#to end all war: oppenheimer & the atomic bomb | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

denimbex1986 · 9 months

Text

'It’s perplexing. Who thought that it would be a good idea to pair the premieres of the films, Oppenheimer with Barbie? Ultraviolence (I am become the God of Death — Bim-Bam-Boom!) and Ultrasex (in the guise of some toy’s anatomical incorrectness being solved by Margot Robbie’s Babylonian generosities). Do we need another sign that it’s over for human civilization? That the twin allures of Das Kapital have finally found a way to make us munch popcorn and weep to Oppie’s loss of national security status because he once had pinko ties, and that Robbie has bravely taken pink Barbie out of anorexia nervosa and hangs out with the horns of plenty now. Why no GI Joe, sporting a new 3D printer dick, included in the flick for Margot to bivouac with?

That’s the mainstream for you. They’ve totally bought into the America yin-and-yang, sex and death, just as Freud feared in Civilization and Discontents. Popcorning to a nuke movie. How about that! We just can’t take anything seriously any more, can we?

Pssst. What? Not anatomically corrected? Then why would you go to that movie? Is it a nod of homage to the non-binary orientalists? Is it some kind of an AI inside joke? A fist-up stand of solidarity for poor old Alan Turing and the Singularity ahead? Or is it just omnipotence versus impotence? What a double bill.

Naturally, what’s left of the Left have been wringing their hands, and playing old Dylan tunes again, in disgust at how wrong Hollywood got it. Oppenheimer should represent an important ‘teaching moment,’ as they say, for those of us who have a tendency to forget, and look at Jewish friends with bewilderment when they say, “Never again.” Whaddya mean, Isaac? we go. And they schlep off, muttering at the wall.

I watched Oppenheimer yesterday. The story has been told a number of times now. This particular version, directed by Christopher Nolan (Interstellar, Inception), is based upon the 2006 Pulitzer Prize-winning biography American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin. It stars Cillan Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer; Emily Blunt as Kitty Oppenheimer; Florence Pugh as Jean Tatlock; Matt Damon as General Leslie Groves; Robert Downey as Lewis Strauss; Tom Conti as Albert Einstein; Kenneth Branaugh as Niels Bohr; Jason Clarke as Roger Robb; and, Matthias Schweighöfer as Werner Heisenberger. It’s a stellar cast for the Blast from the past (although it might have benefitted from casting the late great Philip Seymour Hoffman as General Grove). It’s an epic biographical thriller; but it’s too vanilla, and I feel that all that hellfire and angst(roms) should have broken my heart in twain for the last time. But, as Peggy Lee might have sang “Is That All There Is To An Atom Bomb Blast?”

Oppenheimer follows the Bird/Sherwin delineation and begins at the end of his career. In December 1953, the Atomic Energy Commission had suspended Oppenheimer’s security clearance, and a few weeks later revoked it, fearing that, although he could be regarded as a loyal American citizen, his past affiliations with communists, as well as his post-Hiroshima speeches regarding the need to control nuclear proliferation through UN measures, roiled rightwing militarists and political fascists, such as Senator Joseph McCarthy — and president Harry Truman, who referred to him as a “crybaby.” Their decision was influenced by an FBI report that stated that “more probably than not J. Robert Oppenheimer is an agent of the Soviet Union.” The three-hour film attempts to honor Oppie’s request to weigh his existential being in the totality of his life, rather than with reactionary jibes and jingoism.

The AEC move meant Oppenheimer could not work or know about future nuclear weapons projects, but more importantly the widely-publicized rebuke to his legacy as the Father of the Atomic Bomb left his name blackened and his mood blue. The full frontal assault led by Washington lawyer Roger Robb, known for his “ferocious cross-examination” technique, and played typecastically by Jason Clarke, who had us believin’ in torture from his role in Zero Dark Thirty. As the authors of American Prometheus put it:

In assaulting his politics and his professional judgments—his life and his values really—Oppenheimer’s critics in 1954 exposed many aspects of his character: his ambitions and insecurities, his brilliance and naïveté, his determination and fearfulness, his stoicism and his bewilderment.

This deeply contradictory and, yet, serene and highly literate Oppie is what director Christopher Nolan tries to capture in the film. Recently, Cillan Murphy summed up Oppie and how he approached the role of playing the enigma, whose rationale for continuing to develop the Bomb was the counter-intuitive notion that it would make war obsolete: “I do think that he believed it would be the weapon to end all wars,” Murphy recently told NME. “He thought that [having the bomb] would motivate countries to form a sort of nuclear world governance. He was naive.” Indeed, the United Nations has proven futile to stop the dominators amongst nation-states from nuclear proliferation. In the film, in a scene just following the successful explosion of the atom bomb (that’ll end all war), Oppie is talking with Edward Teller, when the former says he hopes that the message sent is that ‘all war is now unthinkable,’ but Teller immediately responds that, yes, maybe, ‘until a bigger bomb comes along’. Teller would go on to become The Father of the Hydrogen Bomb, a super fusion bomb 1000 times more powerful than the one dropped on Hiroshima.

Unfortunately, for my enjoyment of the movie, I’d read other accounts of the relationship between Teller and Oppenheimer. Daniel Ellsberg, for instance, who wrote in his last book before he died, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner — the book he says he wished he’d been able to get out before the Pentagon Papers — that when he came out of seeing Dr. Strangelove with a buddy they were convinced they’d just watched “a documentary,” and writes Ellsberg, “Teller was, along with Kahn, Henry Kissinger, and the former Nazi missile designer Wernher von Braun, one of Kubrick’s inspirations for the character of Dr. Strangelove, who wore, uncomfortably, the Glove that Vice President Dick Cheney would find the need to take off, but who was entirely self-satisfied with in the end. We got very little of this tension, or frisson, if you will, in the film. Director Nolan goes with “naive,” thereby painting all lefty rhetoric since the Double-Tap on Japan as ignorance of realpolitik.

