(Start here, it’s all personal.)
Intro
Aug 28, 2023 Took a day off from work to enjoy Nolan’s Oppenheimer. While Nolan did his magnum opus of mixin’ up the timeline in his previous film like TENET, this time not so much. Divided into 4 chapter(not evenly) we can easily get:
- Early years
- Life in Los Alamos as the director of Manhattan Proj.
- Climax Trinity
👆The process of making an atomic bomb
👇Post-Bomb-Making
- Security Hearing (interspersed among all other chapters)
The Good
Genius like R.J. Oppenheimer and A. Turing doesn’t always end well in history, speaking of which the 2014 film Enigma has a lot of similarities with this one—especially in STRUCTURES:
—The fourth chapter. And tbh one cannot be called a biographical film if it doesn’t have the chapter, that is, the follow-up story of one’s great achievement or shall we call it Life-Post-Success. Judging by Oppenheimer and Turing’s LPS, we can safely say it’s somewhat tragical in the end for them. This nice little(a big one actually) touch adds depth to the film, builds up the social(IRL) influence of the film and is one of the core things that makes Enigma great, especially in its genre—Biography. I mean we are watching a biographical film, we are observing one’s rise and fall.
The Bad
The same thing, however, CANNOT be said the same for Oppenheimer.
—Yeah, Nolan fucked it up slightly somehow. Do acknowledge that these 4 chapters are not evenly divided—in the sense of length. While the first three quarters of the film is thrilling both mentally and physically(I mean its so fucking LOUD) as if I was Oppenheimer himself giving orders to detonate the bomb and witnessing this whole thing on spot, thanks to Nolan’s effects and sound team(the whole post-processing team and the cameraman deserves an OSCAR just because Nolan’s fanatical thingy of the minimum usage of CGs—I do love that.).
But you just can’t describe someone’s life in the sheer amount of 3 hours, and that is the case. This whole ‘Security Hearing’ thing takes up quite a lot of the story, yet Nolan still failed to explain the whole situation of the thing.
Let’s look into this in a classic way of 5W—
- Who: Oppenheimer
- When: Post-WWII
- What: Accused of disloyal to the U.S. (Actually is Oppenheimer being framed on by Strauss.)
- Where: Well in the U.S. of course
- Why:???
The film explained the Why by portraying Strauss as a self-esteemed, vengeful man and this whole farce only happened because of him getting humiliated in front people by Oppenheimer and the former wants to seek a revenge. Which, feels dumb to me. I highly doubt this is the actual case and in reality it is NOT. While I bet he had his massive ego, We have to look at this incident at a grand scheme, that is, Strauss himself didn’t single-handedly screwed Oppenheimer up, he is definitely in it but he isn’t the only one nor the major cause, thus we gotta inspect the domestic political environment at that time.
As we all know during the era of McCarthy, the word Communism is literally a synonym of Treason and was censored. And according to biographer Ray Monk:
He was, in a very practical and real sense, a supporter of the Communist Party. Moreover, in terms of the time, effort and money spent on party activities, he was a very committed supporter.
Which is a clear description of Oppenheimer’s true belief. In contrast to the film, which is quite ambiguous on the topic(I mean only Oppenheimer knew himself. Either the quote or the film can be truthful. But after some research I tend to believe the quote). So what I’m saying here is the fact that Oppenheimer is almost a commie and his tragedy is a prime example product of McCarthy Era.
On the other hand, Strauss, is merely a catalyst, or a fuse OR a plot device(McCarthyism covers a wide range of topics and is definitely not possible nor suitable to discuss in a film whose theme isn't even that, I think that's obvious. Therefore think of Strauss as some kind of concentrated Anti-Communism). The film’s solely fixation on Strauss himself is only making the situation dumber than ever(McCarthyism is already dumb).
I’m also curious about that poisoned apple as well. Oppenheimer, while had been a social butterfly, is also a fucking FREAK. But that scene is weirdly out-of-place. I do question the authenticity of this incident, or I guess some scientists are just freaks.
Some claimed of intense jealousy—but it sounds trivial to me, just like the whole ordeal Strauss had caused in the film.
Also, Led him to take extreme action???, He didn’t even take serious action during the Security Hearing, why would he do that because of some jealousy?—But I guess years have passed and people matured since then, so its not really that comparable. Maybe that’s just Oppenheimer, who knows. This is more of a question rather than some opinions.
Like I said before, 3hrs is not enough to cover one’s life. Films in this genre would just leave so much questionable things—After all it’s someone’s life. IF we are that clear about it, there would be no privacy for them.
Scientific Accuracy
Other than that, while Nolan do care about scientific accuracy—in this case, people saw the explosion way before they heard the sound.—But there is one frame where the shockwave and the sound arrived at the same time.
—That’s mostly impossible. By definition shockwave travels faster than sound in the same medium. In this case what I can only assume is that this is just for the Cinematic Experience™.
35mm Film ver.
Hong Kong is the only place in Asia to have this version of the film released, which is the one that I watched. Due to its nature, heavy film grain, noise, scratches, light leaks are heavily presented. From a general perspective these things do impact the integrity of the film and let’s be fair this is what digitalization wants to eliminated. So why we are bring it back?
—To get that retro and vintage look and feel. They really did a good job on it, e.g. film scratches—while I’m sure the film is carefully treated, they did it on purpose to scratch some of it just to bring back the old times.
Some of the chapter are shot in monochrome, which also works perfectly with the 35mm version.
😎☢️👍
Overall I enjoyed it. I just tend to focus on the bad things. Highly recommended.
Aug 28, Midnight
(Dec 1) I just love the OST of Oppenheimer. It’s ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐.