The plot synopsis didn't help-It's not warmhearted. We watch the journey of a man from the beginning scenes as a creative teacher, loving brother and son who grows increasingly anxious as the Nazis move toward Lviv, his parents' home and the location of his college and friends. He is temporarily safe (no resident status) in the US with his 17 year old brother but feels he needs to do more for the war effort, and joins the Los Alamos nuclear team, bringing his wife, a French/Jewish refugee in danger of being sent back to wartime France (he is attracted to her, but also wants her safe from Nazis). The nuclear team finds the nuclear solution they sought, the war is won and the bomb is used on civilians, but Ulam has lost his family and college friends in Poland. (Later, he will lose his longtime team member and friend von Neumann to cancer, probably caused by atomic radiation at the bomb test site). Ulam is left in a dream state, meditating on earlier lost Native American civilizations like the Anansazi with the ghost of his friend...The non-movie Ulam probably felt the survivor guilt that his colleague Leo Szilard felt (My Trial as a War Criminal) but his family life continued and he formed new creative computer math teams. This biopic sort of presupposes familiarity with WWII and Cold War issues like US impunity from war crimes...
Review of Adventures of a Mathematician
Thought provoking, bleak story of creative mathematician Stan Ulam
17 January 2022
Warning: Spoilers