chain, and drowns with the sinking ship.
Farrier, knowing his fuel is running out, decides to keep flying to chase down German aircraft. He engages a German bomber attacking a destroyer. The ship is bombed and sinks, but Farrier is able to down the plane before it can attack the escaping crew. The crashing plane ignites the oil on the water, but members of the crew, as well as Tommy and Alex, are saved by Moonstone, which had manoeuvred to save the men in the water.
Alex points out to Peter that George has already died of his injuries when they are all asked to be careful below-deck. Shortly after, the shell-shocked officer asks Peter if he will be okay, to which he lies and assures him that he will be alright. Dawson has Moonstone evade an aerial attack using a technique taught by his deceased elder son, a pilot lost at the start of the war.
Farrier reaches Dunkirk just as his fuel runs out, shooting down a dive-bomber approaching the mole to the jubilation of the soldiers below.
Once Moonstone makes landfall, the shell-shocked officer and Collins part ways with the Dawsons, as Peter honours George's desire to do something useful enough to be mentioned in the paper by arranging a publication of his obituary. At the same time, Tommy and Alex board a train with the other evacuees.
With over 300,000 men successfully evacuated, Bolton chooses to stay and oversee the French evacuation next.
Upon reaching England, Alex requests a newspaper from a young boy at the train tracks. He cannot bear to read it, fearful that they will be spit at in the streets for failing. Instead, they are actually heralded by the public upon their arrival at Woking.
Farrier glides safely onto the beach; however, he is far beyond the perimeter. After destroying the Spitfire to prevent it from falling into enemy hands, he is captured by German forces.
Tommy reads the paper for Alex, which is quoting Churchill's address to Parliament, pledging that Britain will fight on.
Oppenheimer
In the 1930s, J. Robert Oppenheimer teaches at the California Institute of Technology and the University of California, Berkeley after studying theoretical physics in Europe. A number of Berkeley academics are also Communist Party members, but Oppenheimer does not join himself.
After World War II breaks out, Ernest Lawrence of the Radiation Lab cautions Oppenheimer against having communist connections. Oppenheimer scales back and is later approached by General Leslie Groves to lead the Manhattan Project. Oppenheimer proposes a new laboratory at Los Alamos, New Mexico, where they could endeavor to build an atomic bomb before the Nazis. Edward Teller is recruited to Los Alamos and theorizes that an explosion could cause global atmospheric ignition. When his theory is disproved, he starts researching fusion-based weapons instead of working on the proposed fission bombs.
In July 1945, the US Army successfully conducts the Trinity test, the first detonation of a nuclear weapon. Subsequently, the United States detonates two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to conclude World War II. In the immediate aftermath, Oppenheimer meets with President Harry S. Truman, to whom he expresses his remorse on building the bomb. Truman absolves him of all responsibility, but is annoyed at Oppenheimer’s remorse. Oppenheimer is labeled 'father of the atomic bomb', but his public stance in the post-war years changes towards nuclear non-proliferation.
In 1949, the Soviet Union successfully tests a plutonium bomb, similar to one developed at Los Alamos. In a meeting of top advisors, Oppenheimer frustrates Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) chairman Lewis Strauss by favoring arms talks with Russia instead of escalating with Teller's proposed thermonuclear weapons. During a heated period of discussion, Oppenheimer's past security lapses are brought up, including rekindling an affair with Communist ex-lover, Jean Tatlock, immediately after gaining his security clearance in 1942. Oppenheimer had also protected his friend Haakon Chevalier from an espionage investigation, by directly lying to security officer Boris Pash.
In 1954, irritated at constantly being undermined by Oppenheimer, Strauss conspires with staunch anti-communist William Borden to initiate a security clearance hearing for Oppenheimer. He appoints Roger Robb as the board's counsel, who replays the accusations of Oppenheimer's disloyalty towards the US. Groves, Isidor Rabi, and Oppenheimer's wife Kitty testify in favor of Oppenheimer, but Teller and Borden testify against him. In the end, Oppenheimer's Q clearance is revoked by a two-to-one decision of the hearing's three judges, ending his government advisory role.
