Review Tales

Memento: Time as Memory

Insomnia: Time as Perpetual Daylight

Batman Begins: Time as Fear

The Prestige: Time as Deception

The Dark Knight: Time as Chaos

Inception: Time as Dreams

The Dark Knight Rises: Time as Reckoning

Interstellar: Time as Love

Dunkirk: Time as Survival

Tenet: Time as Entropy

Oppenheimer: Time as Arms Race

Fission occurs when a neutron slams into a larger atom, creating smaller atoms. However, Fission produces long-term radioactive by-products.

Fusion occurs when two atoms slam together to form a heavier atom. Fusion is what powers the sun, and is several times greater than Fission.

It is a Fission explosion that initiates the H-bomb. A Fusion explosion is the aftermath of the H-bomb detonation. Cause and Effect.

In this film, Fission scenes are in Colour, indicating a subjective viewpoint on morality. Fusion scenes are in Black & White, indicating an objective one!

Fission is Oppenheimer breaking apart like the splitting of the atom – Fusion is Strauss and Oppenheimer clashing like two dueling nuclei clashing in fusion. These two men representing incompatible moral viewpoints collide at two specific points in the film, each time with appropriately explosive consequences results!

“Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to man. For this he was chained to a rock and tortured for eternity”

RDJ’s Strauss could be seen as the higher power who was slighted; Oppenheimer is obviously Prometheus; Rami Malek’s Dr Hill would be our Heracles (or Hercules for you Romans); Emily Blunt’s Kitty is the good Dionysus at the end. I love that Nolan’s film isn’t afraid to portray Oppenheimer as a genius without conviction. The US government gave him clearance to unlock a fundamental force of the universe, and when he did, they unleashed it and tortured him. In less than 20 years from the first nuclear weapon, the Soviets detonated a 50 megaton hydrogen thermonuclear bomb (still the largest man-made explosion and thousands of times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Japan). Today our political leaders still flipantly talk about the use of tactical nukes, proving we’ve learned nothing from this stolen fire!

“Theory will take you only so far”

Every time a character asks Robert Oppenheimer what he really believes, he struggles to make a stance or articulate a position. He’s capable of moral thought, but he would rather act first and then reflect on the morality later. He literally leaves his kids, almost like he’s too smart to be weighed down by parental responsibilities. He believes in Communist ideas but not the party. He’s great at theory but terrible at math. He goes from anti-war to joining the effort because the Nazis were killing Jews, to not even batting an eye when Hitler was killed – Cillian Murphy lets the man’s hollowness sting. Oppenheimer’s inability to commit to anything, politically or romantically, means he can’t grapple with reality – it’s all theory with him! He’s like Pain in Naruto, who desires world peace by unleashing so much suffering to teach people the value of pain. Robert wanted to be known for a big contribution to the world; he prides himself as a solver of the problem of war. In reality, all he ended up achieving was a chain reaction to mankind’s self destruction!

“You don’t get to commit the sin and then ask all of us to feel sorry for you when there are consequences.” – Kitty Oppenheimer 

Think back to Robert’s breakdown in the woods: He fucks up, but when it bites him, he wants everyone to feel sorry for him without owning up to it. In that moment Kitty’s talking about Jean Tatlock, but same goes with the bomb. She’s so fed up with his self-imposed martyrdom from the beginning. Nolan visually blinds Oppie with the light of truth as Jason Clarke’s prosecutor questions his moral qualms. He has to see himself as the coward he is in that moment and be blinded by those feelings no one sees. He knew how destructive the bomb would be before Trinity. He believed the cities HAD to be bombed to get the point across, to bomb them into fear from ever picking up arms again. Ultimately it WAS Truman’s decision, especially since Truman knew that Japan was close to surrendering and chose to drop the bombs as a warning shot towards Russia!