A major question at the time of the development of the Bomb at Los Alamos was the actual urgency of its need. It has been presumed by politicians and military figures, and fed to the public for consumption, over the decades that the Bomb Chase was to get there before the Nazis did; that the prospect was real that if the Germans developed and used the device first it could have taken out the British and the Russians, ending the war a different way and leaving the world with the prospect of rule by super-fascists. Certainly the V2 rockets, already devastating London, were seen as a more terrifying delivery system for any super bomb.

In The Doomsday Machine, Ellsberg actually paints a different picture and suggests that he opposed its immediate development, in part, due to the safety concerns that were being reflected in droll bets being made before the test of Trinity. In June 1942, Ellsberg writes, Albert Speer and Hitler were discussing the feasibility of the Bomb and whether it could done safely:

Actually, Professor Heisenberg had not given any final answer to my question whether a successful nuclear fission could be kept under control with absolute certainty or might continue as a chain reaction. Hitler was plainly not delighted with the possibility that the earth under his rule be transformed into a glowing star. [Following this discussion, Speer reported,] “on the suggestion of the nuclear physicists we scuttled the project to develop an atom bomb … after I had again queried them about deadlines and been told that we could not count on anything for three or four years.”

Essentially, Ellsberg writes, Hitler saw no urgency, while the US and Oppenheimer forged on with the WMD.

In Heisenberg’s War, author Thomas Powers, discusses the Myth of the German Bomb, and ponders why the project fizzled despite the genius of Werner Heisenberg. In June 1942, would-be Vater of Der Fuhrer Bomb deflated some Nazi bagpipes when discussing a bomb’s likelihood. Powers writes:

If we want to know why there was no German bomb, nor even any serious program to build one, we must decide why Heisenberg gave this advice…Was Heisenberg’s advice no more, no less, than his considered opinion, honestly given in the hope of sparing Germany an expensive technical folly? Or did Heisenberg deliberately take advantage of the moment, his prestige, and the uncertainties of an untried science to prick the balloon of official hopes?

Oppenheimer had met Heisenberg and Teller had taken his doctorate in physics under him. Hmm.

Oppenheimer fails on another front miserably and, now, loudly. Nolan chose to enact the famous Oppie quote from the Bhagavad-Gita in a way that the writers of American Prometheus probably would have found misleading, let’s say, and which, some Hindus were said to be deeply offended by. The quote we have heard over and over from Oppie-mism is: “I am become Death, Destroyer of worlds.” Nice sound byte. But it is a quote from The Song of God, which, in American Prometheus, Oppenheimer describes as “the most beautiful philosophical song existing in any known tongue.” But, in Nolan’s film, Oppie, while screwing Jean Tatlock, his then girlfriend, an aspiring psychiatrist, is forced to read (in translation) the stanza embedding the quote directly, while she rides his meat pony to heaven like Belle Starr and he constellates her firmament with, um, time-stars...Hmph.

Nolan might have explored Oppenheimer’s deeper inner mythopoesis not only by more fully contextualizing “the most beautiful philosophical song,” and showing how it applies to the problem at hand. He was also digging on John Donne. I’ve been there, done that; I understand how that can happen. Oppie was drawn to the Holy Sonnets, to the Trinity (he named his Bomb project after it), and, in particular, the “Batter My Heart” one, which I just love to death. It goes on about the hopelessness of being a sinner and the need to be ravished and bodily owned by the Lord; in short, it advocates consensual moral rape. Nolan’s having none of that. In American Prometheus, we find out that Oppenheimer had read TS Eliot’s “The Wasteland,” too. And while Oppie is shown briefly reading it in the film, it gets no further fob; it’s just a gesture to the more literate in the cinema crowd, who might go, dig it, man. I hate lilacs, too, man. Hell, the authors of America Prometheus even describe how Eliot came to Princeton on a short term fellowship at Oppie’s behest, during which the poet wrote The Cocktail Party (“the worst thing he ever wrote,” opines Oppie, in the book) and avoided such faculty parties while at Princeton. Nope. Too highbrow to explore. Welcome to messy Democracy and its Discontents.

Oppenheimer was nominated for the Nobel Prize for physics three times, in 1946, 1951 and 1967. He was never awarded the prize, but many physicists believe that he should have been. Oppenheimer’s work on atoms was groundbreaking. He was one of the first scientists to understand the nature of positrons, and he made significant contributions to the development of quantum mechanics. His work on black holes was also highly influential. In 1939, he and his student Hartland Snyder published a paper that laid out the basic properties of black holes. This paper was one of the first to describe how a star could collapse under its own gravity to form a black hole. I Am Become Death Twice.

Preceding Oppenheimer’s release by just a couple of weeks was another Oppenheimer film (documentary) that appeared on NBC, To End All War: Oppenheimer & the Atomic Bomb. The PBS Ken Burns-ish feel doesn’t have the manipulative soundtrack, or the wonder-filled moment at how They pulled off that Bomb explosion on film without CGI, or the titty sexual romps of Oppie riding two women (tragic as a molecule fissioning), or the play to the plebs for entertainment rather than factuality. But To End All War does have a nice compact story that unfurls over a mere 83 minutes. And everybody plays themselves. Including, surprise, surprise, Christopher Nolan, brought in to talk Oppie. And I would recommend that shorter doco over the epic tragedy of the Left’s demise.

The Barbieheimer phenomenon is bizarre, as already duly noted. Now I ‘ve just read that Oppenheimer star Cillan Murphy has announced his willingness to be a Ken in the next Barbie movie. More Big Bang for the Buck. Ee-haaa! And what sacred text will he despoil in that one?!'

