Wonders Are Many: The Making of Doctor Atomic is a highly original, darkly funny feature documentary which chronicles the creation of composer John Adams and director Peter Sellars’ new opera about J. Robert Oppenheimer and the first atomic bomb.  As it explores the making of the opera Doctor Atomic, the film simultaneously weaves a striking newly declassified historical tale of the real events behind the drama, a new story of how the largest weapons in our nuclear arsenal came to be, how they work, and how we have learned to live with them. 

"Art and science form a combustible fusion in Jon Else’s elegant and wide-ranging “Wonders Are Many: The Making of Doctor Atomic.” A dazzling case of the right filmmaker attached to the right subject, Else comprehensively captures the making of the 2005 San Francisco Opera world premiere of composer John Adams and director Peter Sellars’ opera, “Doctor Atomic,” on J. Robert Oppenheimer and the creation of the first atomic bomb.”

Robert Koehler, Variety 

Sundance Film Festival

Directed by Jon Else, English, 90 minutes, 2007

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