“No one who discovers anything does have or can have an idea of how it would be used. All the scientist can do is to go further to understand, to apply and to explain”

– Edward Teller

Still can’t believe a blockbuster brought in millions of people and then sat them down for 3 hours of Edward Teller arguing with Oppenheimer about fission vs fusion bombs. Benny Safdie was Peter Seller’s Dr Strangelove but real! Safdie ate in a movie where everyone ate! It’s not only the look or accent, but the commitment to giving a complete understanding of a character that the writing doesn’t provide. Teller is an echo of Oppenheimer’s mistakes. Oppie keeps him on, despite his nature and unpopularity in the program, because he supports the research. Teller benefitted and eventually took advantage of that. Teller famously thought it was stupid for the US to have an arsenal of “small” nukes when they could just build a gigantic world-ender in Arizona – literally Dr. Strangelove! This man deserves his own biopic! They built Geneva Conventions for guys like Teller!

“I console myself with the normal excuse: If I hadn’t done it, somebody else would have.”

The Godfather of A.I. Geoffrey Hinton quit Google after over a decade, expressing regret over his life’s work and the dangers ahead. Interesting parallel to Oppenheimer – this recurring notion of “I just built it, I don’t have any control over what they do with it” among scientists. Nolan calls out the cowardice of neutrality! Whatever his beliefs were, Oppie was able to be easily controlled by the military-industrial complex to create the worst thing humanity ever invented! Even a brilliant coward is easy to control. Almost every scene is a moment where he had the opportunity to do the right thing! That’s true to what history is: a series of accidents, mistakes and late responses!

“I just wish we had time to use it on the Germans.” 

The Gymnasium scene is horrifying in its surreal banality. The effect of muting the audience’s response during Robert’s speech; leaving only a hauntingly silent, desolate planet – a brilliant foreshadowing of the doomy note the film ends on. Oppie may not have been physically present when the bombs hit Japan, but a bomb was going off internally in this scene. Dropping the bomb did save lives in the short term-on both sides. But this “winning the war” has actually been dwarfed by the larger “war” between the forces of peace and the forces of violence, chaos, and authoritarianism that could still use nuclear weapons to destroy our world.

“Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds ” 

The famous quote is found in the Bhagavad Gita which mentions weapons of war that sound a lot like nukes. There are parts of India that look like they were hit by nukes thousands of years ago. In reality, Oppenheimer was quoting a slightly scuffed translation (which he translated by himself btw) of Hindu scripture. A translation that kinda derails what the scripture was trying to get across. So leave it to Nolan to have him quote it in a Cowgirl position! It’s low-key genius to tie that quote to his 2 biggest regrets – Jean Tatlock and the nuclear arms race! And I’m sorry if you’re one of those people who wanted Nolan to depict a Japanese explosion in IMAX to make you feel the impact of the bomb (you should really interrogate yourself if that’s how you truly feel). Jeez some of you guys will not object to a bloodbath, but sex and nudity is where you draw the line! If you wanna see more atom bombs go boom so bad, go watch Twin Peaks: The Return episode 8!

“You think because you let them tar and feather you that the world will forgive you? They won’t!”

I pity anyone saying the last 40 minutes sucked or were irrelevant. There is no better antagonist than someone just doing their job and being really good at it. This is why Jason Clarke as the prosecutor works. He was deliciously infuriating every time he was on screen. He is the chain strangling this American Prometheus. Reminded me of George C Scott in Anatomy of a Murder. Clarke’s the Aaron Eckardt of this movie – an important performance that’ll undoubtedly be overshadowed by other great performances (ironically both play prosecutors in their respective Nolan films). Every 5 minutes you think you’ve seen the best performance of the film, and then another actor pops up to give an equally great one. Shoutout to Nolan for realizing we needed Dave Krumholtz to offer Oppie tangerines to break the tension!

“Amateurs chase the sun and get burnt. Power stays in the shadow”

I know he’s been #MeTood with accusations, but cmon where’s the love for Casey Affleck as anti communist official Boris Pash! He looks like the Affleck that was chained up in the attic for years. In a total of maybe 4 minutes on screen, he changes the tone and the narrative shifts gears. Affleck is literally built up like a jump scare; his face obscured for the first half of the scene. He’s so pale & ghostly with his uneven upper lip and off kilter teeth. Felt like encountering a wolf during a hike, no different from Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds. Half the time, Nolan cross cuts to Damon’s Groves in a prior timeline going, “oh no, it’s not that Pash guy is it? Oh man it is him! He’s gonna kill your whole family with a fuckin pencil and eat your babies alive!” Proof that that THERE ARE NO SMALL PARTS JUST SMALL ACTORS. The way Affleck and Dane Dehaan are subtly nazi-coded speaks loudly to where the screenplay is coming from! Why else would Boris be introduced if not for the possibility that he had a literal hand in killing Tatlock!

