When “American Prometheus” was published in 2005, I wrote a review for The New York Sun pointing out that too often J. Robert Oppenheimer’s life became a morality tale about the perfidy of McCarthyism, obscuring the implications of Oppenheimer’s political commitments and his unwillingness to confront his complicity in anti-American rhetoric and Communist propaganda that may have compromised his security clearance. Christopher Nolan’s new film, “Oppenheimer,” based in large part on “American Prometheus,” needs to be viewed in a context that is much larger than the martyrology of McCarthyism.