1 note · View note

eowyntheavenger · 9 months

Text

If we’re talking about nuclear justice, please don’t forget the Marshall Islands.

Many people have already pointed out how the Oppenheimer film glosses over the effects of nuclear testing on Indigenous communities in the United States, and it’s undeniable that more people need to know about this. More attention also needs to be paid to the Marshall Islands, where the legacy of US nuclear testing still affects the Marshallese people to this day. Most Americans don’t even know where the Marshall Islands is—let alone what the US government did there during the Cold War.

Between 1946 and 1958, the United States detonated 67 nuclear weapons on the Marshall Islands, which was then a US trust territory. The tests yielded the same level of radiation as 7,000 Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs, or 1.6 Hiroshima bombs every day for 12 years. The US government didn’t even evacuate some islanders from close proximity to the testing grounds. The fallout—which spread across the islands and beyond—caused deaths, miscarriages, stillbirths, radiation sickness, cancer, and many other health problems, with high cancer rates persisting to this day. Whole islands remain uninhabitable, and generations have been displaced.

It gets even worse. The US government knew that certain islands were too dangerous for human habitation and resettled the Marshallese there anyway; then US scientists studied the effects of radiation on them without their knowledge or consent in a secret program called Project 4.1. The US government secretly brought radioactive waste from Nevada and buried it in a concrete dome on Enewetak Atoll that is now vulnerable to erosion from the rising seas. And the US military also used the Marshall Islands for at least a dozen biological weapons tests. The US government did all of this to the Marshall Islands while it was a trust territory under US protection.

But in the decades since nuclear testing ended—even since the Marshall Islands’ independence in 1986—it has never received full compensation from the United States. Never.

There is a lot more that everyone should know about this history, and I recommend starting here to learn more:

#Oppenheimer #Marshall Islands #nuclear tests #nuclear justice #my post

624 notes · View notes

transmutationisms · 9 months

Note

can you elaborate on how "the bomb ended the war" is propaganda? war history was never my strong suit but i was basically taught that the war was nearly over and the bomb is what finally ended all of it. i understand how everything else you listed in your post isn't true, so i would like to learn more. tangentially, i feel slightly silly now bc i didn't realize how oppenheimer is a hero and not a villain to a lot of people (i'm USAmerican btw if that wasn't obvious)

#paul hams work has issues but this essay is useful to start thinking on this question imo

156 notes · View notes

kit-walk3r · 9 months

Text

Are the Evans team Barbie or team Oppenheimer?

It seems appropriate 😂

Barbie

Kit- Originally went to see Barbie because Julia wanted to but ended up loving it. Definitely cried. Loved seeing Barbie’s onscreen that looked like Julia, he could tell it made her happy. 100% had a crush on Margot Robbie after this.

Rory- Is actually one of the background Ken’s and won’t stop telling people. Drags all his friends and family to see it so he can point out himself in the background of a dance number for 10 seconds. Laughs out loud at every joke. Actively uses the phrase ‘Kenergy’.

Gallant- Barbie’s were his first subjects for styling hair so is super excited for the movie. Thinks he could have styled Margot Robbie’s hair better than the actual movie stylist. Everyone thinks he’s crushing on Ryan Gosling as Ken but he’s actually crushing on Michael Cera as Allan.

Peter- Knows all the words to I’m Just Ken. Has the Ken rollerblades and has attempted to run with them on but failed miserably. Is not ashamed to admit that he finds all of the Barbie’s attractive.

Oppenheimer

James- Actually remembers when the atomic bomb happened so is intrigued to see how they’ve translated it to film. Is disappointed that they don’t show the dead. Doesn’t understand why Oppenheimer feels guilty. Barbie is too bright, colourful and happy for him.

Kai- Barbie: a film about empowering women? Fuck that, Kai wants the movie with explosions. Pre-cult Kai would have cried seeing Florence Pugh naked. Considered changing his name from ‘Divine Ruler’ to ‘Death, Destroyer of Worlds’.

Barbenheimer

Tate- Really sees himself in Allen. Can relate to Oppenheimer’s guilt. Leaves both movies crying. Wants Ken’s hoodie that says “I’m Kenough”. Has an existential crisis leaving Barbie questioning who he is. Fears nuclear war after Oppenheimer.

Kyle- Did the Barbenheimer double bill. Secretly preferred Barbie to Oppenheimer but loved them both. Wore pink to Barbie. Gets excited every time he recognises an actor in Oppenheimer. Won’t shut up about both movies after he’s seen them and will fight people on the internet who insult them.

Jimmy- Team Barbie because he thinks every person in that movie is attractive. Team Oppenheimer because he actually loves a good biopic. Afterwards says he would definitely go to a Tupperware Party hosted by the Barbie’s.

Austin- Won’t stop talking about the Barbie soundtrack and costume design. Won’t stop talking about the theatrics of Oppenheimer. Won’t stop talking about Cillian Murphy’s eyes.

Colin- Empowering women!! Emily Blunt!! Colin definitely crushes on Emily Blunt and also loves a movie that empowers women so Barbie and Oppenheimer are his two perfect movies. Clapped at the end of both films.

•—————————————————————————•

Since I’ve seen both of the movies I thought this would be fun 🤭

Taglist: @jellyluvr @howtobesasha @dewberryobssesed @rwottvn @kaismanwich @violetharmonstwin @ifeeltoofuckingmuch @mariefics @spill-the-t @hyperharlz

Want to join my taglist? Just reply here!

