#The 'you're not the only protagonist' thing that both Oppenheimer and Strauss are confronted with also adds to the feeling

[stuffedeggplants]

The resolution to the drama over the revocation of Oppenheimer's security clearance felt less like us hearing the final verdict--an inevitability we've known about for much of the movie--and more like the scenes where both Strauss and Oppenheimer are confronted by the reality that they had overestimated their own importance as individuals and actors in the world. And I don't think it's a coincidence that those scenes are also points where we briefly see beyond the Oppenheimer-centric or Strauss-centric points of view we've been watching things through.

Oppenheimer's moment is Truman's response to him telling Truman that he feels he has blood on his hands. All this time we've been following Oppenheimer as somebody tremendously important to the efforts at Los Alamos--the director of the lab itself--but it's during this scene that Truman most starkly communicates to Oppenheimer (and the audience) that there's an entire world of political/military decision-making in Washington and at the Department of War that Oppenheimer has nothing to do with and is even subordinate to, whether he's consciously realized that or not. Oppenheimer may have built the bomb, but he only did so at the behest of the government that made it possible. Then Truman decided to drop it, and the military made that happen. Oppenheimer is not the only protagonist here.

Strauss' moment is when surprise testimony ends with him failing to be confirmed to the seat of Secretary of Commerce--a first in the history of the United States government--and when he's confronted (for maybe the first time in his life) with the idea that Oppenheimer and Einstein's conversation years ago may not have been about him at all, but about "something more important." Despite years of maneuvering in Washington and successfully doing so to get Oppenheimer's security clearance revoked to snuff out the man's potential for influence on national security strategy, the culmination of years of Strauss' ambition is snatched away from him by a scientist (i.e. not a political rival) who chose to just show up and speak honestly about Strauss' character. For all the control and success that Strauss had in the political arena, Hill's damning testimony seems to come out of nowhere because Hill himself and his own thought process is so far outside of the realm that Strauss normally concerns himself with.