“You drop a bomb and it falls on the just and the unjust. There is no escape from it.”*
Reading Log (2) — January 21st, 2024
*I.I. Rabi, from Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin — American Prometheus pg. 211
My reading log from January 21st, 2023. I have a lot of different books on the go. This week I mostly read these two. I also watched the new Miyazaki film The Boy and the Heron which is the first movie I’ve watched by him. It was so weird. Maybe I should switch this to a general art log.
Siddarth Kara — Cobalt Red
Solid journalism. He really went deep into the Congo and penetrated places yet heard of in this modern western world. Some really great questions and reflections this poses. Our digital/tech society is largely built off of this slave labour empire. Hard to believe given we’re in the 21st century. Their politicians are letting their country get taken advantage of — their own greed is one of the main cause of this disaster which they’ve had control over in the last 50 years. It’s honestly hard to believe that this is going on while I’m sleeping, children dying everyday.
Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin — American Prometheus
The bomb has been dropped and all the guilt is finally beginning to hit Oppie and his scientists. Now it’s a mad political scramble to put in force anti-atomic development constraints, to not allow tactical atomic weapons nor actual atomic bombs. Oppie os really no longer a scientist, he’s a politician. The FBI is beginning to crack down on former communists because of worries about the Cold War (McCarthyism though?) which is odd because it’s not illegal. Oppie has also taken up his post at Princeton which was not that important in the movie. It’s another crazy gathering of scientists (Einstein, von Neumann, Dirac, Bohr among others), and from it their growth seems stunted a bit, yet Oppenheimer tries fighting hard against the stagnation. It’s also crazy to me how many people’s work he helped with/helped start, which got that person a Nobel prize.
The Boy and the Heron
This movie was both odd and beautiful. The artwork and vivid portraits of fantasy worlds were inspiring. It was so weird in a great way that really opened up the mind to the idea that anything was possible. The house complex in the real world was very aesthetic and self-contained: an own little world in itself with interesting, weird characters, and a meshing of the spirit world and the real world. The fantasy world was also very self-contained and brought the story to a new place that was so far removed from the real world and in which it seemed like anything could happen. An entire city of parakeets, pelicans, and of course, the not-so-great grey heron. The visuals were absolutely stunning. The story was dense and up to interpretation which I always like in a movie. However, for some reason with this movie, there was just something missing. I guess it was lacking a sense of coherence. But that summons the question if movies really need a firm plot in which to move along. I am unsure whether they do, and there are examples of movies which I loved which didn’t have a firm plot. Maybe if I watch this movie again, or I make a more firm opinion on the above issue, I may like the movie more.
I did not like the ending all the much. I thought it was much too abrupt and like there was more to be said. The more time that passes the fonder I am of it, but I still feel as though there was something more to be said or done. Overall I would rate it a 7 or 7.5/10.
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