#american horror story #ahs #evan peters #tate langdon #kit walker #kyle spencer #jimmy darling #james patrick march #kai anderson #rory monahan #mr gallant #Colin zabel #Peter maximoff #barbenheimer

102 notes · View notes

levmada · 9 months

Text

which aot characters would watch barbie or oppenheimer

i made this in like 10minutes prepare for stupidity

Levi: his answer is conditional based on who he’s with (“i will follow you erwin smith”) but he’s more overstimulated by sound than sight, so he’d go with barbie, but levi is not a “little girl” so he’d dislike oppenheimer the least

Erwin: oppenheimer. do i even need to explain that the historical 3-hour long movie featuring an anti-hero with hard to understand intellectual concepts would appeal to erwin smith

Hange: hard choice. oppenheimer would be very intellectually stimulating for them, as well as feeding a special interest, but also hange is hange and barbie is barbie. it depends on who they’re with

Mike: oppenheimer. falls asleep somehow and is only managed to be shaken awake by hange during the nude scenes

Eren: LMAO

zoned out whenever a bomb wasn’t going off.

Mikasa: will go wherever eren goes, in which case oppenheimer. but that would be her choice anyway (but secretly goes by herself to barbie on a different day with a solid alibi).

Armin: he would choose oppenheimer but enjoy barbie more

Zeke: oppenheimer. literally studies world war 2 in order to compete with erwin intellectually. equal match. gets a major superiority complex about it though and corrects anyone who mispronounces oppenheimer’s name. also tries to talk over the action sequences and somehow manages to make himself heard.

Pieck: barbie :3 wholesome fun

Gabi: goes to oppenheimer partly just to defy all expectations of her and ends up hating it because it’s confusing. in the tiniest crevice of her heart she accepts that barbie is an okay movie.

Falco: barbie. but he’ll go wherever gabi goes and enjoys barbie more as well.

Annie: oppenheimer. had no knowledge of ww2 or atomic weapons beforehand and thereafter it became a special interest for her.

Bertholdt: will go wherever annie and reiner go. has no opinion one way or another because he is also not the target audience for barbie, but has no interest in large explosions (traumatic)

Reiner: oppenheimer. but got overwhelmed by the loud noises and spent half of the 3 hours runtime refilling his friends’ popcorn and drinks. “as long as you guys had a good time.” and he means it

Connie: barbie to be ironic. fell asleep during the real world parts. had a good time though, but can’t explain when asked how

Sasha: wherever her friends go, as long as there’s plenty of snacks. oppenheimer was too pretentious for her tastes and barbie was good fun!

Jean: oppenheimer to be edgy. came out of the theater braindead from confusion (jean is the same person who hates a space odyssey), but insists he understands it and gaslights those who question him on it

Historia: wanted to see both movies back to back with ymir. determined to feel very intellectually about oppenheimer and relate to the characters. it was fine🤷🏻barbie was okay too. she had a good time with ymir.

104th Ymir: will go anywhere historia goes, and historia’s opinion dictates her own. they are lesbians

101 notes · View notes

ryind · 9 months

Text

SPOILERS FOR OPPENHEIMER BY THE WAY BECAUSE I HAVE WAY TOO MANY THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS MOVIE AND WANT TO DISSECT IT

Okay so I know there are some very reasonable and valuable complaints, comments, and criticisms about Oppenheimer and how it handles the ACTUAL victims of the war, martyrizing Oppenheimer, an arguably very gray character in reality for more reasons than the atomic bomb and...trying to poison his mentor. You know. The basics.

THAT SAID I AM GOING ABSOLUTELY FERAL FOR CILLIAN MURPHY'S PORTRAYAL OF OPPENHEIMER LIKE I HAVE A 3 IN 1 DEAL FOR HYPERFIXATIONS RIGHT NOW I THINK BECAUSE WE HAVE THE ACTUAL MOVIE, CILLIAN, AND THEN OPPENHEIMER. AGH. LOSING MY MIND. PICKING APART EVERY SCENE AND DETAIL WHILE ALSO GUSHING ABOUT CILLIAN'S PERFORMANCE.

on that note here's some things I worked out about the movie, or rather, my takes on them for those curious (some of these are definitely a stretch, but I like seeing how far I can push a metaphor once I find one, so here we go):

Lotta controversy about the "I am become death" quote during the sex scene, which, fair. I can see why they included it though, upon reflection. In the moment, it just feels like a strange foreshadowing of the bomb itself, which did Not resonate with me and seemed fairly jarring, but upon closer inspection, I think the relevance of that quote in *that* context is that this is the first person Oppenheimer lost. Jean needed Oppenheimer, and he blamed himself for her suicide (or murder, maybe). This was the first time he "became death, destroyer of worlds"; the first marble in the bowl, which mirrors Oppie's reaction to the bomb's actual detonation quite well, too, I think. Something terrible has just happened, and yet the expectation is that Oppenheimer shows up and pretends all is well and he isn't horribly damaged, just martyring on.

SECOND

The orange from Rabi might be a bit deep or I might be a bit stupid. Oranges tend to symbolize positivity and aid, so being told to eat one by a friend in his most vulnerable moment is a kindness, hence some symbolism there. I did unpack this deeper though, say, such that oranges need to be peeled to get to the sweetness, and they are one of the sweetest citrus fruits, though they maintain their tang. This represents perfectly how the orange delivery felt in that scene; sweetness from Rabi in a moment of vulnerability, the orange peel gone, the bitter and trauma numbed exterior of Oppenheimer stripped away for just a moment before the sour slammed back in full force. Also just. Really stretching it but oranges being segmented could both represent a fractured mind AND the different perspectives on Oppenheimer as a whole and his reputation to this day.

Oh and General Groves when telling Oppenheimer he's essentially done with him but will ..try? To keep in contact? And update him?? He's buttoning up his coat if I remember right, mirroring his guard getting put up as he ends his amicable dealings and negotiations with Oppenheimer, adding layers and making himself less vulnerable. Oppie, meanwhile, smokes as the quiet, socially acceptable way to perform an anxious ritual.

