Oppenheimer

[silverscreenselect]

I went to see Oppenheimer Friday. I was surprised by the crowd at the theater where I was and by the box office generally. I think the studio did a shrewd bait-and-switch with the marketing, suggesting that this would be another Christopher Nolan effects-driven film like Inception or Interstellar that should be seen on an IMAX or other super-wide screen. It's not. The special effects are somewhat minimal. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not shown (the characters at Los Alamos hear Truman announce the Hiroshima bombing on the radio). The desert test of the bomb is shown, and that scene is the most suspenseful in the film, even though the audience knows what's going to happen. But what they see is a decent-sized fireball in the middle of nowhere at night. Other than the test, most of the photography that benefits from IMAX is several outdoor shots at Los Alamos, showing the spectacular desert and mountain scenery around there. Oppenheimer also has visons/nightmares of nuclear explosions and their effects on human victims, but these are very brief, fragmentary shots.

The movie is brilliant. Terrific production values (expect a bunch of technical Oscar noms, sure Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Director, and Screenplay for Christopher Nolan, sure Oscar nomination for Cillian Murphy, and probable Oscar win for Robert Downey Jr., possible nomination for Emily Blunt. Although much of the movie concerns the development of the bomb, the test takes place two hours into a three-hour movie. The last hour concerns what happened to Oppenheimer after the war, and focuses on the hearing that led to the revocation of his security clearance (due to Communist "ties" in the 1930s) and another hearing involving the head of the Atomic Energy Commission, Leslie Strauss (played by Downey). Much of this is talking heads, but it's powerful drama and the closeups of Oppenheimer's and others' faces make the subtler aspects of the acting that much better.

Spock probably wouldn't like this film for many of the reasons he didn't like Dunkirk. The movie doesn't hold viewers' hands about introducing the many scientists involved in the project and what their importance was. Unlike many biographical dramas, there are no captions that appear identifying who each new character is. I had a fairly good knowledge of the Manahttan project before seeing the film and knew a lot going in, but for many people seeing the film, the only scientist they're going to recognize besides Oppenheimer is Albert Einstein. This dilutes the impact of some key moments. For escample, there is a dispute about whether to involve Russian scientists in the effort to develop the bomb ahead of the Nazis. They don't, but, right afterward (in the movie), they do invite some British scientists over to help. One of them is introduced right after this discussion is Klaus Fuchs. Most people watching probably didn't know that Fuchs was a Soviet spy who fed the information he received back to Moscow. So, the irony of the scene didn't register for them as it immediately did for me. The two main characters besides Oppenheimer are General Lesley Groves (played by Matt Damon), the military head of the project, responsible for logistics, and Strauss. I had never heard of him before seeing this movie, but he's the second most-important character in the film.

All in all a great example of old-fashioned, adult moviemaking without superheroes and tons of CGI effects.

[silverscreenselect]

I'm mad at myself for not spotting this one. There's a scene in Oppenheimer when he addresses the scientists and families at Los Alamos and thanks them for their work. Many of them were holding and waving American flags. But the flags had 50 stars in NINE ROWS, not the 48 stars that flags would have had in 1945. I'm the resident flag expert but I didn't spot this until it was pointed out on CNN today.

[jarnon]

I'm mad at myself for not spotting this one. There's a scene in Oppenheimer when he addresses the scientists and families at Los Alamos and thanks them for their work. Many of them were holding and waving American flags. But the flags had 50 stars in NINE ROWS, not the 48 stars that flags would have had in 1945. I'm the resident flag expert but I didn't spot this until it was pointed out on CNN today.

Oppenheimer is not alone. Time magazine printed a D-Day anniversary issue with this map:



It's hard to see on the screen, but the U.S. flags have 50 stars. At the time, my father had retired from the Time map room. If he had been working there, or if his boss R.M. Chapin was still in charge, the error would have been caught before publication.

Can any eagle-eyed BB spot an even worse anachronism?

