I struggled in the beginning of Oppenheimer. It's edited together like a bad movie trailer from the early 80s. You know, back when the previews gave us such low expectations that we were rarely disappointed at the theater. So I'm trying to watch this sprawling event unfold before us but so much is happening. They're shoving in about 20 scenes per minute and I just want them to pause for a second so I can breathe or maybe pee, but the movie has taken on so much. Early on I'm excited because I'm thinking I'll get to use my portmanteau Floppenheimer.
The end, however, is nigh. I mean not nigh nigh—all nigh is relative. For a lifetime, it's nigh. For your average movie running time, it's not nigh. Actually, a lot of nighs will die before this movie does so forget I ever said nigh. The end is several hours from the beginning of the movie but it's going to move you. It's a dark catharsis after you get through what amounts to about 20,000 wartime TikToks, but it's worth it.
My boys 14 and 15 had their hoodies up as they slouched down in their theater seats.
100s of thousands of people died for the making of this film.
We didn't get the comfortable seats. These were old school. Mine leaned toward the ground in a desperate attempt to spill its husky load to the floor. My butt battled old cushions and gravity but I wasn't going to give up on this movie.
I don't give up on movies. I didn't want my kids to see I was gonna give up on the movie. Although I kept thinking of my writing professor in college and how he'd tell me I needed to narrow my subject. I needed a topic, which I think is even more narrow than a subject. And I'm thinking of Oppenheimer director Christopher Nolan and how much he had to take on. First of all, it's as if he got drunk at a party and invited every white male actor in Hollywood to be a part of the film. Then he had to give each one their own little a-ha! moment for every audience member who might recognize them from whatever Netflix show they'd been in. And that's before we even got to the story and you're thinking, "Okay, they're going to make this bomb." I mean not the movie bomb but the bomb bomb. We know there's going to be a bomb but that of course is only part of the movie. Because it's not about the bomb. It's about the guy, Robert Oppenheimer, who’s somewhere between a Prometheus and a Con-metheus.
I’d get a little tingle of yearning for a scientist salesman who's not promoting fire.
But the movie. Even after the bomb is successfully tested, we have a lot to go through. And somehow, for maybe the first time in his career, you're rooting against Robert Downey, Jr. It's about then when Nolan gives you little gratuitous bumps with characters you didn't think were going to play a a major role until suddenly they're providing you the kind of warmth that Matt Damon did when he showed up on screen like two and a half hours prior. Which I should just say Matt Damon's getting an award every year for just being him. He's got the Tom Hanks thing where you're just happy he's there. Cillian Murphy is, of course, great and still smoking in period duds as if he never left Peaky Blinders. And there's dudes all over the place. Sweaty dudes. Heavy dudes. Handsome dudes. Brilliant dudes. Commie dudes. Dudes who’ve sold their soul. And just like any party full of dudes, the few women are tantalizing and brilliant even if they are dispirited and pissed.
Florence Pugh is the fiance who turned into the mistress whose extended nude scenes are sexy in the way that Rose wanted Jack to paint her on the Titanic. There's a sadness, too. Too much brilliance. Dogma is man’s best friend. She’s turning in on herself. Oh god war is dumb. Just love Florence Pugh. Wait. Holy shit it's Emily Blunt. OK, God, love her as well. She's so raw but she shouldn't have to be, Cillian! She shouldn't have to die in this vacuum of your accolade-swilling emptiness.
Blunt, it turns out, is the perfect name for what becomes of one when they have to watch the flaccidity of men making love to business like tired manatees. That's all before they go hump someone other than you. Oppenheimer has a periodic table of mistresses.
I was hoping my boys took note of an academic as such a player.
Mostly I was just stoked that they survived all those edits; so many of them without any kind of resolution. Gradually a few of them start to pay off. Did he just say John F. Kennedy? Boom! Dividends paid! My son turned his hoodie head towards me and mouths, "Wow!"
Comeuppance for all. Even Oppenheimer. When he realizes the true horror he has helped create, there's a scene in a tiny gymnasium at Los Alamos that should, yes, garner some audio editing awards, but mostly want you to rush out and erase all the bad in the world. Oh, goddamn. I was floored but not by the weary theater seat.
And then the mistresses become Foment and Bemoan. There's an orgy of patriotic fervor bumping uglies with horrific wartime epiphanies.
It's all happening at once with audio so loud that you may sustain permanent damage. But here comes the nigh. The nigh is about how nigh we are to the end. And, unfortunately, not just that of the movie.
Jagged stabs of atomic slaughter ripple to the shore of our troubled hero with Einstein.
A duality is discussed about how you can be happy for the man who's finally getting his recognition yet still horrified for what it is he's being recognized. It gets another "Wow!" from my kids. They can't wait to see it again.
And that there is positive review enough for a collage of horrific lessons that should not soon be forgotten.