Also the RAIN. Don't have this one fully unpacked yet and maybe never will but Cillian in an interview mentioned that Nolan described Oppenheimer as "dancing between the raindrops" and this has only half clicked with me but oh well here we go. The basic idea is likely that Oppenheimer doesn't abide by just one grouping of people or their ideas, or hop on any flow bound for one particular destination. Rather, he dances in the space between; in the uncertainty that looms closer towards the ground the further things fall. I think this works decently with what I've listened to and read about Oppenheimer as a person, saying he'd follow recent physics, always growing impatient with the current field he was in and seeking something more...I don't like the use of this word in relation to science but "trendy." I guess the dust particles and whatnot in the headspace sequences work in line with the whole rain theory too in terms of how Oppenheimer doesn't just think about the interactions and the space between, but lives and breathes it as the space between the raindrops; between those that make the biggest splashes, as he gets caught in the ripples. Also given his anti-war rhetoric throughout the movie I feel like there's maybe a fire/water thing going on with him trying to quench the bomb he created but ultimately failing? Who knows. Maybe it's just rain.

Anyways here's all the ramblings I did to myself to reach these conclusions. They are incomprehensible.

#oppenheimer #cillian murphy #christopher nolan #oppenheimer spoilers #barbenheimer #god dammit cillian has me in a chokehold #american prometheus #j robert oppenheimer #my ap lit brain was Not Okay after that movie

144 notes · View notes

intobarbarians · 9 months

Text

the thing about oppenheimer being told even in a “nuanced” way is that if or when these movies become cultural phenomena, their narratives aren’t always kept firmly in the realm of fiction in the minds of their viewers. people accept things they see or read as fact all of the time. they forget where they first learned something, and so it becomes divorced from the context (a film created for entertainment). they forget any information at all sometimes, and simply recall the feelings they have regarding the subject. a film that evokes sympathy for a man who committed war crimes and not the victims is not responsible art.

hamilton heavily influenced how many people think of alexander hamilton despite the play being not true on several fronts. how many people corrected those inaccuracies through their own research or the many articles published to refute the creative liberties and falsehoods in the musical? who knows!

it’s not to say that real life people should never be the subject of art, even art conceived and executed in poor taste, in a cocoon of privilege where the pain and horror inflicted on the (also real!) people can be ignored, but big budget films like this are sent out into the world crafted to be a moment in the culture. they want to be seen by as many people as possible. they know when to release against which other movie premieres.

at the end of the day, are we going to have people who sympathize with the guy who helped build atomic bombs while they also feel nothing for the victims? are we burying the stories of people who haven’t received justice? are we reinforcing us military propaganda and justifying war and war crimes as necessary? are we dressing up validation for the existing power structures as critique? how much art and work will be needed to combat the narrative of one film?

#i’m thinking the answers are not good

71 notes · View notes

yuri-is-online · 3 months

Note

My brain is whirring in the blender right now so here are the things I think twst characters would find interesting/horrifying

Atom bombs. Why would they need atom bombs? Wars were either fought with magic or swords if lilias backstory is standard war procedure. And in endless halloween, leona tells a (fake) story about a terrorist group on a yaht party or something that attacked with a magic cube. Also that whole moment with Oppenheimer where he didn't know if igniting that bomb would set off a chain reaction that would ignite all the other bombs and basically destroy the world. AND HE STILL FUCKING DID IT.

Gun. Same reasons as the atom bombs.

French revolution and the reign of terror. What do you mean 40,000 were executed and over 300,000 locked up in the time span if a few years? Why did the "french" switch between so many governments so fast? Who the hell is napoleon?

Russian revolution and Anastasia. that revolution was MESSY. But imagine telling leona or someone about how everyone thought that princess Anastasia and her brother escaped execution cause they couldn't find their bodies with the rest of the royal family. So all these middle aged women just started coming out being like "I am Anastasia", and one of these women was eventually accepted as Anastasia. Until they found out that thr royal family were submerge in vats of acid after they were killed, and because children's bones aren't quite solid, the just. Melted in the acid.

The whole mystery of those villages getting up one day and dancing themselves to death and we still don't know why.

Medieval torture devices. Like the crowd cage or when you get covered in honey and sent away on a boat to be eaten alive by bugs (jamil throws up)

The black plauge. Just. The black plauge.

Early Industrial revolution working conditions. I think even azul would get uncomfortable with those.

Mansu Musa going on tour and giving away so much gold that he collapsed entire economies.

The cold War. "Yeah so the US and the USSR were in a war-not-war because of paranoia of nuclear atom bombs but they couldn't actually go to war because if they actually went to war that would just be the end of the world so they just had a massive dick messering contest. Oh yeah! That's actually why we got the space race!"

The space race. ("The fucking moon in the sky!" "Yes azul, the moon in the sky. And Mars. And there are satellites that literally went to the cold cold edge of our solar system" "...why are you guys insane?")

American prohibition laws and the outlawing of alcohol that everyone hated so much that the government legalized alcohol again and now we have this thing called moonshine.

Mexican revolution and the solid century where their presidents just kept getting assassinated.

The greatest night in pop "we are the world". Just as a treat for the pop music club.

The entire age of exploration honestly. "What do you mean half your world didn't know the other half of the world was there until a few centuries ago?" "Oh you're gonna shit yourself when you find out what Europeans did next"

What the Europeans did next.

The world wars. Lilia has a fucking stroke while listening to it. But some of it was funny! Not really but yk! A polish bear loading an artillery Canon, an unsinkable cat, that British guy that carried a bow and arrow and played bag pipes when the nazis found him only to be the most unkillable yet unserious guy ever, a US naval captain that literally FLOODED HALF HIS SHIP on D-Day just to tilt that bitch back so they could hit the Germans better, and the US just converting a spare ship into a massive ice cream machine is pretty fucking hilarious.

