Oppenheimer
I’m choosing my words with care because Barbieheimer provokes strong feelings! If you love Christopher Nolan’s oeuvre, impressive and imaginative cinematography, Cillian Murphy or films about scientific discoveries, then this is for you. It’s also clearly a thoughtful labour of love on the part of Christopher Nolan, so I don’t want to be critical just for the sake of criticising. However…
For me, I’ve come away having watched this movie feeling shell-shocked, but for the wrong reasons. It was, on balance, alright, but such a long film has left me emotionally cold and feeling stunned. And I don’t think that was the intention of the film maker.
This is partly because it’s difficult to watch as a woman. It is mostly men in suits/uniforms and women appear as ciphers — wives, sexualised love interests or scientists turned into admin and secretaries. Whilst I don’t have any issue with films about lots of men in suits fighting for scientific/military breakthroughs, I do have a huge issue with the way women are written in this movie and portrayed. For example Jean Tatler (Florence Pugh) chats with Oppenheimer about Communism in the street, in a split second, suddenly, they are having grindy sex and an on-off affair. It sort of feels like watching porn because there is just no set up for them to be involved, beyond a conversation and perhaps really wanting to rifle his library. Even in their affair there isn’t any emotional connection — I’m not sure why she keeps rejecting his flowers or calling him only to push him away, and then berating him for not caring about her. It all feels super unhealthy. More importantly, she is a scientist and professional, but we never see her doing any science or indeed see any reason why she’d want to be with Oppenheimer. All we see is how unhappy he makes her (or she makes herself over a married man and colleague) and hints of her own deeper emotional struggles, which she seeks to destructively resolve.
Emily Blunt’s Kitty Oppenheimer is similarly written in such an underpowered and surface way. She only appears in relation to Oppenheimer as his wife, as a married woman and mother, and married biologist he’s about to embark on an affair with, as well as as someone in the background struggling painfully with addiction and being a mother with such an emotionally and physically absent (though brilliant) husband. Ironically for a film so much about scientific discovery, we never see the why for either Kitty or Jean. Hinted at, Kitty talks about being lost and solving her lostness through a series of kind, rescuing knight kind of husbands — one who died, one who swept her along in politics and revolution — which also drove them apart, and now a genius who can talk the scientific talk and flirt, (but has no substance). Personally, the film for me never showed the emotional connection between Oppenheimer and either of these women — why was Kitty driven to addiction and why did either of them and more want to be with someone who was so emotionally distanced and unreliable? It’s to Blunt’s total credit that we see Kitty as anywhere near a human being at all.
Seen through Oppenheimer’s eyes entirely, this was part of the problem. Oppenheimer didn’t know himself, so neither did we and it also jumps between colour and black and white footage. Past vs present or his view vs others views? It wasn’t until much later in the film when he develops a conscience that we see anything of the man at all — notably smiling at the end when embraced by his friends. Until then, although he is gifted in languages, learning, powering through a lecture and not listening to people, who is he?
I began to worry for the Oppenheimer children as their mother struggled and both their parents were so focused on other things and emotionally disconnected. I felt like I needed to rush out and call child protection to get them all some help; they were in peril of being severely neglected by both parents. Mr and Mrs Oppenheimer even seemed to deal with things by not dealing with them, sliding them out of sight and mind and most definitely not talking — hence Kitty’s shock when Oppenheimer is pushed into talking about his affairs in semi-public. The only moment that we see Kitty the woman is when she is being questioned by the committee and then she shines, indeed dazzles — we see the intelligent, competent, professional, erudite woman she is and how hard she must have found it to set aside the life of the mind for the domestic. But marriage was clearly her only way out of whatever it was she was trying to escape from.
Mutinously, whenever twinkly Albert Einstein appeared on the screen (as portrayed by Tom Conti), I longed for Einstein the movie rather than Oppenheimer. Really moved by Einstein’s stony face when he realised that his science has led to the potential to murder the world with the development of super bombs.
Matt Damon saves the movie by injecting a whole heap of energy as security obsessed General Leslie Groves having to manage all these flouncy scientists. Equally enjoyable is the creation of a closed scientific community in Los Alamo (on an indigenous burial ground) as the scientists squabble and swop ideas, security is worried about as are what the Russians are doing. I am concerned that the indigenous Americans were never seen or heard (just lost their land and became a footnote in history) in this drama, much like the professional women being co-opted as scientific secretaries, and wives, (even if they didn’t have the skills). Nor was utilising of Nazi German scientists ever mentioned, de-Nazified or not, towards the end of World War Two and after. (Although I appreciate that this may not be relevant to Oppenheimer’s own personal story).
