To appreciate is to judge
I read the book and watched the movie. Neither the book nor the movie Oppenheimer has done the justice for the life of a genius. Maybe Oppenheimer is as hard to decipher as quantum physics, the author failed to appreciate him. Because to appreciate is to judge. With all the facts and complexities of Oppenheimer’s life, the author not only has to reconstruct the chain of events. But he also has to build the perspective, putting all the elements into the proper place, choose the defining moments, leaving everything else out. The burden is on the author to filter, to assess, to weigh and to pick. The author misunderstood his mission by presenting unfiltered facts and perspectives. Through arduous work, the author assembled large volume of material about Oppenheimer’s life: personal letter, personal recounts of events and comments. But that was only the first half of job done. Maybe he intended to preserve various angles to look at a complex life, he refused to do the second half. Base on the raw material, the author should have formed his own assessment, picked and chosen what to include, and re-constructed them with full artistic freedom and creativity. In this re-creation of Oppenheimer’s life, we don’t want a archival dump of documentations, we want an immersion of a heroic journey.
Because of the absence of judgment, the book is bloated into a thick brick. The movie is based on the book, therefore, suffering from the same problem. If you haven’t read the book and watch the movie, you might feel a bit lost in various parts of the movie. You might also feel some of the characters in the movie look like card board figure dropping into scenes abruptly. For example, there were a few scenes about Frank, Oppenheimer’s younger brother. The two brothers were close and their relationship could bring another facet of Oppenheimer as an elder brother. However, the movie is already 3 hours long and has no room to expand and develop this thread. Then what you have is a flat image of Frank and an underdeveloped story line of brotherhood.
Vulgarity is not art
Hollywood is often proud of its vulgarity. Like showering cheese on anything possible, American directors can’t help loading movies with sex and violence. The explicit, unfiltered, unnecessary scenes of sex and violence. You walk into the theatre and look forward to art, only find out that the director wants to give you a blow job on the spot. I don’t know if Oppenheimer had wild sex with his ex-fiancee and it’s none of my business. But if Christopher Nolan has such a condescending attitude towards the audience that there’s nothing but sex in common between an average person and a genius, he reduces both Oppenheimer and the audience to animal to find common ground. For that, Nolan, may I say hello to your mother?
Bright spots of the movie
Beyond the shortcomings, there are bright spots in the movie, especially in spectacular visual effects, suspense, and good actor’s solid performance. The explosion of the first test bomb, the twisted plot of political persecution, Kitty’s refusal of handshake with Edward Teller scene are great examples of the might of Hollywood machinery. It’s still a good entertainment for $12 a ticket, but you won’t remember the movie for long and you won’t watch it again.