You Can’t Martyr Oppenheimer.
But I don’t think that’s what Nolan intends. I was wary, walking into the theatre. I didn’t want this to be another of those “the science was blameless, it was the politicians who misused it” movies. Then again, if the director had meant to somehow absolve the brilliant Oppenheimer of the tremendous guilt he bears, he wouldn’t have cast Cillian Murphy.
After six masterful seasons of Peaky Blinders, the viewer is accustomed to rooting for Murphy. Not because he’s portraying a good guy. He wasn’t a good guy in Peaky Blinders, and he is definitely not a good guy in Oppenheimer. He’s bad, yet he’s so bare-faced about it and so charismatic, you end up eating out of his palm anyway.
An opening for martyrdom? Not a chance.
Fairly early on in the film, there’s a scene where Oppenheimer asks American writer Haakon Chevalier to look after his child for a while, because he and his wife can’t cope. It’s not the sort of thing that one normally does, but everything goes on account of Robert’s genius.
“We’re selfish, awful people.”
Oppenheimer tells Chevalier, and I believe the entire weight of the film lies in that one scene. The choosing of death over life, because ultimately, Oppenheimer’s research will take him to a destruction and terror of such magnitude he will not be capable of coming back.
In that scene, it’s clear to the viewer that Oppenheimer is kicking away something unmissable, the experience of being a first-time father. And while it may be evident to the audience, it’s not so to Oppenheimer. For much of the film, Murphy’s character seems to exist on this special plane, a realm of privilege and allowances reserved for men of great promise.
To men like us, the rules need not apply.
It’s only belatedly, in the autumn of his life, and following one of the greatest atrocities yet known to mankind, that Oppenheimer understands he is not above the law of the realm. For no matter how far his genius previously allowed him to venture, it will not save him from this, his own guilt. Nor will it silence the anguished cries of the dead and maimed.
“I bet the Japanese didn’t like it”, Oppenheimer jeers in a rallying victory speech, soon after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And even as he does so, Murphy’s face brilliantly cracks. He can shout. He can even invite applause and acclaim, but it is too late. Oppenheimer no longer believes his own facade. He has left the realm of allowances, only to find himself in the world of too mortal men, saddled with a grave burden.
As the assembly at Los Alamos prepares to run the final test on the atomic bomb, Oppenheimer has a chilling exchange with Matt Damon’s Leslie Groves. Seemingly only just realizing the potential fatalism of the bomb, Groves does a double-take. He plays the righteous, clueless card typically reserved for politicians (though seldom military men), and almost accuses Oppenheimer. How could he let this go through, when there’s even an almost-zero chance it would destroy the world?
Oppenheimer: What do you want from theory alone?
Groves: Zero would be nice.
It is a testament both to the brilliant acting and to Nolan’s particular genius that Oppenheimer toes the very fine line between blame and sympathy. His post-apocalyptic change of heart will tug on the strings of many a moviegoer, for who among us hasn’t woken up to realize a terrible, unpardonable mistake? We are but human, and we are all destructive at our core.
I read somewhere Robert Downey Jr saying the movie proves his belief that men are atrocious, and the world should be run by women. However, much as I found Oppenheimer himself repulsive, that’s not the thought I walked away with.
Rather, the movie left me more secure in my own convictions that,
We are not all Oppenheimer, just as we are not all Hitler. I know that both women and men alike walked out of that movie-theatre knowing they would’ve gone for zero. No less.
The distinction here is not men versus women. It almost never is, and such divisive rhetoric certainly should have no place in the 21st century. Rather, it is a battle between thinkers and feelers.
The artist versus the scientist — an unbridgeable gap?
And now I am become Death,
The Destroyer of worlds.
Robert J. Oppenheimer doesn’t create the atomic bomb because he is male. He does it because he’s a physicist, a man of logic, a thinker. To an extent, he does it, I believe, because he wants to make a name for himself, and knows that whatever he’s glimpsing beyond the white hills is it.
But more solidly, he has this desire to know. He’s so turned on by curiosity, by a philosophical “what if” that it overrides his humanity. He is a Jungian model of the thinker, using logic-based, impersonal reasoning to power his decisions.
In Oppie’s mind, yes, seeing what would happen if he pushed the limit is worth the destruction of the world. He lacks the emotional capacity to acknowledge beforehand the destruction he is about to unleash.
It is only post-factum, when the hypothetical destruction is become reality, that Oppenheimer understands what he has done. Because now, the death and atrocity are no longer possibilities, they are fact. And he knows facts.
I’d argue Oppenheimer struggles with the possibility of pain inscribed in his creation. That’s the realm of the ‘feelers’. Where a feeler has no difficulty imagining another’s pain or gauging the potential for pain and sympathizing with it, a thinker struggles.
“These things will harden the heart,” Oppie whispers, as he waits for the bomb to go off. Yet, I think his heart wasn’t very soft to begin with.
Time and again, he kicks away emotion in return for theory. He gives his young child away. He abandons his erstwhile lover, Jean, even though he sees her pain and fragility. In the end, he fails to resonate with emotions.
Oppenheimer is led by his thoughts, not his feelings. Even when the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings are facts, Oppie’s repulsion is a theoretical one, one prompted by the knowledge of what he has unleashed, rather than by his perceived empathy for the victims.
So no, Nolan’s Oppenheimer isn’t a testament to the cruelty of men, but to the lack of emotion in thinking types. More so, it’s a prediction of a grim future, if we continue being led by thinkers, not by feelers.
Naturally, both have their merits. It’s a mistake to call either ‘side’ better, or more apt to rule. Without thinkers, we would be missing so much development and progress. Without the feelers, though, we risk not seeing the suffering of our fellow man until it is too late.
It was interesting to me that the premiere of the film was affected by the SAG-AFTRA strikes. The artists taking to the streets (for a very just cause). The feelers. Because obviously, they are feelers. You need to be strongly emotional to be an actor, and I think, in part, that was where Downey Jr.’s comment hails from.
Walking out of the theatre, I felt a strong urge to condemn, myself. But condemn whom? Men? I don’t think we’d get very far, and really, aren’t we past issuing blanket gender-based accusations?
Well, then? Scientists? Not as a whole, they’re vital for progress.
Politicians? RDJ’s own Lewis Strauss certainly hints towards a blanket condemnation of the political class. And yet, it is men like Oppenheimer, and regular folks like you and me who enable politicians.
Ourselves? No. For I can always argue I would’ve abandoned the project. So perhaps we don’t condemn anyone. After all, laying blame is convenient. I can say the scientist, or the politician, or the German was a monster, and be along my merry way.
Maybe instead of a pointed finger, I walk away from Oppenheimer with a lesson. A reminder for feelers, like myself, to do better. To do more. Because if there would be a fairer balance between heart and brain in our world, atrocities like the Second World War, and the Cold War, and the current war would not happen.
Put simply, Oppenheimer curdles the blood. Both because of what has been done, but also for what we may yet do, if we do not heed our past.
Thank you for reading. Guess what. I am actually publishing my first novel this fall. Wild, I know. Meanwhile, I’m gonna be documenting my process/journey/slow descent into madness on here, while also dropping the occasional opinion piece.
So if you’re someone who enjoys that kinda writing, well, why not subscribe? It’s free. And I’m desperate. So there, honesty.
