Before you ask, no, I didn’t do the double feature crap. I’m sure Barbie is a good movie but I tend to avoid bullshit, moron trends I find shallow such as people pouring ice water on each other thinking it will cure cancer. I will see it in due time. I probably won’t waste my Alamo Pass or money on Barbie. I’m not against it like the usual dickheads who get their undies in a knot (Ben Shapiro, Bill Maher, Ann Coulter, etc.); although I don’t recall seeing any movies directed by Greta Gerwig, she is a director I am willing to support and I hear genuinely good things about. So, I will see it for those reasons. As for the toy, I’m neutral.
Moving along, I’m surprised Oppenheimer did well at all. Americans don’t like films with bitter endings, facts or a moral lesson pointing out we are still heading toward extinction, just not with nuclear missiles but with the worst weapon in our quiver, complacency.
Nolan’s signature move of bouncing around in time works too. I found it annoying with his previous release Dunkirk. He also presents Dr. Oppenheimer in a more frank way, warts and all; his wife was still married when he got her pregnant and he cheated on her via a previous relationship he established years earlier. With how quickly he moved, you’d think that earning a PhD in Physics get you laid often. Truthfully, the movie is proving how we know our grandparents and great grandparents weren’t as “pure and chaste” as they’d like us to believe.
The story is encased in the private hearing/kangaroo court Oppenheimer faced to renew his security clearance for America’s nuclear weapons research and Admiral Lewis Strauss’ senate confirmation for Eisenhower’s cabinet. The latter person was the scientist’s boss a couple times: Princeton and the committee overseeing nuclear-weapon policy. Nolan then bounces back in time when either references the past incident they’re talking about. Here the movie stays pretty linear (phew!). We witness Oppenheimer’s journey through Europe to earn his doctorate (the US didn’t catch up on Physics and Chemistry until WWII), his heroes he meets along the way (Heisenberg, Bohr), new friends he made (Rabi, Lawrence) and then settling in to teach this crazy new theory at UC-Berkley…Quantum Physics (I didn’t think it went this far back). Initially, few were interested in his class but if Nolan’s take is accurate, it gained traction. I understood a little and only what pertained to my big love, Astronomy. I’ve also been noodling around on the periphery since Oppenheimer’s theories dip into Quantum Computing. Anyway, during his off hours, he becomes involved with the university’s American Communist Party (it was the Great Depression) and a drive to unionize the faculty. Both of these obviously come to bite him in the ass when McCarthy and the Red Scare make America crazy in the Fifties (or it never ended).
We know the rest. Oppenheimer is recruited (grudgingly) by General Leslie Groves to lead the Manhattan Project but the scientist pushes it to Los Alamos, NM as the nexus between Oak Ridge, TN; Chicago, San Franscisco and (I think) Hanford, WA. Plus families have to come along or the top talent won’t participate. I was surprised they left out how the idea of a nuclear bomb was a pitch the UK made to the US in their trunk of ideas they sent in case the Nazis defeat them. Nolan is English. Even so, this horrendous weapon isn’t a complete secret. Everybody around the world working in Physics know the Nazis are doing all they can to build one first. Throw in their innovations with rockets led by von Braun and WWII would probably end as it did in the novel Fatherland.
I don’t think many people today know that Oppenheimer later regretted he unleashed. It sucks and keeps me awake fewer nights than it did in the Eighties. If he didn’t though, we know Groves would find someone else. Personally, I think all the contributors realized how human wisdom and temperament are too immature for this technology, especially with the West’s elected leadership, our enemies’ tyrants and nation’s wanting to settle very, very old grudges.
I loved how Nolan highlighted all the past legends of Physics who assisted Oppenheimer: Teller, Fermi, Lawrence, Rabi, Bush, Bainbridge and Feynman; are all I recognized. Bohr and Einstein refused to take part on moral grounds. Contrary to what you see, Heisenberg never worked on making nuclear bombs while under the Nazi regime, nor did Truman call Oppenheimer a ‘crybaby’ within earshot. They did bring up the worries about how the first nuclear detonation could’ve ignited the atmosphere. Not from all the Oxygen. They feared the Plutonium and/or Uranium breaking down would keep feeding a chain reaction into other elements. Fear not. Uranium quickly splits apart into Lead (inert), stopping the process and Earth’s number one gas is Nitrogen which doesn’t burn easily.
There should be a drinking based upon how many times I bring up the now lost History Channel show History Versus Hollywood. Oppenheimer could’ve been a two or three part episode! It’s important to dispel the myths popular entertainment glosses over important facts because too many people dangerously get the wrong message or ‘memory.’ Today, the younger/modern generations of Uganda believe The Last King of Scotland is an accurate portrayal of what happened in the Seventies during Idi Amin’s reign of terror. So it isn’t completely an American flaw. I want to blame the shitty excuse for a human, David Zaslav for turning a great idea for a cable channel into another cesspool showing White Trash Under Pressure but History’s slide into crap happened before he took over.
Yet I still wholeheartedly endorse this movie. It’s great to have a more serious, intellectual flick to clear our Summer palette of ‘junk food’ or what the biz calls a ‘tent-pole movie’ over it going less noticed in the Spring or Fall.
Alamo Extras:
- “Bombs Aren’t Cool” video set to rap.
- PSAs: Groucho Marx telling you which precautions to take in case of nuclear war (they’re all useless); Build a Shelter (really a grave) plug if you’re afraid.
- “A Mushroom Cloud” by Sammy Salvo from the Fifties.
- A cartoon of a snack bar machine.
- Snippets from the 1982 movie The Atomic Cafe.
- A presentation on all the traits of a Christopher Nolan movie containing pieces of all the stuff he’s done since Inception to Tenet and the frequent actors he prefers to work with.