Write What You Know

Some thoughts on Oppenheimer

Ok, I’m going to do that pretentious thing where I start with a quote because, in this case, the quote feels particularly apt.  

I write to know what I think – Joan Didion

Flannery O’Connor said something nearly identical:

I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say

Probably not a coincidence that both of these quotes are from women, since men tend to be project more confidence in their beliefs, regardless of whether that self-assurance is supported by anything.

All of which ties into what I want to write about today:

As we walked out of Oppenheimer yesterday, my wife and I asked each other, as we always do, “What did you think?”

Honestly, I didn’t know what I thought, which is why I’m writing this today. I’m going to try to digest the film as I write, so I can figure it out. Apologies in advance for the scattershot form of this piece. Let’s agree to call it “impressionistic” so it seems more intentional than it is…

There is a certain kind of movie that you are thrilled to see once and never want to see again. I think Christopher Nolan’s film falls into that category for me. As you probably know, it’s long, something like three hours. Moreover, it’s a dense three hours, crammed with dialogue, exposition and interrogation.

The story structure is odd: somehow the biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer is framed around the confirmation of a candidate for Commerce Secretary under Eisenhower fifteen years after the end of World War II, a framing that only makes sense in the last twenty minutes of the film. Was this the best way to tell the story? It gives the film the benefit of an unequivocal ending, which I suppose is good for an audience that has just spent a tense three hours in a state of quiet dislocation, but also undermines the movie’s theme, awkwardly shoehorning a film about moral ambiguity into an unequivocal morality tale.

The morality in question, of course, is the development and use of the atomic bomb. Oppenheimer is presented as a man who can see what others cannot. From the instant news arrives from Germany that the uranium atom has been split for the first time, Oppenheimer intuits that a bomb must follow. Apparently, the American government agrees and soon sets forth a project to make one before the Germans do. While his prior Communist sympathies initially leave him on the outskirts of the American project to catch up to the Nazis’ nuclear developments, he is soon hired to lead the nascent Manhattan Project team.

There is much business as he recruits an all-star team of physicists, engineers, and chemists to Los Alamos, New Mexico. With heedless enthusiasm, he builds a town from scratch, rides horses, takes trains, consults Einstein. At one point, he moves his young family into a freshly built house at the base. His wife peers through a doorway.

“There’s no kitchen,” she says.

“We’ll fix that,” he replies.

(I’m probably getting this and subsequent quotes wrong, but the gist is correct.)

In those early days, Oppenheimer is a man of action getting things done. If he has qualms about the nature of his work, we don’t see them. Step by slow step, the bomb gets built, theory moving into reality. Will it work? If it does, will it ignite the atmosphere, a question which provides a grim running joke through the movie.

Oppenheimer seems possessed with certainty. When stumbling into a meeting of concerned Los Alamos scientists discussing whether or not the US should actually use the “gadget” they are building, Oppenheimer assures them that the weapon will create an enduring peace. They alone understand the bomb’s awesome power. Only in using it will the rest of the world understand. Only then, he says, will peace be possible. Does he believe his own words?

It is the women in Oppenheimer who know their own minds. His first wife, Jean Tatlock, was a dedicated Communist. Oppenheimer dabbled with Communism but never joined the party – what did he believe? His second wife, Katherine Vissering, is a biologist and dedicated alcoholic. It is Vissering who stands up to the inquisition facing Oppenheimer over the renewal of his security clearance, providing the movie with its “Have you no shame, sir?” scene. Both women implore Oppenheimer to fight for his beliefs, whatever they may be.

Late in the film, Oppenheimer’s colleague, Edward Teller, who has become obsessed with building the next iteration of this technology – the H bomb – confronts Oppenheimer about the “gadget,” which at that point is still in development. Teller has no uncertainty about his own work, increasing the yield of the atomic bomb a thousandfold, from kilotons to megatons. If something can be done, Teller seems to believe, it should be done. “What do you believe?” Teller asks. “Do you even know?”

Oppenheimer has no answer. In the end, Oppenheimer is presented as a man confronted with the dubious legacy of his achievement, and the ambiguity of a nation at first grateful, then resentful, of that legacy.

So, what did I think of Oppenheimer? It’s gorgeous. It’s haunting. In some ways, I think the closest analogue to the film is 2001: A Space Odyssey, another long and masterful film about the promise and horror of technology, and a singular man confronting both the technology and himself. Cillian Murphy will win Best Actor for his quiet, fully realized performance. It’s long, but I don’t think it would be possible to cut much without restructuring the story entirely. I have no idea how Nolan even began to dream up something so ambitious and realized it so completely. How did he take something so monumental in his head and make it live? How did he move from theory to reality? Did he know what he was making when he started or did it only become apparent as he made it? Did he know what he believed? How do we know what we think until we have written?