Oppenheimer: a few words, not-quite-a-review

By now pretty much everyone has heard about the strange double-premiere of Barbie and Oppenheimer. It's become something of a meme so it spread like wildfire. Well I saw Oppenheimer, since I didn't have time or money to see two movies so I had to choose the one I was most interested in, and I have to say, I loooove Cillian Murphy.

Well I watched it yesterday so I let it simmer for a while and now I decided to write a few words about it (while watching Formula 1 in the background).

First of all I want to talk about why I think this movie premiering at the same time as Barbie was strange and took away a lot from its own charm. I'm sorry to say but I don't think these two movies can share an audience, and since the double premiere became a meme, people are rushing to see both of them. I am certainly no movie elitist and I don't care if people want to watch something lighthearted one day, and the next one, something more serious. However, and I haven't seen Barbie yet, I can still tell that what is essentially a 2 hour long Mattel product placement takes less brainpower to digest than a historical biopic. 'Oppenheimer' was watered down as much as possible for the general population to understand but people were still leaving the theater, possibly also overwhelmed by the film's length, 3 hours with no intermission.

This movie was really good but because its premiere became a meme, it subsequently became a meme itself. And in the process of becoming a meme, a movie loses the privilege of being watched with open eyes and open mind and being understood, which shows in the pathetic way this movie was received. From jokes to straight up bad takes. The jokes don't bother me as much. The bad takes shows that the average person has laughable media literacy, it makes me wonder why filmmakers even try, but I'm glad they do.

Probably the most memed quote from the movie was this one, which is historically accurate:

This is actually quoted from the Bhagavad Gita (which has been on my reading list for a long time, btw :) ); fascinated by Hindu mysticism, it's easy to see why the Gita was so meaningful to him, since it tells the story of a warrior who is forced to fight against his friends, and has to learn how to carry forward his duty without emotion or personal conviction clouding his judgment. It's really more meaningful than the meme makes it seem and to me it's quite an iconic quote. 

Now I am someone who likes to joke and have fun but I also know when to take something seriously and I tend to dislike people who don't know where the line is. Or people who have no interest in building any kind of literary or cinematic culture. It probably isn't necessary to live a fulfilling life, but I don't see it like that, and I also like to surround myself with people who like a good book or movie, and especially, people who understand them. I think a lot of people somehow didn't understand that a movie explicitly called 'Oppenheimer' was going to be about the man with the same name and not about the victims of WW2 and whatever. Yes, it's about his life and work. It's not about the people who died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I think there are n movies and documentaries about it anyway. It's not about the people in New Mexico who suffered from the fallout from Trinity. And it's also not this movie's job to explicitly say that Hiroshima and Nagasaki was bad. I think if you need that spelled out, you should start out with something simpler for your mind to digest like Bee Movie or whatever. This movie was about this man's life, his work, and his moral qualms about what he unleashed. It's not wrong to make a movie about this without focusing on the victims of the A bomb. It shies away from taking a strong moral stand for or against him, which I think is correct, and instead chooses to show the nuances that every single story, and every single human being has (yes, even the ones who did bad things).

The opener quote was interesting, it was basically a summary of the legend of Prometheus: he gave fire to man, and as punishment the gods chained him to a rock. It's not hard to see the parallel, but I always like a good reference to mythology. Mythology is all around us and it makes everything better if you can see that, so I always recommend to get familiar with it.. 

I think Murphy was brilliant in this role and his performance really captured the sensibility of Oppenheimer. He was very well read and charming to women, but prone to emotional breakdowns and neuroses, these are all the marks of a very intelligent man, and Murphy was great at portraying them all. I also really liked the sex scene, when Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh) browsed his library and asked him to read to her from the Bhagavad Gita, I think it was sensual without being so drawn out it becomes awkward (it's really hard to make a sex scene with enough sensuality and that doesn't become awkward to watch). 

I don't have much else to say about this movie enough to put in a proper review but it was really enjoyable. And I wish it could've been received better, but in all online spaces, where the average IQ is about 70, all nuance is gone out of the window. Even moreso, if a movie becomes a meme, no one will bother to watch it seriously or understand it. I don't think this movie deserves this since it did a really great job at portraying an important man's life just the way it was, with good and bad parts. His contribution to humanity was presented the same: it helped stop WW2, but it's also a perfect weapon in the hands of imperfect humans, who has caused immeasurable grief and suffering, and who knows if/when it will cause it again.