In 1959, Strauss is nominated as US Secretary of Commerce, which the US Senate is expected to confirm as per tradition. During his Senate confirmation hearing, Strauss is questioned over his actions relating to Oppenheimer's security hearing. Strauss alleges that the FBI was suspicious of Oppenheimer since his teaching days, well before Borden accused him of espionage in 1954. Strauss claims to not have acted against Oppenheimer through the security hearing, despite having many public disagreements with him. Strauss further alleges that Oppenheimer turned scientists against him, starting with Albert Einstein at Princeton University in 1947. Teller testifies in Strauss' favor, with Physicist David L. Hill of the Chicago Met Lab expected to follow suit. However, Hill instead exposes Strauss' personal vendetta and claims that the scientific community is against Strauss. Shortly afterward, the Senate rejects Strauss' nomination.
While Oppenheimer receives the Enrico Fermi Award in 1963, a flashback reveals he never mentioned Strauss during his 1947 conversation with Einstein. Instead, he admits to Einstein that the global catastrophe they feared, and then believed was averted, was now ironically inevitable.
The film opens with a sequence, played in reverse, where a man fatally shoots another in the head and takes a Polaroid photo of the dead man. The film continues as a non-linear narrative presented as an alternating series of black-and-white and color scenes.
The black-and-white scenes begin with former insurance investigator Leonard Shelby in a motel room speaking to an unknown caller. As a result of an attack by two men, Leonard has anterograde amnesia and is unable to store recent memories. He explains that he killed the attacker who raped and strangled his wife Catherine, but a second clubbed him and escaped. The police did not accept that there was a second attacker, but Leonard believes the attacker's name is "John G" or "James G". Leonard investigates using an elaborate system of notes, Polaroid photos, and tattoos to keep track of the information he discovers.
Leonard recalls Sammy Jankis, another anterograde amnesiac, from his insurance industry days. After tests demonstrated Sammy's inability to learn tasks through repetition, Leonard believed that his condition was at best psychological and denied his insurance claim. Sammy's distraught wife repeatedly asked Sammy to administer her insulin shots for her diabetes, hoping he would remember having given her a shot. However, Sammy administered each injection, giving her a fatal overdose.
The color scenes are presented in reverse order. In the story's chronology, Leonard self-directively gets a tattoo of John G's license plate number. Finding a note in his clothes, he meets Natalie, a bartender who initially mistakes him for her boyfriend Jimmy Grantz, whom she expects to meet. After offering to help Leonard, she provokes him into assaulting her and exploits his condition by blaming her bruises on Jimmy's associate Dodd. She explains that Dodd has been aggressively pestering her for money that Jimmy took to a meeting he never returned from. Leonard volunteers to confront Dodd and Natalie provides him with Dodd's address.
Dodd finds Leonard driving and questions him about his car, but Leonard escapes after Dodd attempts to shoot him. Leonard ambushes Dodd in the latter's hotel room and calls his contact Teddy, who helps drive Dodd out of town at gunpoint. Teddy advises Leonard not to trust Natalie, but Leonard finds a note warning himself not to trust Teddy. Feeling pity for Leonard, Natalie returns his favor by running John G's license plate through a database and provides him with the driver's license for a John Edward Gammell, Teddy's full name. Confirming his information on "John G" and his warnings, Leonard drives Teddy to an abandoned warehouse, leading to the opening sequence where he fatally shoots him.
In the final black-and-white scene, prompted by the caller, Leonard meets with Teddy, an undercover cop who has found "John G", Jimmy, and directs Leonard to the abandoned warehouse. When Jimmy arrives, Leonard strangles him and takes a Polaroid photo of the body. As the photo develops, the black-and-white transitions to the final (chronologically earliest) color scene. Leonard swaps clothes with Jimmy before hearing him whisper "Sammy".
Suddenly doubting Jimmy's role in his wife's murder, Leonard confronts Teddy when the latter arrives. Teddy explains that he helped Leonard kill the real attacker a year ago, which Leonard has no memory of. Since then, Teddy has cyclically exploited Leonard's condition and search for "John G" to bust drug deals and profit off them. Teddy reveals that Leonard's wife survived the assault and was diabetic. It was actually Leonard who overdosed his wife, and he had repressed the memory into Sammy's story to escape his guilt.
