(no subject)
Aug. 8th, 2023 07:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretOppenheimer continued
I thinkstarlady's review is a perfectly cromulent review of the movie from someone who's familiar with the history, but I have such specific wishes for a Manhattan Project film that this movie didn't really satisfy, and was never going to satisfy. I mean, I never wanted an Oppenheimer film, I wanted a Manhattan Project film. I don't find the martyrdom of Oppenheimer all that interesting, what I find interesting is all of these brilliant minds thrown together in the middle of nowhere with both the greatest intellectual challenge of their lives and the greatest moral challenge of their lives. And also the logistics!
starlady isn't bothered by the lack of women in the film because the film is interested in the moral culpability of the creators of the atom bomb and she's satisfied with blaming the mostly white men in charge for the moral crimes of the Manhattan Project. That's fair enough, but the reality is that there were lots of women involved in the Manhattan Project, as scientists, as clerks, as 'human calculators' doing most of the actual mathematical calculations, and also as wives and mothers of other project workers at all levels. They were all pulling the same oar. And the thing that bothers me is the lack of interest in those stories, the lack of interest in them as people, rather than the lack of interest in them as formal moral symbols.
Nolan's first act shows the significance of Oppenheimer's Judaism quite sharply- he shows Oppenheimer in Europe, spending time with both European Jewish physicists as well as Christian German and British physicists and seeing the conflict between Deutschephysik and Jüdische Physik. He shows Oppenheimer telling Groves that the only advantage the US has over Germany in the atomic race is the Germans' unwillingness to invest in Jüdische Physik. And he shows in Oppenheimer's conversations with the (perfectly cast) ubergoy Lawrence the way in which Oppenheimer's moral uncertainty about the bomb is overridden by his desire to stop Hitler at any cost, because he has family in Europe and Lawrence doesn't. But then these very well drawn Jewish elements disappear, as if either Nolan loses interest, or he's asking the viewer to be sophisticated enough to read... something?... into the fact that Oppenheimer's Jewishness doesn't go away when you stop mentioning it. Sorry Chris, I don't get it.
There's this sort of chug-a-chug-a sound that echoes through a bunch of the later parts of the film as Oppenheimer worries about his moral responsibility for the bomb, and I wondered for a while if it was supposed to suggest the cattle cars taking people to Auschwitz, but we eventually get a reveal that the sound is the stomping of feet in an auditorium of cheering Manhattan Project workers thanking Oppenheimer for leading them to success- Oppenheimer is haunted by being praised for something he is not convinced is right, but is also not convinced is wrong. So as usual I was over-reading the Jewish narrative.
But mostly there are two and a half hours of movie and so damned much of it is tied up in the various post-War hearings of different government agencies- Oppenheimer's security clearance appeal and Strauss's cabinet confirmation hearing and that starves out the time that should be spent with... life at Los Alamos. It was such a tedious frame story given what I was looking for out of the film. There's a very brief recruitment montage where one of the scientists says he can't go without his family and then Oppenheimer says of course you'll be taking your family with you, but then Nolan shows no interest in what it's like to take your family with you. Kitty complains that her new house in Los Alamos lacks a kitchen, Oppenheimer shrugs and says they'll fix that, and then there's no resolution to the domestic complications. There's a Christmas party scene that was the cruelest in the film for me, because you have a bunch of Jews and atheists and freethinkers celebrating a Christmas party in the middle of New Mexico, come on here, dig into what's weird and messy about that!!! And of course, show me Jews dancing!!!!! Nope, they immediately run out of that scene to inject some war-based tension and drama back into the story.
I mean, this is profoundly not a useful review of the movie as Nolan made it; Like I said, go look atstarlady's review if you want that. But the building of the bomb required thousands of people to make intense and significant sacrifices and if any of them had refused the project might not have worked, so the focus on Oppenheimer's moral qualms just seems incredibly reductionist and boring to me.
I wanted to see Szilard's humor, I wanted to see Feynman as more than just a bongo joke, I wanted to see Teller taken seriously (This was my biggest disappointment in the film, I had such high hopes for Benny Safdie's performance but he just... didn't end up being my Teller), I loved the three seconds of Vannevar Bush we got and wanted so much more. I wanted the Oak Ridge parts of the story to be more than just a handful of marbles. I wanted to see scientists discussing science. Nolan had this persistent sleight of hand of representing scientific debates by cutting to them just as someone was getting the last word in, because heaven forbid we see scientists actually debating science in a movie about scientists. None of these wishes are reasonable expectations for a Christopher Nolan Oppenheimer film, but nevertheless.
