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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   29421 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 31, 2023

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I absolutely hated this movie. I don't know why people just go along with Nolan's awful sound mixing. There were many moments when I could not even hear the dialogue because Nolan insists of having that THOWWWOMMM sound playing over everything. You could definitely notice it in his previous films, but it feels like it's gotten a lot worse this time.

It's also very plain that even 3 hours isn't enough time for all the history Nolan wants to cover. He has no time to be subtle with his character's motivations, which is why towards the end you have RDJ going on an expository rant about why his character hates Oppenheimer, which sounds like he's rattling off the Wikipedia page on Lewis Strauss.

I also don't think this film was particularly coy about where its sympathies lie - you're supposed to sympathize with Oppenheimer and his entourage of remorseful nerds, and lament that the products of their work and research are not theirs to control. It's squarely in the "I believe SCIENCE" camp of liberalism that seems to believe scientists and the scientific establishment are just trying to be apolitical experts working for the betterment of mankind with no particular or personal biases of their own, and that they should be accorded authority over policy by virtue of their expertise, since it would be ugly to sully their position in society with something so uncouth as "politics", or democratic control over their work. Every government official in the movie is a bloodthirsty zealot, Edward Teller is a brute, and you have to feel sorry for Oppenheimer and how his lip trembles as he navigates these monsters.

I don't think Teller was being naive so much as he felt much more passionately about the cause of hydrogen bomb development than Oppenheimer did, because Teller's native Hungary was under Soviet occupation. John von Neumann felt the same way, and for similar reasons. There's an interesting discussion to be had about how Oppenheimer and many of his colleagues were Western Jews whose favorable opinions of communism came from academic hobnobbing and philosophical flirtation, and who were thus not keen on the idea of nuclear brinksmanship against the Soviets, versus other Jewish figures of the era like Teller, von Neumann and Ulam, whose native countries were under communist occupation. But the film doesn't have enough time to touch on that, and I doubt it would want to at any rate.

3/10; the next time I feel like watching a Nolan movie, I'll just have someone drive a pneumatic drill into my ears to simulate the experience.

I had a very different take on this. Oppenheimer from almost the first minute is shown as murderous, arrogant, a philanderer, and ethically questionable if not an outright monster that is more focused on his own accomplishments than the the implications of his project. I dont know how anyone could leave the movie thinking he was a good man. There were no good men or women in the entire movie.

There were no good men or women in the entire movie.

I disagree. Groves, Lawrence, Bohr, and Oppenheimer's Brother (despite him and his wife being communists) all come out of story looking pretty good, and the last two exchanges we see between Oppenheimer and Einstein are excellently played and very much in line with the popular perception of him as the wise-old-sage of physics.

There's an interesting discussion to be had about how Oppenheimer and many of his colleagues were Western Jews whose favorable opinions of communism came from academic hobnobbing and philosophical flirtation, and who were thus not keen on the idea of nuclear brinksmanship against the Soviets, versus other Jewish figures of the era like Teller, von Neumann and Ulam, whose native countries were under communist occupation.

One wonders how much of Oppenheimer's remorse was driven by the fact the bomb was used against Japan rather than Germany.

this was a meme on /tv/ (my bomb... was used on POCs?), but there's no reason that he would have been particularly aggrieved if it was used on the nazis.

>The son of German Jews, Oppenheimer would have preferred the bomb be ready earlier so that it could be used against the Nazis, but he still understood that his government would use it against Japan.

He has no time to be subtle with his character's motivations, which is why towards the end you have RDJ going on an expository rant about why his character hates Oppenheimer, which sounds like he's rattling off the Wikipedia page on Lewis Strauss.

You don't need to explain why anyone would hate or distrust Oppenheimer. He's portrayed as an offputting, sometimes dickish person. Really, the question is why anyone puts up with him.

You do have to justify why this guy would take offense and I think they do, at least on a character level (I can't speak to the history). Obviously there's political reasons (which is basically what Josh Hartnett's character is there to highlight in the first hour). But he's also clearly just a thin-skinned, Machiavellian narcissist and the movie is pretty clear on this.

They seed that pretty well. Oppenheimer makes an offhand (rude) comment about his lowly working class background and he flinches. He notably gets annoyed when Oppenheimer says he's "considering" his job offer. He keeps coming back to paranoid tales of people turning scientists against him or how they hate him for being the boss, he seems to have A Thing about the fact that he's a bureaucrat not a scientist. Every individual piece is justifiable because Oppy is an asshole, until it's taken together.

As someone with similar anxious tendencies - unfortunately without the Machiavellian talent - his reaction to the Oppenheimer-Einstein talk actually was uncomfortably legible. Especially the paranoid insanity of "people are reacting emotionally to something in this situation, is it cause they hate me?". It's a pretty perfect example of that pathology.

You don't even need that final scene. It's basically redundant with Truman and his wife's harsh summations of Oppenheimer's behavior and character.

I found it harder to understand his character and decisions.

I also don't think this film was particularly coy about where its sympathies lie - you're supposed to sympathize with Oppenheimer and his entourage of remorseful nerds

Maybe that was Nolan's intention but a biopic imposes more limits on shaping events to fit your narrative.

I'll just have someone drive a pneumatic drill into my ears to simulate the experience.

Reminds me of one time a friend was visiting and we managed to recreate Hans Zimmer's Bladerunner 2049 by fooling around with a synthesizer and couple of effects units. Which really says a lot more about modern soundtracks and their reliance on distorted booms and horns than about anything else.

Zimmer's (and whoever he corralled into assisting him) work on BR2049 was presumably an attempt to mirror the Vangelis score of the first film which was entirely done on the synthesizers of the late 70s... and which remains an historic soundtrack. I encourage anyone interested in such things to look up the so-called Vesper edition. While you can use Garage Band in 2023 to mimic some of the same sounds, said sounds would not be available had Vangelis not been such a creative genius. He himself was very critical of so-called "New Age" music and I am not aware if he made any public comments on Zimmer.

Those booms kill in IMAX though.

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