Sidenote, it seems Dehaan realized he wasn’t working as a leading man – he’s better off taking the Paul Dano route by starting out with weasely roles like this one before attempting leading roles!

“Algebra is like reading sheet music. But the thing is you dont read music, you hear it. Can you hear the music?” – Niels Bohr 

Ludwig’s score channels Oppenheimer’s tsunami of thoughts; letting you feel in one minute the vibrations of the existence, and then a strange thrill between pain, adrenaline, anxiety and hope. The way the instrumentation and evolving melody builds, how it moves faster and faster makes us feel that something monumental, important, and triumphant yet inevitable is happening. It captures something so universal but completely ineffable. It’s a concentration of wonder, strife and humanity.

“You see beyond the world we live in. There is a price to be paid for that.”

Jennifer Lame edits with lucidity, propulsion and precise focus. I feel like Lame channeled Nolan’s phobia of shots that last longer than 2 seconds into something that felt more meaningful and tense. Much has been made of the 3 hour runtime, but actually the pace of the film is frenetic, especially in the first hour as we gallop through introductions of significant characters and Oppenheimer’s complex motivations. Nolan handles these with his trademark nonlinear structure that sets us up for big pay offs; masterfully racking the tension up to almost unbearable levels for the actual Trinity test at the 2 hour mark. You might wonder what could possibly top that, but Nolan delivers a complex web of intrigue and back-stabbing that would make Tyrion Lannister’s head spin. The finale is delivered with such a breathtaking gut-punch that you’ll find yourself, even days later, wondering what happened to the oxygen in the room!

“The bigger the star, the more violent its demise. Their gravity gets so concentrated, it swallows everything”

Oppenheimer the man is a really nice fit for Nolan thematically: the ultimate “obsessive creator trapped by his terrible creation”, following in the steps of Cobb, Leonard Shelby, Borden/Angier and, even Batman. There’s that concern of escalation from The Dark Knight Trilogy recurring as well in this film! Not a single punch thrown or gun fired, yet I was engaged by confident directing, convincing acting, and compelling writing. Nolan paces it like a blockbuster; suits up Oppie’s suit and hat like he’s freaking Batman; drops Einstein and Bohr akin to a Marvel cameo; name-drops JFK like an Easter egg. And worst of all, we are still living in the post-credit scene, praying we don’t get burned inside the fires of a thousand suns when politicians push that button.

“Stop being so goddamn naive”

Am I plagued with Recency Bias giving this film such praise? I don’t think so! On my first viewing, I didn’t know how to describe the film. It made me so uncomfortable that my instinct was to call it a bad movie – but if someone else were to say that, I’d feel the need to defend it. I left the theater feeling so lethargic and taken aback. I am still taking it in after my 5th viewing, it’s 3am right now and it’s still keeping me up. It was both thought provoking but also overstimulating – is that what it musta been like to have Robert’s brain?! Oppenheimer felt like a marathon, rather than a series of sprints. I knew it was special on first viewing, I know now it remains something special! This isn’t a mere film, it’s a cinematic achievement! Do I sound pretentious saying so? Perhaps….but everyone walks into a Nolan film with some sort of bias, so don’t accuse me of having a bias lol.

This is Nolan’s The Tree of Death

This is Nolan’s The Nuclear Network

This is Nolan’s The Theory of Annihilation

This is Nolan’s Hidden Physicists

This is Nolan’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Scientist

This is Nolan’s A Radioactive Mind

Happy 53rd, Sir! You made the impossible possible by beating Dead Reckoning – the one bomb Ethan Hunt couldn’t diffuse at the box office! Barbie may have won the battle, but Oppie won the war!

P.S: Watching Oppenheimer, I realised how important a lecture used to be for students, the way Robert and the whole class was so excited and waiting for Niels Bohr’s lecture made me realise how “accessible” education has become and how ignorant we have become of physical lectures!