I think
starlady's review is a perfectly cromulent review of the movie from someone who's familiar with the history, but I have such specific wishes for a Manhattan Project film that this movie didn't really satisfy, and was never going to satisfy. I mean, I never wanted an Oppenheimer film, I wanted a Manhattan Project film. I don't find the martyrdom of Oppenheimer all that interesting, what I find interesting is all of these brilliant minds thrown together in the middle of nowhere with both the greatest intellectual challenge of their lives and the greatest moral challenge of their lives. And also the logistics!starlady isn't bothered by the lack of women in the film because the film is interested in the moral culpability of the creators of the atom bomb and she's satisfied with blaming the mostly white men in charge for the moral crimes of the Manhattan Project. That's fair enough, but the reality is that there were lots of women involved in the Manhattan Project, as scientists, as clerks, as 'human calculators' doing most of the actual mathematical calculations, and also as wives and mothers of other project workers at all levels. They were all pulling the same oar. And the thing that bothers me is the lack of interest in those stories, the lack of interest in them as people, rather than the lack of interest in them as formal moral symbols.Nolan's first act shows the significance of Oppenheimer's Judaism quite sharply- he shows Oppenheimer in Europe, spending time with both European Jewish physicists as well as Christian German and British physicists and seeing the conflict between Deutschephysik and Jüdische Physik. He shows Oppenheimer telling Groves that the only advantage the US has over Germany in the atomic race is the Germans' unwillingness to invest in Jüdische Physik. And he shows in Oppenheimer's conversations with the (perfectly cast) ubergoy Lawrence the way in which Oppenheimer's moral uncertainty about the bomb is overridden by his desire to stop Hitler at any cost, because he has family in Europe and Lawrence doesn't. But then these very well drawn Jewish elements disappear, as if either Nolan loses interest, or he's asking the viewer to be sophisticated enough to read... something?... into the fact that Oppenheimer's Jewishness doesn't go away when you stop mentioning it. Sorry Chris, I don't get it.
There's this sort of chug-a-chug-a sound that echoes through a bunch of the later parts of the film as Oppenheimer worries about his moral responsibility for the bomb, and I wondered for a while if it was supposed to suggest the cattle cars taking people to Auschwitz, but we eventually get a reveal that the sound is the stomping of feet in an auditorium of cheering Manhattan Project workers thanking Oppenheimer for leading them to success- Oppenheimer is haunted by being praised for something he is not convinced is right, but is also not convinced is wrong. So as usual I was over-reading the Jewish narrative.
But mostly there are two and a half hours of movie and so damned much of it is tied up in the various post-War hearings of different government agencies- Oppenheimer's security clearance appeal and Strauss's cabinet confirmation hearing and that starves out the time that should be spent with... life at Los Alamos. It was such a tedious frame story given what I was looking for out of the film. There's a very brief recruitment montage where one of the scientists says he can't go without his family and then Oppenheimer says of course you'll be taking your family with you, but then Nolan shows no interest in what it's like to take your family with you. Kitty complains that her new house in Los Alamos lacks a kitchen, Oppenheimer shrugs and says they'll fix that, and then there's no resolution to the domestic complications. There's a Christmas party scene that was the cruelest in the film for me, because you have a bunch of Jews and atheists and freethinkers celebrating a Christmas party in the middle of New Mexico, come on here, dig into what's weird and messy about that!!! And of course, show me Jews dancing!!!!! Nope, they immediately run out of that scene to inject some war-based tension and drama back into the story.
I mean, this is profoundly not a useful review of the movie as Nolan made it; Like I said, go look at
starlady's review if you want that. But the building of the bomb required thousands of people to make intense and significant sacrifices and if any of them had refused the project might not have worked, so the focus on Oppenheimer's moral qualms just seems incredibly reductionist and boring to me. I wanted to see Szilard's humor, I wanted to see Feynman as more than just a bongo joke, I wanted to see Teller taken seriously (This was my biggest disappointment in the film, I had such high hopes for Benny Safdie's performance but he just... didn't end up being my Teller), I loved the three seconds of Vannevar Bush we got and wanted so much more. I wanted the Oak Ridge parts of the story to be more than just a handful of marbles. I wanted to see scientists discussing science. Nolan had this persistent sleight of hand of representing scientific debates by cutting to them just as someone was getting the last word in, because heaven forbid we see scientists actually debating science in a movie about scientists. None of these wishes are reasonable expectations for a Christopher Nolan Oppenheimer film, but nevertheless.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-08-08 04:59 pm (UTC)I think this total focus on Oppenheimer is part of the reason why I'm less bothered about people being left out, particularly the women. Unlike, say, Apollo 13, which did actively erase women in the control room while purporting to be a panoramic picture in some ways, Oppenheimer just isn't, despite so much of it being shot in IMAX. I kind of think the Manhattan Project is unfilmable. Or you would need a 20-hour HBO series like HBO doesn't make anymore, like From the Earth to the Moon.
