3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Oppenheimer

2023, Christopher Nolan (Tenet) -- Amazon

From my opening paragraph for Tenet:

"...for the arrogance and self-importance just drips from the movie... But I must say, but for some small details in the chaotic mess that is travelling both forwards and backwards in time, this one was pretty straight forward...."

Dude, you are quoting YOURSELF ?

Two salient points. Nolan still thinks he is smarter than anyone sitting in the theatre, and here we have a movie about a man who was probably smarter than anyone in a room with him, debatedly even Alfred Einstein; or at least he thought he was. And, chaotic messes are Nolan's bread & butter. This movie is as much about Nolan himself, and his opinion of himself, as it is about Oppie.

We (Kent and I [a less irascible version of "Withnail & I"]) just re-watched "Tenet" last night (as of the timing of the writing of this paragraph) and I retract my statement about "chaotic messes" -- that movie was, in fact, quite linear in its timeline, as we humans currently view time. The chaos comes when we think about what is going on outside of Protagonist's viewpoint.

Side-stepping the structure of the movie, the jumping around in timelines, a more palatable version of the technique which acts more like flash-backs & flash-forwards than as a disconnected from linear depiction, much of this movie was about exactly how smart Oppenheimer, and his peers, was/were. There are brief attempts to bring us into understanding, but most of it is just hand-waved away assuming we the viewer will just let smart people say smart things without needing to fully understand it fully. In this instance, the intelligence present positively drips from all the characters.

And part of this movie is saying that smart people have the right to decide moral quandaries for us lesser evolved folk. Unless they themselves are overwhelmed by emotions and personal motives. Oppie has to make hard choices, knowing fully what he could be releasing, that a post-A-bomb era is a new world. But he also acknowledges that an end to war is required and hopes this will be the inspiration/forceful-hand. Finally, the movie does not shy away from his desire, his need, to see his ideas come to fruition. Ego. Fame.

Performances. This movie is so full of incredible performances, it almost makes the head ache more than the science talk does. There are just soooo many incredible people in this movie. First up, Cillian Murphy himself. All I knew of him before just fell away as he embodied this man. He is not running from zombies, nor fighting as a Peaky Blinder; his character in Dunkirk is likely what brought him here. Opposite him was a supporting cast of dozens: Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh, Josh Hartnett, Alden Ehrenreich, Kenneth Branagh, David Krumholz, David Dastmalchian, and so many others. And Robert Downey Junior, who is finally able to take off the Tony-role.

At its heart, it is of course a story about how he is compelled to create an atomic bomb, for the US, to fight the Nazis. But it is also a story of the times, before, during and after WWII. Politics, racial politics, egos, communism, sex and loyalties. Its incredible that he was able to create such a cohesive story considering the technique. Its all so chopped up, depicted in small chunks, jumping from thought to thought, scene to scene. Oh we know that movies are made this way, each scene shot in isolation from the next, but I loved how masterfully it was all brought together. And once America has the bomb, everything seems to just ... come apart.

One of the theories the  fear is that once the atomic explosion begins, it will  just continue, atom after atom igniting, the next one after the next one, until our entire atmosphere burns off. "Close to zero", and yet that is not zero. And yet they proceeded. In today's postulation of multiverses, what if ours was the one universe where that didn't happen?

Kent's universe.