After hearing Teddy confess, Leonard burns the photograph of the dead Jimmy and the photo Teddy handed him that documented his successful revenge from a year ago. In a monologue, Leonard explains that he is willing to lie to himself to be happy and believe that his actions are meaningful. He targets Teddy, who revealed that he too has a "John G" name, by ordering a tattoo of Teddy's license plate number and writing a note that Teddy cannot be trusted. Leonard drives off in Jimmy's car to a tattoo parlor.
The Prestige
Note: Though the movie contains multiple flash-forwards and flash-backs throughout, the story is told here in chronological order.
In 1890s London, Robert Angier, Alfred Borden, and Angier's wife, Julia, work as magician's assistants under the mentorship of John Cutter. During a water tank trick, Julia drowns after Borden, seemingly, incorrectly ties her wrists. Angier blames Borden, and the two men become bitter rivals.
Both men pursue separate careers in magic. Borden, a gifted inventor of illusions, marries a woman named Sarah, with whom he has a daughter named Jess, and hires an enigmatic assistant, Fallon. Angier, whose strength lies more in showmanship, continues working with Cutter and takes on a new assistant, Olivia. The feud escalates as Angier and Borden visit and sabotage each other's acts. Borden loses two fingers after being shot by Angier during a pistol trick, and Borden violently thwarts Angier's bird act in front of a live audience, harming an attendee.
Borden next debuts a spectacular illusion, The Transported Man, in which he appears to teleport from one side of the stage to the other almost instantly. Angier becomes obsessed with discovering the trick's secret and, with Cutter's help, roughly recreates the act using a lookalike named Root, a failed actor. Though Angier's version is successful, he resents remaining hidden beneath the stage while Root takes the applause. Desperate to outdo Borden, he sends Olivia to spy on him. Olivia, however, falls in love with Borden and defects, though she still passes Borden's coded diary to Angier.
After Angier kidnaps Fallon, Borden reveals to Angier that the key word, TESLA, supposedly decrypts the diary and reveals his method. Seeking answers, Angier travels to Colorado Springs to meet the inventor Nikola Tesla. Believing Tesla built a teleportation device for Borden, Angier commissions Tesla to make one. Tesla eventually delivers a working machine but warns that it will bring only misery. When used, the device creates a duplicate of its subject while leaving the original person intact. In London, Angier uses the machine in a new illusion, The Real Transported Man, which earns him acclaim. Sarah, suspicious of Borden's secrecy and affair with Olivia, hangs herself.
Determined to uncover Angier's method, Borden sneaks backstage during a performance of The Real Transported Man and witnesses Angier fall into a water tank and drown. He attempts to open the tank and save Angier, but is arrested for Angier's murder, convicted, and sentenced to death. While awaiting execution, Borden is approached by a solicitor for a wealthy Lord Caldlow, who offers to care for Borden's daughter Jess in exchange for the secret behind the original Transported Man. When Caldlow visits the prison, Borden is horrified to discover that he is actually Angier. Borden passes Angier a note revealing the secret, but Angier tears it up, leaving him to hang. Cutter helps dispose of Tesla's teleportation machine, but is dismayed by Angier's intention of allowing Borden to die.
As Borden is hanged, a disguised visitor shoots Angier in the basement of his theater, revealing himself as Borden. The mortally wounded Angier learns the truth: "Borden" is in fact a pair of identical twins sharing one identity. One twin loved Sarah, the other Olivia; one lost two fingers, and amputated the twin's same two fingers to match; one has survived, while the other was executed. Together, they performed The Transported Man by switching places undetected, and whenever one twin was performing, the other hid using prosthetics and makeup under the identity "Fallon".
Dying, Angier confesses that each time he used Tesla's machine, it created a clone, one of whom drowned beneath the stage each night, and that he is no longer sure of his own identity. The surviving Borden brother reclaims his daughter, as Cutter narrates that the final act of any magic trick—the "prestige"—is the return of what was thought lost. Angier's death knocks over a kerosene lamp that sends his theater up in flames, revealing rows of water tanks holding the corpses of his many duplicates.
Dunkirk
While the film is shown in a nonlinear narrative, including the action of one week on the beach, one day in the rescue flotilla, and one hour of the air battle, the following is the chronological order of events that happen in the film.
