I watched Oppenheimer on the 78th anniversary of the Hiroshima atomic bombing, which I only found out after watching it. This coincidence is just one of the endless coincidences in the world, like Kyoto escaping the atomic bombing only because the U.S. Secretary of War remembers his honeymoon there. And Nagasaki's suffering as the second in line is even more absurd, even US President Harry S. Truman forgot its name.
These two subtle but salvaged details from the Great Black Abyss Valley of history, with Nolan's quiet irony, such side-knocks abound throughout "Oppenheimer", so much so that they almost cover up Nolan's biggest object of doubt: Oppenheimer himself, the father of the atomic bomb, this contradiction.
The original book was originally called "Prometheus in America: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer", and the film removed this "pre-emption" from the title and placed it as an "inscription" at the beginning, and it cannot be said that there was no Nolan's cunning, because the next three hours were almost wavering between Oppenheimer's self-identification as Prometheus and his contemporaries contributed to this point or questioned the deconstruction. It's just that because of Murphy's strong performance appeal and the audience's preconceived sympathy for the preacher, it seems that we instinctively side with the martyr Oppenheimer.
The silence is deafening. This is something that all audiences who have seen the scene of the climactic "Trinity" nuclear bomb test explosion in the whole film can feel, and the overloaded soundtrack of the whole film highlights the preciousness of the silence of the explosion, because after this moment of silence, the world can not go back - the destruction of the world happens all the time, and Oppenheimer only provides one of its opportunities - the film tirelessly emphasizes that Oppenheimer believes that he "really destroyed the world", as he told Einstein, But in fact, it is an entire generation of earthlings who participated in the destruction.
For example, a more convincing shot than Oppenheimer's confession is the scene on the eve of the nuclear test, hearing the wind hunting and going out to see the sheets hanging on Oppenheimer's wife. The wind rises, the wind rises, and people remember their sheets, their humble world, which is reminiscent of the famous anti-nuclear animation "When the Wind Rises Again", the old British couple who thought that the nuclear winter came and could still save their little lucky son's hand, and finally became a tragic scene with the child, which has been used as a metaphor for the subtext in the scene of "Oppenheimer". The immense "significance" of the success of the nuclear test is linked to the everyday image of "collecting the sheets," and Nolan is familiar with the profound power of T.S. Eliotian tension creation, in short, this rhetoric is a kind of nuclear fusion in poetic technique.
December 15, 1957, Princeton, USA, Robert Oppenheimer, creator of the atomic bomb.
In a metaphorical sense, the atmosphere of morality is indeed ignited, and the earth has been destroyed in a parallel world - the illusion of a nuclear explosion at the subsequent celebration proves the possibility that Japan is not the only victim of the atomic bomb, but the whole world will be a victim of common karma, and Nolan even let his daughter personally play the woman whose face skin has been peeled off by the nuclear wind, further metaphorically extending the scourge of common industry to the next generation. And the global nuclear destruction of the last shot already belongs to the simile of Tu Qiang.
Moral nuclear bomb, moral silence, this is the key to Oppenheimer's destruction. He repeatedly recited the phrase from the Bhagavad Gita, "And now I have become the Grim Reaper, the destroyer of the world" (also translated: "Now I am the Lord of Death, destroying all things") did not appear first because of a nuclear explosion, but when he and his lover Jean Tatlock first had sex.
This paragraph cannot be biographical, so it can be played to your heart's content, Nolan arranged for Jean to suddenly stop having sex and go to the bookshelf to pull out one of the books she couldn't understand - this image inevitably reminds Nolan fans of the scene in "Interstellar" when astronaut Cooper's daughter extracts books, the bookshelf that connects the five-dimensional space! The moment when Jean Tatlock asks Oppenheimer to read the verse also connects him to another world.
But this connection brings not transcendence, but lockdown. Oppenheimer, who was connected, began to sense that Prometheus' fate was entrusted to him. This fate is not necessarily mystic, but more likely realist. Oppenheimer gradually learned to converge and choose ambiguity and silence, but the clockwork of the world had already been tightened and started, and he could not stand back.
Nolan's position is displayed in two scenes cheering "Oban" - one at the American Communist Party and one after the nuclear explosion at the Patriots gathering, and the left and right wings are almost identical. The sound of the latter stomping is the most important sound effect in the whole film, and in my ears (or the ears of the Jewish Oppenheimer) it is like the sound of a train to a concentration camp.
All this, tearing Oppenheimer, like the Skyhawk tearing through Prometheus' internal organs.
And slow, not necessarily Prometheus, this is just the appearance, Oppenheimer in the interior shows a Hamlet: "This is a time of upside down and chaos, alas, I have to take responsibility for regrouping", he became the center of nuclear fusion intentionally or unintentionally because of his talent, but he was not a strong hero, destined to suffer.
Don't always say that Nolan "uses thrillers to make biopics", the truth is: any person's life is a horror if it is seriously examined. Is it really as the movie villain Strauss and his wife Katie point out synonymously: this is a self-atonement performance? Oppenheimer does have his hypocritical and willful duplicity (such as his claim to sympathize with communism but disdain his sister-in-law who was born as a hostess), bravery and weakness (risking to visit his mistress of the American Communist Party even after knowing that he will leave a bad record, and is very brave for love, but does not dare to resist all kinds of oppression and false accusations). When nude sex is made public, this illusion is not only a satire of the privacy of citizens under far-right prosecution, but also a metaphor for the naked self that Auburn does not want to face.
"You can't let the world pity you after committing a crime!" This is when Katie condemns Oppenheimer's self-abuse after the suicide of his mistress, in fact, it also predicts Oppenheimer's psychology after the atomic bombing, and he chooses to accept all the persecution of McCarthyism in order to atone for his sins, but also contains what Katie points out again at the end: the motive for seeking forgiveness. Sadly, Gene Tatlock will not forgive him, and neither will the nuclear victims and anti-nuclear activists.
To some extent, even all the villains questioned him, Oppenheimer's sudden morality, like his sudden deep love, lacked deep thought and was too late, but of course, where love can be pondered and right and wrong.
The same goes for morality, "Is the Spanish Republic worthless?" "My husband sacrificed our future just to stop a fascist bullet that went into the mudflats." Oppenheimer and Katie's earliest position conflict has long alluded to the dilemma contained in the future "atomic bomb ends World War II", and none of us can choose black and white, but to accept: this is history, this is destiny.
The sea of chaos in the universe is silent and full of meaning, and when people go to spy on or even want to harness the power in it, they will be devoured. However, it is precisely in the midst of engulfing that people are like stars at the critical point of a black hole, spinning brilliantly.
(Liao Weitang, poet, writer and photographer, currently teaches at Taipei University of the Arts)
Author: Liao Weitang
Image source: Visual China
Photo editor: Zhang Xu
Editor on duty: Wan Xiaojun