[Spock]

>>>"Spock probably wouldn't like this film for many of the reasons he didn't like Dunkirk."<<<<

You mistate my attitude towards Dunkirk (LOL). I hate it to the depths of my soul with the heat of a thousand suns.

But it is not for any of the movie-making tricks that you attribute my hatred too. It is for a lot of other reasons that I don't want to go into right now.

[Weyoun]

I'm mad at myself for not spotting this one. There's a scene in Oppenheimer when he addresses the scientists and families at Los Alamos and thanks them for their work. Many of them were holding and waving American flags. But the flags had 50 stars in NINE ROWS, not the 48 stars that flags would have had in 1945. I'm the resident flag expert but I didn't spot this until it was pointed out on CNN today.

Oppenheimer is not alone. Time magazine printed a D-Day anniversary issue with this map:



It's hard to see on the screen, but the U.S. flags have 50 stars. At the time, my father had retired from the Time map room. If he had been working there, or if his boss R.M. Chapin was still in charge, the error would have been caught before publication.

Can any eagle-eyed BB spot an even worse anachronism?

They screwed up the Canadian flag, too

[Bob Juch]

I'm mad at myself for not spotting this one. There's a scene in Oppenheimer when he addresses the scientists and families at Los Alamos and thanks them for their work. Many of them were holding and waving American flags. But the flags had 50 stars in NINE ROWS, not the 48 stars that flags would have had in 1945. I'm the resident flag expert but I didn't spot this until it was pointed out on CNN today.

Oppenheimer is not alone. Time magazine printed a D-Day anniversary issue with this map:



It's hard to see on the screen, but the U.S. flags have 50 stars. At the time, my father had retired from the Time map room. If he had been working there, or if his boss R.M. Chapin was still in charge, the error would have been caught before publication.

Can any eagle-eyed BB spot an even worse anachronism?

The Maple Leaf flag wasn't adopted by Canada until 1965.

[Spock]

Saw the movie today in a sold-out theater.

To probably no one's surprise my favorite character was Casey Affleck in a very minor role who I think was the head of security (or something like that) for the Project.

His father was a Russian Bishop and while the Casey character had been born in the US, he had gone back to Russia in the Civil War and had fought against the Reds. As presented, he had killed communists with his bare hands.

[Spock]

Saw the movie today in a sold-out theater.

To probably no one's surprise my favorite character was Casey Affleck in a very minor role who I think was the head of security (or something like that) for the Project.

His father was a Russian Bishop and while the Casey character had been born in the US, he had gone back to Russia in the Civil War and had fought against the Reds. As presented, he had killed communists with his bare hands.

Make White Russians great again-LOL

We need more movies and such with White Russians in them. They were pretty thick on the ground in Europe between the wars.

One of the (mostly) unknown tragedies of the aftermath of the war is that the British and Americans sent White Russians to Stalin in large numbers to face the music in a regime that they had never sworn allegiance to and had fought actively against.

See "Operation Keelhaul"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Keelhaul

[Spock]

From what the movie showed us-I have an issue with his (Oppenheimer's) communist bitch of a wife.

Ok, we were shown 2 affairs in the movie (well 3 really) but there were likely many more. The 3rd was when Oppenheimer cheated with his future wife on her 3rd husband.

The movie showed us that the reason the Josh Hartnett character ("Leonard" to Oppenheimer's "Sheldon") was considering testifying against Oppenheimer was because he (Oppenheimer) had a long-term affair with a colleague's wife. He had a change of heart and chose not to testify.

So, as the movie shows, Oppenheimer's communist bitch of a wife held the fact that Josh Hartnett's character was offended by an affair by Oppenheimer with a colleague's wife against him and refused to shake his hand years later even though he didn't act on it.

Really, your husband has cheated on you god only knows how many times and you hold it against somebody for being offended by that?

My other problem with the movie is that the Manhattan Project was leaking like a sieve to the Soviets. It wasn't only Klaus Fuchs as presented in the movie.