In the summer of 1940, during the Battle of France, Allied soldiers retreat to Dunkirk. A British soldier named Tommy loses his squadmates and flees through the perimeter held by French troops to the beach, where thousands await evacuation. He helps another soldier, Gibson, bury a body and survive a Luftwaffe dive-bomber attack. They rush a wounded man on a stretcher onto a hospital ship at the single, vulnerable mole, overseen by Commander Bolton, available for embarking on deep-draft ships, but are ordered off again. Together, they hide underneath the pier in hopes of sneaking back on, but the ship is sunk by German aircraft.
Tommy saves a Highlander, Alex, from being crushed by the wreck of the sinking ship. Tommy and Gibson submerse themselves underwater and masquerade as some of the boat’s survivors in order to be let onto the next available ship. That night, the three board a destroyer, but it is hit by a U-boat torpedo before it can depart. Gibson saves Tommy and Alex while escaping the sinking ship by opening the door to below-deck, and they all return to the beach.
The Royal Navy requisitions civilian vessels in England for the evacuation. In Weymouth, civilian sailor Dawson and his son Peter set out in his boat Moonstone, rather than let the Navy commandeer her. Their teenage hand George joins them on impulse. In the English Channel, they save an officer, now shell-shocked after surviving a U-boat sinking. Realising Dawson is going to Dunkirk, the officer grows fearful and Peter locks him up. He escapes, urging they turn back, and tries to wrest control of the boat; in the scuffle, he elbows George, who falls down a staircase and suffers a severe head injury.
Three Royal Air Force (RAF) Spitfires fly towards Dunkirk to provide cover for the evacuation, limited to one hour of operation by their fuel supply. They engage in a dogfight with a Messerschmitt Bf 109. After shooting it down, one of the pilots, Farrier, has his fuel gauge smashed and cannot read how much he has left. He and the second Spitfire pilot, Collins, determine their leader has gone down and fly on with Collins radioing Farrier about their remaining fuel. The crew of the Moonstone witness the two RAF pilots protect a minesweeper from a bomber escorted by fighters: Collins's Spitfire is hit and he ditches. Initially trapped in his canopy as the plane sinks, Collins is saved by Peter.
Becoming increasingly desperate, Tommy, Alex and Gibson join Highlanders in a grounded trawler in the intertidal zone outside the perimeter, hoping the tide will float them home. After its Dutch sailor returns, Germans start shooting at the boat, and water enters through the bullet holes.
Alex, attempting to lighten the craft to keep it afloat, accuses Gibson (who has been silent the entire time) of being a German spy despite Tommy's defences and pleas. He turns the rest of the soldiers against Gibson, using the logic that he must either speak German, or can only speak English with a very thick German accent. Scared for his life, Gibson reveals he is actually French, meaning that he took on the identity of the buried soldier in hopes of being evacuated earlier.
During the scuffle to try to force Gibson out, all the soldiers are thrown to one side, which dislodges the ship and allows the tide to finally lift the trawler. The group has to eventually abandon the boat, as they cannot stop the intruding water after taking more hits. As they leave, Gibson is entangled by a chain, and drowns with the sinking ship.
Farrier, knowing his fuel is running out, decides to keep flying to chase down German aircraft. He engages a German bomber attacking a destroyer. The ship is bombed and sinks, but Farrier is able to down the plane before it can attack the escaping crew. The crashing plane ignites the oil on the water, but members of the crew, as well as Tommy and Alex, are saved by Moonstone, which had manoeuvred to save the men in the water.
Alex points out to Peter that George has already died of his injuries when they are all asked to be careful below-deck. Shortly after, the shell-shocked officer asks Peter if he will be okay, to which he lies and assures him that he will be alright. Dawson has Moonstone evade an aerial attack using a technique taught by his deceased elder son, a pilot lost at the start of the war.
Farrier reaches Dunkirk just as his fuel runs out, shooting down a dive-bomber approaching the mole to the jubilation of the soldiers below.
Once Moonstone makes landfall, the shell-shocked officer and Collins part ways with the Dawsons, as Peter honours George's desire to do something useful enough to be mentioned in the paper by arranging a publication of his obituary. At the same time, Tommy and Alex board a train with the other evacuees.
With over 300,000 men successfully evacuated, Bolton chooses to stay and oversee the French evacuation next.
Upon reaching England, Alex requests a newspaper from a young boy at the train tracks. He cannot bear to read it, fearful that they will be spit at in the streets for failing. Instead, they are actually heralded by the public upon their arrival at Woking.
