Oppenheimer

 "Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal..."

~Albert Einstein 

So I saw Christopher Nolan's new film. It details the mostly true story of J. Robert Oppenheimer's career in physics and how he lead the Manhattan project, the development of the world's first atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, bringing an end to WWII. I'm a big fan of Nolan's other films. Inception is one of my favorite movies of all time and I enjoyed Dunkirk. The Dark Knight trilogy is mixed for me, I generally don't like to put it up on a pedestal like most people seem to do and I didn't hear good things about Tenet and elected not to see that one. I originally didn't know anything about this movie or that it was even in production until I saw the trailer at the front of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. Later it was revealed that it would be released on the exact same date as the new Barbie movie and the internet took strongly to the irony that these two films who could not be more diametrically opposed in terms of tone were releasing on the same date. It became a very similar situation to March of 2020 when the video games Doom Eternal and Animal Crossing: New Horizons released on the same day and indirectly marketed each other through memes. The "Barbenheimer" memes undoubtedly caused each movie to sell tickets for the other as lot's of people elected to do a double feature just for the fun of it and to partake in the meme. I was initially on board for this as well but it appeared that all of my friends had already seen one or both of the movies by the time I set time aside to see it. So I elected to just go see Oppenheimer in the absence of any friends to do the double feature with. 

So what did I think? I thought it was really solid. I doubt there will be another movie released this year that competes with it so it will probably end up being my favorite movie of the year. The story plays out in a similar fashion to Dunkirk in that it's non linear and cuts around to various different points in time. Often contextualizing the change in time by putting the scene in black and white or adding some noticeable makeup to the actors to age them up a bit. After seeing just how many different characters and events they are trying to include in the movie I thought that was actually the best choice they could have gone with. If the story was told linearly it would have actually been harder to follow and it would have made large sections of the film boring. There is a theory going around that the movie's fast pace and over the top score was to keep the "average viewer" from getting bored. The pace honestly works extremely well and the score is compelling but I've heard a lot of people complain that the score ruins a few scenes that would have been more effective if they were silent aside from the dialogue. I also share that sentiment, some of the best and most tense scenes in the movie do not have music. Not trusting that your audience won't get bored from a movie that is mostly dialogue and characters and trying to stimulate them with a constant score and the occasional explosion to jumpscare them awake doesn't exactly instill a lot of confidence in your work. But again, I assume these were decisions made in the editing booth. I really enjoyed the cast. I thought all of the actor performances were really solid and a lot of the introductory scenes of characters are done in rather fast pace. Montage style almost, but the dialogue is fluent and flows nicely. Theres also quite a few moments of brevity and humor but not to where it takes you out of the story. It's more so the characters bantering with each other in a way that feels realistic for real people. Even Robert Downey Jr's performance was great and very intense. it's just kind of sad that after more than a decade of him playing Iron Man that I can't listen to any of his dialogue without hearing that little bit of sarcasm in his voice. It took a minute for me to get the sincerity of his performance but once it set in. He was great. I feel like Oppenheimer would have definitely been lost without Emily Blunt's character. The fact that they're both adulterers and/or alcoholics who weren't available for their children for a while was a sobering reminder that these characters aren't exactly....good people? but the movie isn't trying to villainize them by writing them this way either. Emily Blunt's character was that massive reality check that he needed and she saved his ass from the Kangaroo court set up by RDJ's character to sabotage his reputation. Between the Kangaroo court situation and President Truman's condescending dismissal of him, he probably realized that even the great nation of the United States has the potential to be corrupt and can not be trusted with this technology that can end the world. (Also good lord, the makeup job on Gary Oldman for that scene)

The difficulty with telling any kind of story about or around WWII is that there is just SO MUCH to tell that you can't possibly tell the whole story. So movies like this, correctly chose to just focus on one thing. This is very much just a story about Oppenheimer and nothing else. There is no war footage and they don't go into much of the discussion around Japan's conditions of surrender and what was going on with them at this time during the war. But that does leave a lot of context on the table that hopefully the audience is already aware of, or will take the time to educate themselves on to fully understand what was happening around this time. The use of the atomic bombs has remained and ongoing debate to this day if they were necessary or not. The amount of people they killed was undeniably, unequivocally, horrible. However, it is important to understand how Japan was handling the war at this point. They had committed all manner of atrocities in places like China. (just look up the Nanjing Massacre). The Allies had recently invaded Okinawa and it was an absolute bloodbath. Countless casualties on both sides. The US Navy had Japan blockaded and was trying to negotiate an unconditional surrender from Japan but they simply would not do it. The Allies feared that if they invaded Japan to fight them on foot, they would put guns in the hands of women and children and it would be just like Okinawa from end..to end..of the island. With estimated casualties in the 500k range for both Japan and the allies. The atomic bombs were undoubtedly a horrible, horrible thing that killed countless innocent people. But it was a lose lose situation for everyone involved. I definitely recommend watching this video if you want to hear more. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCRTgtpC-Go

The atomic bombs instilled this fear into everyone around the world. The dialogue between Oppenheimer and Einstein that the movie choses to end on summarizes the underlying theme of the movie. That once we split the atom, we set the doomsday clock on mankind. In the eyes of the scientists and people who understood the potential of these inventions, as a species we are doomed. We lack the restraint and the maturity to prevent our own destruction. I think back on the line that Oppenheimer gives when explaining how he thinks we can catch up to the Nazi's scientific discovery. "Antisemitism, if the Nazi's hate the Jews so much and are spending so much time killing them, they're not going to listen to their science or offer them any resources". This combined with all of the discrimination Oppenheimer gets after the project is done and all of the redundant, time wasting, nonsense trying to figure out if he was a secret communist. It just goes to show that all of the casualties of WWII and every war, are caused by ideology. So much of our modern history, culture and society are the results of the Red Scare and the Cold War and we, the average person, are still paying the price for it to this day. This film reminds me a lot of 2014's The Imitation Game. A film about a very specific story from WWII that tells a true story but also uses it to expound upon other aspects of our culture, society and politics. 

I definitely recommend that you see this film. I will say that it is obviously a very heavy film that is not everyone. It has an R rating for a reason. There is some nudity and sex although it is brief and done tastefully enough, not gross. (there is also discussion of suicide at one point if that bothers you in specific) I definitely would like to watch this along with Dunkirk and The Imitation Game when the movie comes to Blu-Ray.