A Light

What about the man who found a way to destroy the world? 2023's Oppenheimer follows the brilliant physicist who led the development of the atomic bomb, a psychological portrait of a complex man who was nonetheless dwarfed by his own grim achievement. Christopher Nolan directs a film with great momentum and solemnity. It's like a funeral where all the mourners are frightened.

It's a three hour movie but it maintains its pace and focus relentlessly, captivating the viewer, better than most of Christopher Nolan's films and in a way that frankly reminded me of Citizen Kane. But Robert Oppenheimer, portrayed with fine, intense subtlety by Cillian Murphy, is no egoist out to save the world. He may have ego, he may indeed wish to aid the war effort, particularly as his fellow Jews are being massacred in Europe. But primarily he's a physicist, contemplating possibilities and the nature of reality at a level more fundamental than had ever been contemplated before.

His relationships with women are an important part of the film, more important than many reviews seem to suggest, some of them going so far as to say Nolan doesn't know how to portray women. His films are generally about men and so is Oppenheimer but the prominent places two women play in the central character's life reflect and illustrate his relationship with his work.

After having heard Florence Pugh's nude scenes called gratuitous and pointless, I was surprised to find they were in fact deeply meaningful. I really am disturbed by how increasingly deranged the perspective on women's sexuality has become among media commentators in the Anglosphere. I still remember five minutes ago when "free the nipple" promoted the idea of desexualising women's breasts by showing them as casually as men's. But one scene in which Cillian Murphy and Florence Pugh are both nude while having an intellectual conversation is called gratuitous. Aren't people contradictory creatures?

In the film's actual conversations about physics, Oppenheimer continually comes back to ideas of contradiction and paradox, of the categorically impossible nonetheless proving to be true. Pugh's character, Jean, is contradictory and unclear about what she wants from her relationship with Oppenheimer. She wants to break up with him but then he naturally asks why she keeps calling him if that's the case. She tells him to stop answering the phone. Oppenheimer's behaviour with Jean adds depth to his behaviour associated with his work. I suppose now that we live in a climate where the "No means no" message is particularly strident, it's particularly offensive to many that a woman would be portrayed whose inclinations are so at odds with her conceptions. Of course, I live in Japan where very often even yes means no.

What about Japan? As you can imagine, if you're one of the few in America who bothered to think about Japan amid the Barbenheimer phenomenon, people in Japan were generally displeased by the memes pairing a grinning Barbie with images of mushroom clouds. Despite no counterargument voiced among proponents of Barbenheimer, it didn't much seem to slow the phenomenon. It seemed people just decided not to think about Japan.

To be fair, I don't think Japanese media has done itself any favours with its own treatment of the atomic bomb in recent years. This year's Godzilla: Minus One basically turned the bomb into a toy for a silly soap opera. But using a grave issue for cheap thrills can come off differently when it comes from another country, particularly if that other country was the home of the perpetrator. I'm not surprised that Christopher Nolan has not indulged in any of the Barbenheimer commentary. Anyone who watches the movie will see he takes the issue much too seriously, as he damned well should.

We see Oppenheimer tormented by the devastation his bombs caused. In one scene with President Truman (Gary Oldman), he says he feels he has blood on his hands. To which Truman replies that it has nothing to do with Oppenheimer, it's Truman himself who bears the responsibility of actually giving the order. I thought perhaps Truman was attempting to lighten the burden on Oppenheimer's soul but then we overhear Truman referring to Oppenheimer as a "crybaby". I don't know if this is historically accurate but something I wish the movie had done more of was to show some of the wartime propaganda, some of the collective fervour deliberately stoked among the populace for attaining victory. In our neurotic times, it's hard to imagine psychological manipulation on that scale being so easy (though it absolutely occurs to-day). One could argue it has no place in a film focused on one man, but it plays a part in his psychological state, particularly in the scene where he's giving a victory speech to the assembled populace of Los Alamos.

Ultimately, if Japan still culturally exists in twenty or thirty years in any form like it does to-day, I don't think Oppenheimer will be seen as controversial. It's by no means a celebration of the bomb nor the U.S.'s victory in World War II, though considering how morally simplistic Japanese films have become on the topic, it's not surprising people in Japan would expect an American film to be just as simplistically nationalistic. The film is another entry in this new era of World War II mythology but it's a particularly complex one in which the depths of one man's soul take on aspects of the collective imagination: the tormented, compulsive introspection that has cropped up in American art and literature in the decades since the second World War.

I wondered if Nolan took any inspiration from Twin Peaks season three and the memorable eighth episode portraying the atomic bomb test in New Mexico. Visually, I'd say he did, with many of the abstract images of clouds and flashing lights. Musically, too, Ludwig Goransson's score often resembles the "Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima" David Lynch used for the Twin Peaks episode. I feel both works feature references to the fruit of knowledge in the Garden of Eden, Oppenheimer even featuring an apple significantly in an early scene. It's Oppenheimer himself who chooses whether or not to give the apple, and death, to Niels Bohr. Already, Oppenheimer is playing God. And, already, the consequences of his godlike acts are more than can be borne by one man, even one so brilliant as Oppenheimer.