I was wondering about Oppenheimer's Judaism too. I sort of noticed it disappearing around the time of the Christmas party but then everything just keeps stampeding towards the finale. You might expect that it would have recurred when the establishment (Strauss) decides to ruin Oppenheimer through the security clearance, but Strauss was Jewish too--a fact which goes unmentioned during his confirmation drama but may have been relevant.
I was sort of surprised there was no end card mentioning that the decision to revoke his security clearance was vacated last year, and I wanted an end card mentioning that his brother and the other guy who were blacklisted were eventually allowed to return to university positions (and his brother went on to found the Exploratorium in San Francisco!). But as you say, that is not a reasonable expectation for a Christopher Nolan Oppenheimer film.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-08-08 09:11 pm (UTC)And yeah, the movie I want is probably unfilmable but if you are going to get together the cast of 50+ and get all these A-listers, why bother getting all these A-listers to film these boring one minute parts? Matthew Modine was such a good Vannevar Bush, maybe they make an Oppenheimer Cinematic Universe and they give him a film about the radar program. Josh Hartnett was such a good Ernest Lawrence, maybe we get a prequel movie with him... The First Atom Smasher.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-08-10 03:55 pm (UTC)Could you elaborate on this? To my knowledge there was 1 woman working in Launch Control at KSC during the Apollo program and precisely 0 women in Mission Control. Maybe only 1 woman (Poppy Northcutt) working in the backrooms during Apollo 13. There were of course plenty of women working in the building – secretaries, math aides, a handful of trajectory people – but much though I would have loved a film that gave a panoramic view of life in Johnson Space Center as a whole, Apollo 13 really wasn't it.
Ultimately I'm all right with films about highly male-dominated environments being highly male-dominated, because I find it interesting in a way to see that dramatized, but I would also be 100% there for a film about Poppy Northcutt or what it was like being an unsung math aide.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-08-10 11:37 pm (UTC)Circling back to Oppenheimer, I did appreciate that Lilli Hornig was there and she got at least one good line. But yes, it was a highly male-dominated environment and I don't have a problem with that being portrayed as such either, particularly since the screenplay lets Oppenheimer's wife be more or less exactly as abrasive and unmaternal as she was.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-08-08 05:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-08-08 08:57 pm (UTC)Nolan's primary source was supposedly American Prometheus by Bird and Sherwin, which is good. My all-time favorite doorstopper on the Manhattan Project is Rhodes's The Making of the Atomic Bomb. I also really like Brotherhood of the Bomb by Herken.
Feynman's memoir Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman has some great lighter stories about life at Los Alamos- obviously one must take them with a giant grain of salt, they're probably mostly untrue. Jennet Conant's Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon And The Secret Palace Of Science That Changed The Course Of World War II gives interesting context on a lot of the key figures in the American scientific leadership; though ultimately Tuxedo Park hosted more radar research than nuclear research, there was a lot of overlap on the administrative side.
I really love Beyerchen's Scientists under Hitler: Politics and the physics community in the Third Reich, which has interesting information on the German atom bomb project and captures great portraits of a number of the German Jews who ended up having major roles in the Manhattan Project after being driven out of Germany.
There are probably more, that's enough though, right?
(no subject)
Date: 2023-08-10 02:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-08-10 11:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-08-11 12:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-08-09 12:13 am (UTC)In the visual arts, I enjoyed Fat Man and Little Boy (movie of the Manhattan Project), the Feynman biopic Infinity, and the tv series Manhattan (which shows a lot more of the daily lives of non-scientists in the project).
(no subject)
Date: 2023-08-14 10:29 pm (UTC)That said, I walked out of that movie thinking that it wanted to be a mini-series, or maybe, it wanted to be a dozen different movies, that would have all been good. It just wasn't any of them, as much as a weird stitched together version that never devoted quite enough time to any of the points that it could have made in order to make them.
Someone later told me that it is really a movie about unintended consequences, and I can kind of see it, mostly among the other movies that it could have been.