The coups of the ancient past. I don't really remember who but I think this Indian (?) Prince literally threw his brother out a window, dragged him back upstairs, only to throw him out again for good measure is fucking hilarious.

The mono Lisa wasn't famous until this Guy™ stole it from a museum. The museum employs didn't even realize it was gone until someone asked where it went 💀

The way we name our countries tbh. Most of them translate to some ancient language (Spain translates to "rabbits" and Columbia is "dove"), but twst really has countries like. "Scolding Sands ✨️ and Queendom of Roses ✨️. So our country names are probably really weird to them. Especially the full country names. Do you know Hong Kongs official name? It's long as shit.

The first chainsaw was invented by two socttish doctors in the early 1800s to help with childbirth

I have many more historically rambling I could go on but this shit is getting long.

If anyone at any point wants to ramble about history they are very welcome to do so in my literal dms and not just my ask box. I love history and I love talking about it!!!

I think out of all of the things you listed the atom bomb, the space race, and the Cold War would probably be the what I think the various twst boys would find most interesting. Even in the history of our own world those things were extremely unusual, the sheer scale of something like a world war is really hard to grasp and I doubt Twisted Wonderland has had a similar event. I think the concept of such a thing would really scare the cast, though I imagine Idia, Leona, and Lilia would be grimly impressed at just how creative people can be when it comes to destroying each other. Magic isn't required to make a mess of things, sure they already knew that but oh wow. Now they're really thinking about it.

Now you know who would want to talk about all of these things? Professor Trein! He'd be really interested in learning anything and everything Yuu can remember about the history of their world. As an educator it allows him better insight into his student, and as a lover of history he gets to learn a lot of new things no one else knows.

#<3 asks #twisted wonderland

27 notes · View notes

nando161mando · 9 months

Text

"Here's the story not told in Nolan's Oppenheimer about those forced off their land in New Mexico

In 1942, the U.S. army gave 32 Hispano families on the Pajarito Plateau 48 hours to leave their homes and land, in some cases at gunpoint, to build the lab that would create the world's first atomic bombs, according to relatives of those removed and a former lab employee." #press

1 note · View note

deadpresidents · 3 months

Note

Watched “Oppenheimer” last night, and I keep thinking about the scene with Gary Oldman as Truman. While I absolutely believe that Truman would have claimed all the credit & blame of dropping the bombs for himself, and also that Truman would have called Oppenheimer a cry baby and an s.o.b., I am struggling to think of Truman as being so naive that he thought that Russia would “never” develop their own bomb. I checked the reference — Ray Monk’s “Robert Oppenheimer” (2013) is the source for the scene, but I can’t get at his sources to see what he’s drawing from. McCullough’s “Truman” corroborates the cry baby comment and the blood-on-my-hands but not the “never” quote.

Do you have anything to hand about Truman’s belief in the Russian’s ability to build the bomb? How could anyone think that the Russians would “never” create a bomb?

In American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO), which I believe was one of Christopher Nolan's major inspirations for the film, Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin go into detail about that meeting between Truman and Oppenheimer and the scene in the film takes almost word-for-word what is written in the book. Truman is actually quoted in the book as saying "Never" after asking Oppenheimer when he thought the Russians would develop their own atomic bomb and not getting a response.

The sources that Bird and Sherwin list for that meeting and the "Never" comment are Nuel Pharr Davis in the 1968 book Lawrence and Oppenheimer, and Murray Kempton, who wrote about the meeting and the comment in the December 1983 issue of Esquire Magazine and his book Rebellions, Perversities, and Main Events. I haven't read either of those books, but I did read Kempton's Esquire article and he also directly quotes Truman as saying "Never".

I agree that it seems really naive of President Truman to not think the Soviets would ever develop their own nuclear weapons. The only possible explanation that I can imagine for that mindset was that the meeting between Truman and Oppenheimer that is portrayed in the film took place in real-life on October 25, 1945. (In Kempton's Esquire article, he says it took place in 1946, but he was mistaken because Bird and Sherwin researched Truman's Presidential appointment calendar and were able to pinpoint the correct date.) The U.S. dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and August 9, 1945, respectively. Japan surrendered on August 15 and the war officially ended when Japan signed the instrument of surrender on the USS Missouri on September 2, 1945. So, the meeting between Truman and Oppenheimer took place less than two months after the war finally ended. I can only imagine that Truman had still not fully shifted towards what the next conflict might be and was focused on trying to stabilize what was left of the world and mobilize the government in a different direction than it had been after 15 years of Depression, economic recovery, defense preparations, and fighting the war.

Plus, it's worth remembering that Truman didn't know anything about the existence of the American nuclear program until after President Roosevelt's sudden death thrust him into the White House and the military realized, "Oh shit, we should probably tell the new President that we're very close to building the most powerful weapon in the history of history!"

I don't think it was necessarily naivety on President Truman's part. I think, as Kempton suggests in the Esquire article, that is was just a fundamental lack of understanding by Truman that the Soviet Union didn't need Oppenheimer to build the bomb, especially since the war was now over and they wouldn't be under the time constraints or immediate pressures that made the work of the Manhattan Project so much more difficult. The knowledge was out there and the very fact that it had been proven by the Americans made it clear to the Russians and everyone else that it could be done. Harry S. Truman was a provincial politician from the outskirts of Kansas City who had a healthy dose of American Exceptionalism in him even before becoming a national figure, so the realities of nuclear physics were probably not easy for him to decipher.