More impressive was the imaginative camera work and images generated when Oppenheimer had Physics thoughts. His behaviour towards a sarcastic lecturer was never really challenged beyond showing it and his response afterwards. Loved seeing Kenneth Branagh on screen as Niels Bohr, and Robert Downey Jr spitting bile and disbelief towards the end as Lewis Strauss. Also Louise Lombard at one point!
Of Oppenheimer I’ve come away with an image of him as a destroyer of worlds — and not just because of his involvement in the creation of weapons of mass destruction. More so due to the emotional havoc he created in the lives of women around him — emotionally absent for his wife, his lover (who he couldn’t or wouldn’t support as she wanted him to. Yet somehow he had a loyal band of supportive friends at the investigation who spoke up for him and even Einstein liked him, so he can’t be all bad! (But I don’t know if any of this is accurate?)
More could have been done to show us the man — we only really see him as he develops a horrified conscience learning what the atom bomb has done to people. More could have been made of the ethics of it — it’s not a glib decision (though it’s portrayed as being politically manipulated) and with hindsight we can judge more harshly — but do, can you, justify taking lives to save lives during war time, and at what cost to yourself and others? A reversal of ‘if you save one life, you save the world’. I did enjoy Cillian Murphy’s Oppenheimer defending himself throughout the tedious and critical investigations, especially as dubious evidence kept on being sprung on him from all sides. Jason Clarke’s prosecutor was terrific in grilling Oppenheimer and friends relentlessly. Hang on in there just for the joke about a nothing called Kennedy being influenced by the treatment of Oppenheimer!
The starry cast is superb and it’s down to the ensemble performances, particularly Cillian Murphy, Matt Damon and Emily Blunt that any of this hangs together at all. Nonetheless, it does feel like watching a dramatised documentary rather than a film to move or challenge you, and I think with some editing, it could have been. To some extent I think we’re meant to think about culpability and guilt, but due to the lack of overall emotional connection, this mark could be missed for much of the audience. Time passing is also an issue here — the men pretty much look the same throughout, I wish they had had fashion changes as the few women do to show that we’re not in the same month or year all the way along. Ironic for a Physics film really!
Rewatching Oppenheimer
Giving this movie another chance several months on —and here are my thoughts from a second viewing. I still have big issues with the way that women are portrayed in this work, especially scientist Jean. Her role is very reductive and we never really learn who she is, beyond some very controlling behaviours about not wanting flowers and a very unhealthy relationship with Oppenheimer. Florence Pugh does her best within a very limited character. We never ever get a sense of her professional or intellectual life — unlike Kitty. Having listened to the cast speaking about the film and read around it, I get the choppy flashbacks/flash forwards more — and really what is going on. The fact that Christopher Nolan created his own fake nuclear explosion is impressive, as is the cinematography showing Oppenheimer’s inner world.
Truly this is Robert Downey Junior’s moment, and Matt Damon’s — their performances are terrific. Cillian Murphy gives a wonderful performance as a complex character. I enjoyed how his life was filtered through the POV of the McCarthy era Communist witch hunts. Most of all, this is Emily Blunt’s star turn as she spends much of the script glowering in a corner — and even without words is still impressively forceful. Though I was deeply worried about her children — this is a woman battling addictions, her own lack of choices and a mother who really doesn’t want to parent. Yet the moment when she lucidly fights back under intimidating questioning, or chooses not to shake a hand to make her point — incredible. Be more Kitty is the take away from this.
The unionising of scientists and the way that intelligent woman were enlisted into deeply unsuitable roles such as the chemist being offered a secretarial role are intriguing historical points. They also link us to the wider social and political tensions of the time. The way that Nolan manages to compress politics, physics and ethics is a wonder.
Overall, I am still concerned that prominent Christian leaders are lauding this film and deriding Barbie. Whilst it is impressively acted and produced, do we (as Christians) really want to celebrate a flakey (though charismatic and intelligent) man, who cannot be faithful to his wife? Personally I prefer the themes, world building and zip of Barbie; although Barbenheimer gave us room for both.