Farrier glides safely onto the beach; however, he is far beyond the perimeter. After destroying the Spitfire to prevent it from falling into enemy hands, he is captured by German forces.
Tommy reads the paper for Alex, which is quoting Churchill's address to Parliament, pledging that Britain will fight on.
Oppenheimer
In the 1930s, J. Robert Oppenheimer teaches at the California Institute of Technology and the University of California, Berkeley after studying theoretical physics in Europe. A number of Berkeley academics are also Communist Party members, but Oppenheimer does not join himself.
After World War II breaks out, Ernest Lawrence of the Radiation Lab cautions Oppenheimer against having communist connections. Oppenheimer scales back and is later approached by General Leslie Groves to lead the Manhattan Project. Oppenheimer proposes a new laboratory at Los Alamos, New Mexico, where they could endeavor to build an atomic bomb before the Nazis. Edward Teller is recruited to Los Alamos and theorizes that an explosion could cause global atmospheric ignition. When his theory is disproved, he starts researching fusion-based weapons instead of working on the proposed fission bombs.
In July 1945, the US Army successfully conducts the Trinity test, the first detonation of a nuclear weapon. Subsequently, the United States detonates two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to conclude World War II. In the immediate aftermath, Oppenheimer meets with President Harry S. Truman, to whom he expresses his remorse on building the bomb. Truman absolves him of all responsibility, but is annoyed at Oppenheimer’s remorse. Oppenheimer is labeled 'father of the atomic bomb', but his public stance in the post-war years changes towards nuclear non-proliferation.
In 1949, the Soviet Union successfully tests a plutonium bomb, similar to one developed at Los Alamos. In a meeting of top advisors, Oppenheimer frustrates Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) chairman Lewis Strauss by favoring arms talks with Russia instead of escalating with Teller's proposed thermonuclear weapons. During a heated period of discussion, Oppenheimer's past security lapses are brought up, including rekindling an affair with Communist ex-lover, Jean Tatlock, immediately after gaining his security clearance in 1942. Oppenheimer had also protected his friend Haakon Chevalier from an espionage investigation, by directly lying to security officer Boris Pash.
In 1954, irritated at constantly being undermined by Oppenheimer, Strauss conspires with staunch anti-communist William Borden to initiate a security clearance hearing for Oppenheimer. He appoints Roger Robb as the board's counsel, who replays the accusations of Oppenheimer's disloyalty towards the US. Groves, Isidor Rabi, and Oppenheimer's wife Kitty testify in favor of Oppenheimer, but Teller and Borden testify against him. In the end, Oppenheimer's Q clearance is revoked by a two-to-one decision of the hearing's three judges, ending his government advisory role.
In 1959, Strauss is nominated as US Secretary of Commerce, which the US Senate is expected to confirm as per tradition. During his Senate confirmation hearing, Strauss is questioned over his actions relating to Oppenheimer's security hearing. Strauss alleges that the FBI was suspicious of Oppenheimer since his teaching days, well before Borden accused him of espionage in 1954. Strauss claims to not have acted against Oppenheimer through the security hearing, despite having many public disagreements with him. Strauss further alleges that Oppenheimer turned scientists against him, starting with Albert Einstein at Princeton University in 1947. Teller testifies in Strauss' favor, with Physicist David L. Hill of the Chicago Met Lab expected to follow suit. However, Hill instead exposes Strauss' personal vendetta and claims that the scientific community is against Strauss. Shortly afterward, the Senate rejects Strauss' nomination.
While Oppenheimer receives the Enrico Fermi Award in 1963, a flashback reveals he never mentioned Strauss during his 1947 conversation with Einstein. Instead, he admits to Einstein that the global catastrophe they feared, and then believed was averted, was now ironically inevitable.
Sources and content license
Source and revision history ↗ · Exact listed stories combined in catalog order. Sources retain their stated license; formatting and headings adjusted. Adapted from Wikipedia contributors, Memento (film). Section headings and formatting adjusted. Adapted from Wikipedia contributors, The Prestige. Section headings and formatting adjusted. Adapted from Wikipedia contributors, Dunkirk (2017 film). Section headings and formatting adjusted. Adapted from Wikipedia contributors, Oppenheimer (film). Section headings and formatting adjusted. · Content license