#History #Oppenheimer #Atomic Bomb #Nuclear Weapons #Cold War #Harry S. Truman #President Truman #J. Robert Oppenheimer #American Prometheus #Kai Bird #Martin J. Sherwin #Murray Kempton #World War II #WWII

20 notes · View notes

davidpincher · 9 months

Text

i posted last week about how i went to watch oppenheimer as part of barbenheimer & then ended up writing a 900 word essay about it. three people asked to see the essay so here it is:

a three hour anxiety attack

i watched oppenheimer; had dinner, watched barbie and then showered. i cant stop thinking about this movie. the thing about christopher nolan movies is that there’s always a part of them that makes me remember why i love movies, a part of me that is reminded of their power in the way that they make me feel things. most succinctly, yes, this movie is a three hour anxiety attack because i spent the entirety of the movie anxious, knowing little about this film other than that an atomic bomb is going to be made and dropped on hiroshima and nagasaki.

while i was much too dumb to understand the timeline of events, christopher nolan still makes such a foreign experience feel personal and familiar. relatable even, even though the times have changed. people have always been people, flawed and trusting and selfish. there’s the case of the spy, a jewish man, much like oppenheimer, that oppenheimer initially trusts out of community in hard times. you can understand oppenheimer’s devotion to the war, as someone so personally affected by it. there’s something personal, in the orchestration of the betrayal by robert downey jr (i cannot remember his characters name, truly, he was not that memorable), and how oppenheimer goes from respected to blacklisted. people are petty and cruel. i don’t think i’ve ever seen a movie with a sex scene that i found added to the plot of characters, but there is something so powerful in jean’s death being the only one explicitly shown on screen: humans are selfish and will be our own demise because we, more often than not, cannot find the empathy to care for people who we don’t know. it’s the trolley problem - the death of a lover or the death of hundreds of thousands, or even, the very end of the world.

there’s one line of dialogue that hasn’t left my mind since i finished watching this movie, almost ten hours ago now. it’s the moment in which they’re discussing what cities to bomb, and one character goes ‘not kyoto. there’s too much culture. plus my wife and i honeymooned there’ or something of the sort. it’s the kind of moment that shocked me, how the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians were held in the hands of a guy making decisions based on his honeymoon. it’s the most memorable example of the question ‘who had the right to power’, regarding people’s lives, that consumes this movie. who has the right to create and use a weapon of mass destruction? another that i think of, is the scene with truman. i think that christopher nolan has portrayed a president more accurately than any other piece of media in the past: the president is not just some boss man, he is a guy appointed to look over entire fields he could not possibly understand the weight of, not even if he tried. truman’s depiction in this movie - as does everyone’s, honestly - feels so real because every single person has flaws. everyone here is so deeply flawed and insufferable, even oppenheimer, who likely is only slightly better because he’s aware of it all.

in high school, i was forced to spend two entire years studying world war two and the cold war from every perspective - japan, germany, italy, the united states, the soviet union, china, france and england. so of course, the questions of the ethics and necessity of the dropping of the atomic bomb came up, and there are so many discussions to be had within that. and yet, there wasn’t enough in this film. maybe this is a good thing, given that would require the opinions and analysis of the work of many historians that would likely derail the vision of nolan’s film, it would’ve meant a lot to the little nerd in me specifically.

oppenheimer opposes the hydrogen bomb because if the united states has one; the soviet union, their enemies at the time, would be forced to make one too. on a side note, another moment in this film that made my gut wrench was when this claim is denied on the belief that russia does not have the resources, or knowledge to compete with the united states. and god what a fucking blessing and curse is hindsight, as underestimating russia and the soviet union during a war is just as relevant today. this makes an interesting biopic to me because everyone knows about the atomic bomb. everyone knows about chernobyl and nuclear power. in fact, in the very basic level science classes i took, the world nuclear power became synonymous with chernobyl. bad things happen, and we know it, and this movie helps to warn us a bit about it.

enough on the history nerd stuff i truly did forget how much of my life i spent studying history, even if i only stopped just over a year ago. the sound design of this movie was fucking insane. every piece of audio, the line delivery, everything, made me feel so much (besides rdj - i get what people say about people having faces that know what iphones are) the shots were fucking masterful and despite being a three hour film, there was not a single moment (beyond the sex scenes mayhaps) that i felt dragged on for longer than they needed to. once again, just to end this off, god i fucking loved the sound of this movie, the build up, the anxiety, everything. while i most certainly have not seen enough christopher nolan to say definitively that this is his best work, i can most certainly see why people would say it is so.

#barbie #barbenheimer #oppenheimer #christopher nolan #film #oppenheimer essay

49 notes · View notes

denimbex1986 · 10 months

Text

'Two new documentaries available to stream this week are riding the wave of anticipation for Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, out in cinemas next Friday. Lest Nolan’s Cillian Murphy-starring biopic of atomic bomb creator J Robert Oppenheimer not serve the facts diligently enough, then Oppenheimer: The Real Story (from 17 July) and To End All War: Oppenheimer and the Atomic Bomb (Now TV) are on hand to fill in any gaps. They join a long line of documentaries on the subject and its adjacent concerns; the surprise is that it’s taken this long for Oppenheimer himself to be the protagonist of a major Hollywood drama.

But the legacy of the atom bomb, from its development to its impact to its all-round political aura, is a rich one, spanning everything from esoteric arthouse films to genre B-movies. For decades after the horrifying outcome of the Manhattan Project, through the long-lingering chill of the cold war, anxiety over nuclear warfare was the driving force behind any number of thrillers and war films. Comedies, sci-fi and even the odd film noir – see Robert Aldrich’s blistering Kiss Me Deadly (1955; Internet Archive), which culminates in a literally explosive allegory – got in on the paranoia.

First, however, the film industry attempted to tackle the subject more directly. Mixing earnest informational film-making with melodramatic fiction, the 1947 Hollywood film The Beginning or the End (Internet Archive) is a fascinating relic of its still-raw era. Dramatising the creation of the bomb and the circumstances building to Hiroshima, it has a dour sternness of tone that allows it to smuggle in some wild fabrication. Scenes of President Truman morally wrestling over whether or not to drop the bomb have the ring of patriotic face-saving. Indeed, there’s more history to be gleaned from the film’s blind spots than its inclusions.

