NOOB FILM REVIEW - OPPENHEIMER directed by CHRISTOPHER NOLAN.
Upon watching how Oppenheimer was inspired by the tales from the Mahabharata, I cannot stop linking this biopic with a similar one called 'The Man Who Knew Infinity". Ramanujan, a boy who is a devout Hindu from a small village in India, came up to be one of the most famous mathematical discoveries in the history of mankind, and he does not know how he knew it.
Similar to the character Rocket Racoon in the new Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, where he found the solution to the failed experiment done by the High Evolutionary, he too, does not know how he knows.
Nolan shows Oppenheimer to have received visions to spark his eventual completion of the atomic bomb. Just like how Ramanujan had it. And Rocket Racoon. And many other religious and historical figures we know, even artists.
But from there, Nolan's storytelling goes fixed on a more human level of conflict. Trust. Betrayal. Greed. In a style of the 1957's "12 Angry Men", complete with black and white filming. It is almost saying that mankind will mostly never make good of any divine knowledge. And it has been written in the Mahabharata. George Santayana said that “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” To me, this shows that time is not linear but cyclical instead. The ups and downs of human civilization. Of life and death. Resurrections. Reincarnations.
There is also a famous saying that the wise and the sages amongst men should not knock on the doors of Kings. We can see the fate of Oppenheimer after those in power done using him for their agendas. Hence, the paradox we see he is trapped in. Einstein was smart enough to go into exile from Nazi Germany and smell what Lewis Strauss was up to. And Nolan spares nothing at taking you for a ride along all these dark sides in men of power, like how Lord Acton said it. "Absolute power corrupts absolutely". In some scenes, the sound of explosions is overlayed with the sound of applause. To how we today experienced watching massacres or war from our tv screens as insignificant as any other shit show on it.
Nolan sees and understands that and pays tribute to this man of history by capturing it on 70mm film with an IMAX camera. And what I discovered from Youtube is that Kodak did a unique black and white 70mm film (something that no one has before). We are living in a time where any guy with a laptop and a camera can do all sorts of fancy video effects with a press of a few buttons but very few can really do it as Nolan is doing with Oppenheimer. It is about the big statement he is trying to convey in the most significant medium format available. An anti-war statement.
Today is the 78th anniversary of dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. May the one in Nagasaki be the last.
(Attached photo is of the Youtube video of Frank Sinatra's This Land is Mine, of a similar cyclical theme to the topic.