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I get the humanist effort to empathize with even the most complicated among us but I can think of at least 220,000, or better yet, a few billion people whom we should prioritize first over Oppie.
But even still, him?He gets a movie? With all that blood on his hands, who was part of the colonial project, who clearly loved power and control and wielded it over women? Who erased Native Americans with how he says they’ll put up a negligible resistance to land theft and then pathetically gestures at giving the land back to them and nothing more? By all means let’s deconstruct those with power but Nolan is not the director to dismantle such people (nor to portray women characters with dignity and agency), I think even he would agree. This so-called critique of Oppenheimer goes down too easy and is inappropriately sympathetic.
And it’s just not at all special. It’s just a conventional biopic. I thought coming from Chris “large popcorn” Nolan there would be more abstract scenes like Oppie’s victory speech where he has dreamlike visions of the impact the bomb had on the world, but it was mostly a talking heads biopic. Like reading a New Yorker article on him.
One day the movie Oppenheimer, then with grey hair, will get a nice little reception in its honour and a handsome plaque, yet it will be less to honour Oppie and more for all of us to close the history book on it.
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