Japan had its turn in 1953 with Hiroshima, another blend of fiction and documentary centred on child survivors in the aftermath of the blast. It’s undeniably wrenching, using a vast number of extras to effectively recreate their own harrowing experience, and while it was unsurprisingly branded “anti-American” in certain quarters, it doesn’t go easy on the Japanese military either.

In 1989, leading Japanese auteur Shōhei Imamura covered similar subject matter with a more distanced perspective in his soberly beautiful Black Rain (Arrow). A portrait of a family rebuilding in the wake of Hiroshima, it intersperses a quietly unfurling study of trauma with blunt first-hand accounts from victims. That same year, Hollywood inadvertently responded with Roland Joffé’s peculiarly misguided Manhattan Project drama Fat Man and Little Boy, previously Oppenheimer’s biggest screen showcase. Still, the scientist plays a supporting role to overseeing army officer Leslie Groves (played by Paul Newman), whose clipped, macho sense of duty spars with Oppenheimer’s cerebral detachment in a way that rather diminishes the bigger picture. There’s a reason you never hear of it today.

You certainly get a sharper, more telling view of the masculine egos sparking and aggravating nuclear warfare in Stanley Kubrick’s brilliantly deranged 1964 cold war farce Dr Strangelove, a film that managed to be both piquantly of its time and wildly ahead of it. It came amid a rush of more serious-minded Hollywood dramas on the same subject, including two released the same year. Sidney Lumet’s cold-sweat political thriller Fail Safe, in which an honourable US president and his advisers fret over an error that has sent a nuclear strike Russia’s way, is better remembered than John Frankenheimer’s Seven Days in May, in which a different imaginary Potus faces military mutiny in response to nuclear disarmament. Both are excellent.

European film-makers, meanwhile, may seem to be left out of the matter, but have contributed in surprising ways. Alain Resnais’s exquisite Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959; Amazon), a pointedly even-handed co-production with Japan, addresses Japanese PTSD and western guilt in the form of a desolate, mutually wounded romance. And the UK entered the conversation in the 1960s with The War Game, Peter Watkins’s stark, unnerving pseudo-documentary vision of nuclear war on home turf: a fiction evocative enough to fool the Oscars into giving it a best documentary prize, though a spooked BBC wouldn’t air it for 20 years. We’ll see next week if the atom bomb on screen can still cause that kind of stir...'

1 note · View note

fromevertonow · 9 months

Text

Oppenheimer and the Chain Reaction of Violence

My take on the Oppenheimer issue regarding the omission of the Japan bombings (even though no one asked):

For those who don’t know, the movie does not include an actual visual of the bombings in Japan, to the surprise and even disappointment of some.

On the one hand, I get the critique. It’s a huge tragedy in history and a key element of the story. Maybe some people were expecting more action from Nolan. But on the other hand, the story is not about the bombings specifically. It is about Oppenheimer and his legacy.

Albert, when I came to you with those calculations, we thought we might start a chain reaction that would destroy the world.

I remember it well. What of it?

I believe we did.

The final scene of Oppenheimer, a conversation between Einstein and Oppenheimer

At the end of the movie, we finally find out what was said during the conversation between Oppenheimer and Einstein. It was a huge question mark throughout the movie because of Strauss’ schemes, but it turned out the two scientists were discussing their biggest fear—their scientific research leading to evil. Multiple characters mention the “chain reaction” and often it was in the context of chemicals and what their reaction to each other would be. But in the end, the chain reaction was something bigger—the continuation of scientific research and it leading to nuclear war.

The movie is not about the bombings in Japan. Yes, it is a huge “plot point” and the movie does build up to it, but it is just one link in that chain. Oppenheimer feels incredibly guilty for having created the atomic bomb and wasn’t at all convinced for the government to use his creation against innocent civilians. His guilt is what is most important here because it is the result of that chain reaction.

This isn’t a historical movie in the sense that we are simply given a life story of Oppenheimer. This is a historical movie that reminds us history is still influencing the present. Scientists and governments are currently working side by side to create even bigger weapons of mass destruction and it is a heavy realization that the world might one day be actually set on fire because of them. We don’t know where this current ‘Los Alamos’ is, we don’t know how big the new weapons are, but we do know they don’t lead to anything good. This is the chain reaction.

Oppenheimer was a theorist. That alone should tell you that actually creating the bomb was insane to him. He wanted to rely on theory to prove that it was possible to build one, but people around him pressed him into actually creating it and, most importantly, testing it. The Trinity test scene is prove of how horrified Oppenheimer was by his own creation. The visuals are chilling. In that scene, Oppenheimer grasped the true scale of the destruction the atomic bomb can cause. It sealed the link to that chain, and the reaction was the bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Aside from story’s message and the relevance of showing the bombings, there is also a technical argument against including the bombings. The story is mostly told from Oppenheimer’s perspective, he is almost in every scene. But he wasn’t there when the bombings happened, so it wouldn’t have made much sense to show them. Oppenheimer asked Groves to inform him about when the bombings would happen exactly, but he heard about it like the rest of the world—through Truman’s radio announcement. Oppenheimer was incredibly anxious about the bombings, as can be seen in the scene where he is waiting by the phone the day before it happened. His guilt was eating him up from the inside while everyone celebrated either a military victory or a scientific break. Oppenheimer only saw the destruction of the world and the deaths of innocents. With his research he sealed the fates of millions of people. Because that is the chain reaction—the accumulation of historical events.

#oppenheimer #oppenheimer spoilers #christopher nolan #cillian murphy #emily blunt #j robert oppenheimer #matt damon #robert downey jr #florence pugh

42 notes · View notes