If ‘Oppenheimer’ Is Anything Today, It Is Irrelevant
Nolan and his team succeeded in getting immense publicity for this out of date and disconnected project.
Director Christopher Nolan revealed in interviews how he keeps himself away from today’s technology. He does not use a smart phone, keeps physical copies of his scripts and refuses to share them via email.
Cillian Murphy, his frequent collaborator and chosen lead actor for Oppenheimer, tried to project a similar image of himself during promotions of the movie. In an interview it was made clear how ignorant he is of the new internet lingo used by millennials and Gen-Zs.
This disconnect (perhaps a deliberate attempt to be disconnected) with the current world trends is reflected not only in the director’s decision to use analog special effects over CGI, but also in its subject matter and the overall handling of the plot.
Oppenheimer is problematic not just with its content but also how it has been packaged and publicized. It was released along with another hyped production — Barbie — and the tug of war between these two movies resulted in one of the most enormous social media publicity stunts ever created.
While the teams involved in both of these movies were sportive within their ‘competition’, it was the fans who took to making memes and generally fuelling the media war. It reminded me of one of Tajfel’s social identity studies which showed that categorization of groups based on minimal criteria (like preference of painting, for example) can lead to discriminatory behavior towards the perceived ‘Other’ group, creating an ‘us versus them’ ideology. Otherwise known today as ‘Othering’.
The supporters of Oppenheimer saw (or tried to brand) the movie as something more serious and sophisticated, as something for the science nerds who are not challenged when it comes to applying mind and logic. More so in India, away from the primary movie market, fans were making posts about how one needs to read a list of books (mostly scientific texts) to be able to even understand the movie.
In contrast, Barbie with its pink and plastic world is told to be silly and for girls. People were only too happy to apply the dumb blonde stereotype to every girl who chose to watch Barbie instead of Nolan’s film. Girls, who are seen as major supporters of Barbie (or is that just an impression?), can’t be good at or interested in understanding science… or any serious subjects.
The whole fan wars are packaged under this cover of manly men who would go for Oppenheimer, and how Barbie was for the dumb, the inferior who wouldn’t possibly be able to follow a film like Oppenheimer. Funny thing, to anyone who criticized Nolan’s previous works (like Interstellar) as mediocre, the one weapon his fanboys always used was ‘you gotta be smart to be able to understand those movies’.
While Barbie is a feminist movie trying to fight the very girl stereotype these memes are trying to portray, Oppenheimer is mostly a historical account of the titular scientist’s life rather than a movie focused on science. In fact, one need not know more than the basic difference between nuclear fission and fusion to be able to follow this movie. But knowledge on history and politics plays more of a role in order to engage in Nolan’s film.
The movie has four major issues, ones which make it unworthy of the Academy Award, and one key strength.
Starting with the positive, there is the decision to not go with CGI effects in today’s world, one in which audiences are suffering form an overdose of gratuitous effects. The visuals of the nuclear testing, and the emphasis on the characters and their facial expressions captured through close-up shots during the crucial moments of the movie brings much needed freshness.
Coming to the contentions, the first one is the movie’s treatment of its women.
Emily Blunt, who played Kitty (Oppenheimer’s wife), when asked about the character said, ‘she was a brilliant brain that went to waste at the ironing board’. Kitty’s brilliance nor her frustration with having to deal with it being wasted in the pool of her marital obligations received no mention nor an intentional space on screen. But the emphasis was clear in scenes where she stood for her husband, especially in scenes where he faces prosecution as a communist supporter and also, in the end, how she despised an old acquaintance who betrayed him.
What I cannot forget is the scene where Cillian Murphy’s character, after their successful testing of the weapon, calls his wife to deliver the message telling her she can “take in the sheets” (the choice of words) — their code for discussing the success of the world’s most powerful weapon comes down to, of course, domestic work.
The case of Jean Tatlock, who clearly was an achiever herself, is no different. Florence Pugh, who played the character, is confined to intimate scenes with Murphy and to a display of alcoholism and depression. One might argue that is a biographical account and the main emphasis has to be on Robert Oppenheimer. But to treat female characters right, the movie need not be admittedly feminist nor have women at its center. There ought to be a complexity to the characters, though.
In The Imitation Game (2014), the protagonist was Alan Turing and every other character in the movie was presented in relation to his perspective. But that did not mean that the filmmakers presented Joan Clarke (played by Keira Knightly) as secondary. While her struggles with gender-based stereotypes of the era are taken into account, she still had her own shine, independent of her association with the main character.
Second, the length dedicated to show his fight against the alleged involvement with the Communist movement
If I write a political piece today, say to some newspaper or other political publication, about the communist vs capitalism debate or how any individual/individuals suffered during the Cold War’s climate of distrust, I can safely assume it will be rejected saying that ‘I should find an issue that is relevant today’.
The political environment has changed a lot today. Issues on the forefront are not communist propagandas or their opposition but those of war, immigration, collective human rights, and most importantly, the ethics of the bomb and ethics of war itself.
If someone is going to make a movie today on the maker of the nuclear bomb, its focus has to be on the ethics of the bomb and how far the realist theory of deterrence could stand. But no, Nolan got a hefty budget and super star cast to act in a movie that spends most of its time about prosecution faced by Oppenheimer about his alleged involvement supporting communism. How did he even get to that?
Third, it is not about Japan, even for a second.
No discussion about the nuclear bomb or World War 2 is complete without mentioning Japan, the bomb’s first and undeserving victim. But Nolan ignored these victims without any substantial visuals of the suffering people. Even insensitive memes, such as one where the ‘whole world is shown as enjoying the movie meanwhile people of Japan could not’, made rounds on the internet.
Nolan made the film all about the atomic bomb’s American maker, his face, with the American flag waving, and his remorse, his sadness and his hesitancy. If Nolan made any criticism of the bomb, its done through the protagonist’s thoughts, emotions, and attempts at trying to convince the establishment to not to drop the bombs (most of whose accuracy is questionable).
There is the suggestion that the invention of the bomb and/or its dropping on Japan are wrong not because of the ethical questions involved or the consequences suffered by the victims, but because the protagonist was penitent about it. The world does not need another white-washed apologist narrative today.
Fourth, the gimmicks employed to get the attention
Jean Tatlock was credited with introducing John Donne’s poetry to Oppenheimer, which might have inspired him to come up with ‘Trinity’ as the name for the first test of the bomb. But this never caught the popular imagination as much as Oppenheimer’s recital of the line from Bhagavat Gita did.
Nolan wanted to cash in on such things and made his focus on Tatlock discussing the Gita with him. The book considered sacred by many Indians was mentioned in a sexual scene which most Indians would consider inappropriate. If anything, the objections only served to gain the movie more publicity.
Nolan might also be well aware of his branding as the maker of movies that are the science nerds’ sanctuary, because remember, if you do not like his movies then that means you are unintelligent. Apart from throwing big science names here and there between scenes, he also got the poster boy of high IQ (no disrespect to Einstein) Albert Einstein himself appearing randomly to Oppenheimer here and there, passing his words of wisdom whenever the latter seemed to have faced a dilemma.
While Oppenheimer meetings with Einstein are not historically inaccurate, the only reason such scenes were included is to increase the appeal of his movie (I also hated what he did to Tesla in The Prestige).
Prestigious awards like Oscars give movies a place in history, where the future generations look at them for the immense value they carry. It is sad that the Oscars are not serving this purpose anymore, and Oppenheimer, with great chances of winning, is nothing more than a missed opportunity at discussing great questions related to a nuclear world.
