🫠 well, they’re not wrong.

"They won't fear it until they understand it. And they won't understand it until they've used it. Theory will take you only so far."

OPPENHEIMER (2023) dir. Christopher Nolan

Way to miss the whole point

Okay this is so dumb. Even Nolan expressed that his film was meant to be about the unintended consequences of scientific discoveries. This movie about a bomb that utterly reshaped the earth (for the worse in my opinion), is still a beautiful depiction of understanding and loving physics, but obviously has to veer on the cautionary side. The equivalent of this would expecting a movie about a murderous bioweapon to somehow inspire students to take up biology.

That's not why ANYONE should love their disciplines, but I guess the two in house geniuses of Twitter disagree.

Just saw someone on Twitter complain about the lack of Japanese people in Oppenheimer, and what did you expect??? Did you want the final act to be the bomb dropping and see people burning alive???

The reason why we don't see a Japanese perspective is because one, including a Japanese perspective, just to see how bad the suffering was would be exploitation. Two, to see an accurate and sensitive take on how the japanese felt about Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan (as incredible as he is) isn't the right person to do this. And three, it's based on Oppenheimer's biography

Oppenheimer, the movie, literally shows you white people doing something evil and just incredible inhumane because they removed themselves away, both emotionally and physically, from the people they are hurting. Nagasaki and Hiroshima only exist in those men's distant thoughts and imaginations. One guy literally asks to take a city off the bombing because that's where he had his honeymoon. It's disturbing and unsettling, as if those people were not real human beings. The lack of Japanese people drives the entire point home.

Also, Japanese cinema is right there. Barefoot Gen, Grave of the Fireflies, or Hiroshima (responsible for showing to many Americans the effects of the bombs for the first time) are just a few of the many, many decades of post-war Japanese movies we have

Something not enough people have been discussing about Oppenheimer is just how accurately they portray what the wonder and awe of physics feels like. I remember watching the thought sequences and near obsession Oppenheimer had with stars and quantum mechanics, and between the visuals and the music, it just resonated *so hard with me.*

The phrase, "can you hear the music?" so perfectly describes what made me fall in love with physics in the first place. It's something so *beyond* the scope of human existence; a hidden score that the universe harmonizes to. I so often feel like movies either downplay science or glorify it to seem less taxing and tricky than it is, but I feel like Oppenheimer found the sweet spot. To quote someone I saw review the trailer, they "made scientists (and for that matter physicists) cool again." Anyways, just thought that was neat and figured I'd share my nerdy little thoughts since there's so much barbenheimer everywhere and I can't seem to find just Oppenheimer appreciation. Do love barbenheimer though.