This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
How the fuck u make a movie about the invention of the atomic bomb and it has the most underwhelming depiction of an atomic explosion ever committed to film.
Nolan has zero confidence in his own dialogue and the performances of his actors, and uses music as a crutch. In a typical drama film, understated music is used sparingly to accentuate the emotions and actions onscreen. Most of the actors who appear in Oppenheimer express few if any emotions (even though all of them have shown an ability to do so in other, better films), so Nolan instead relies on a relentless bullying score to emphasise everything. If everything is emphasised, nothing is. There's a scene where Opp and the military brass are debating which cities to bomb (and one dude veto Kyoto, probably one of two times this movie made me laugh), and it occurred to me that it was the first time in the movie that Nolan had allowed the onscreen action to speak for itself for more than thirty seconds. This relentless musical score in service of admittedly stylish cinematography, disaffected performances and cliché dialogue produces an effect not unlike watching a really expensive music video that goes on for three hours.
And yet in spite of this obvious lack of confidence in his writing abilities, the screenplay is peppered with lines that sound like they're intended to be witty or clever. Maybe one or two them produced the intended effect in a trailer. In a movie of this length, no one in the cinema so much as chuckled.
The scene where Opp is speaking and imagines the people in front of him bursting into flames was cool (and then they spoiled it by using the same effects again at the end of Opp's appeal, in a context in which it made no sense). The sequence with Casey Affleck was great. The build-up to the Trinity test was genuinely exciting and gripping, but then the test actually happens and it's the most colossal cinematic cocktease of the year.
I think Nolan is autistic. He doesn't seem to understand or like people at all, a fatal flaw when directing an R-rated drama for grownups about a real people. The early sequences where it's Opp's character drama and strained familial relations drag. None of the characters seem like people - they're robots reciting words. Florence Pugh breaks up with Opp and it sounds like she's a little ticked off at him for forgetting to collect her dry cleaning for her. The pace of the film notably picks up when they get to Los Alamos, when the movie can get down and dirty into Boys' Own detonators and isotopes, then declines again after the war is over. For the last hour of the movie I got the distinct impression that nobody else in the cinema really cared what happened to Opp or Strauss. The strenuous efforts to maintain cinematic intensity during the end of Opp's appeal seemed, frankly, laughable. The pyrotechnics, quick cuts and omnipresent score might work for a sci-fi thriller or action film - they definitely do not work for what by now has become a legal drama. Nolan is ostensibly making a movie for grownups, but can't resist his natural instinct to try to get the attention of the teenagers making out in the back seats. Spielberg, by contrast, always knows what mode he's operating in and never gets them muddled.
Not as bad as Interstellar. Probably marginally worse than Dunkirk, which at least had the self-awareness to recognise that Nolan is hopeless at a) writing believable or punchy dialogue and b) getting the audience to care about his characters; and hence generally didn't really try to do either. Miles and miles from the still-wonderful Memento, which I'm increasingly confident will, years down the line, come to be seen as his only film really worth discussing.
I'm surprised to be saying this, but I'm Team Barbie 100% and it's not even close. Better screenplay, better performances, better production design, better cinematography, better makeup (seriously, that aged-up makeup in the appeal scenes, who do they think they're kidding?), at least some characters I can care about at least a little bit - and most importantly, it didn't outstay its welcome.
At least there was essentially no handheld camerawork. I was pleasantly surprised, given Nolan's reputation, to find the dialogue consistently intelligible, I think there were only one or two lines that slipped past me (and it wasn't because the music drowned them out).
More options
Context Copy link