Oppenheimer

Year of release: 2023. Directed by Christopher Nolan. Starring Cillian Murphy, Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh, and Robert Downey Jr.

Bruce Wayne, as imagined by Christopher Nolan in his Dark Knight Trilogy, watches his parents be killed by a Gotham City gangster who turns out to have been hired by his later mentor Ra’s al Ghul. Bruce takes his childhood fear of bats and falling to create a superhero that visits those fears onto Gotham’s criminals. At the height of Bruce’s power, he builds a cellular spy network reminiscent of the Patriot Act to track his most dangerous nemesis, and he then takes the fall for that nemesis’ crimes to preserve peace in Gotham, laying aside his work as the caped crusader with feelings of guilt about whether he did the right thing.

Why I am talking about Nolan’s Batman? Because in the Nolan Cinematic Universe, J. Robert Oppenheimer is nearly indistinguishable from Bruce Wayne. Other than Wayne being a lapsed Episcopalian (commonly assumed knowledge among superhero fans) and Oppenheimer being Jewish. No comment on the casting of Cillian Murphy as a Jew.

I do not mean to sound glib or dismissive, but Oppenheimer, Nolan’s latest sprawling historical epic that plays with time and reckons with the potential end of the world, is essentially Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, and The Dark Knight Rises rolled into one three-hour film. That’s a factually neutral observation, not a criticism.

J. Robert Oppenheimer is a brilliant theorist who introduces quantum physics to the United States after studying it in Europe, alongside several Nazis. He’s selected to head the Manhattan Project, builds the first atomic bomb, later develops reservations about building more weapons of mass destruction although never expresses regret for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and then becomes a fall guy for the communist witch hunts under McCarthyism, all while being wracked by guilt over whether he destroyed or saved the world.

What makes Nolan’s presentation of this story engaging is the liberal cross-cutting from timeline to timeline, punctuating three phases of Oppenheimer’s career with comparisons to the other two. If the movie is too long (and it is by about 30 minutes), it’s never boring even as it becomes a relentless marathon of big ideas told with bigger gestures matched by Ludwig Göransson’s bombastic, swelling score.

As Oppenheimer, Murphy does a great job at capturing the stoic coldness typical of most Nolan protagonists. At their best (Christian Bale in The Prestige and Guy Pearce in Memento), Nolan protagonists are antiheros who meticulously construct their own hell through their obsession with their career or mission combined with their off-putting personalities. Oppenheimer is certainly no exception, burning bridges with authorities and fraternizing with communists, which includes screwing one, both of which combine to make his post-war crucifixion all the more of a foregone conclusion.

I was less interested in the kangaroo court that a political rival sets up to oust Oppenheimer as a petty act of revenge than I was in the film’s presentation of Oppenheimer’s willingness to go along with it over his guilt at starting the Cold War, or so he believes. If Bruce Wayne and Cooper (Interstellar) are Nolan’s most noble flawed protagonists, with Alfred and Leonard (The Prestige and Memento) being the most villainous ones, J. Robert Oppenheimer is somewhere in between. The common link is all these men obsess over something until they lose everything else.

Nolan is not a subtle filmmaker when it comes to political themes and philosophical ideas, as starkly contrasted by his masterful puzzle-making that provides easily missed clues, which build to a jaw dropping reveal. It’s why his best films are his ruthless revenge thrillers and his weakest are attempts at philosophizing and depicting a noble humanism. Oppenheimer has both elements, but it shifts back to the puzzle-making of his earlier films, and the philosophical ideas are less on the nose than they have been in other recent offerings of his.

The puzzle’s reveal and third act twist of Oppenheimer will be no shock to history buffs, but that doesn’t mean Nolan didn’t set them up masterfully. For those who don’t know who the villain is (I didn’t) I won’t spoil it here, but the performance by that actor is superb, and his reveal as evil and his downfall are masterfully handled. The downfall is slightly undermined by an on-the-nose moment when an intern reveals the senator who thwarted him was some kid from Massachusetts who wants to make a name for himself, “Kennedy. John F. Kennedy.”

For all of Oppenheimer’s masterful craftsmanship, it hits its viewers over the head with moments like that way too often. Some of them land the intended punch; some of them don’t. My favorite of such scenes was when Oppenheimer’s wife Kitty (Emily Blunt) is being grilled by Jason Clarke’s unethical lawyer and shows herself to be intellectually his equal if not superior. The most jarring of such scenes involves an interrogation about Oppenheimer’s ongoing affair with Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh) as Kitty imagines their naked bodies thrusting in front of her and the entire tribunal for the Atomic Energy Commission. It’s so obviously Nolan’s first explicit sex scene and one of the only scenes in the film not from Oppenheimer’s perspective, that it comes across as more of a clumsy shock than anything else.

Not that the sex scenes in Oppenheimer weren’t necessary for the story. They all contribute to Oppenheimer’s assholery, which is an essential part of a Nolan protagonist, and the first sex scene provides Nolan an opportunity to introduce Oppenheimer’s quote from the Bhagavad Gita, “Now I become death, the destroyer of worlds.” It’s another on the nose moment, especially given the line’s repetition when the Trinity test is successful, but for the integration of Oppenheimer’s messy personal life with his equal messy professional and political lives, I thought it worked.

As the theorist who can’t quite connect with the real world, Murphy’s Oppenheimer fits very neatly into the Nolan Cinematic Universe. As he struggles at school with how to relate to a professor, how to manage his affections for various women, how to serve his country, and whether the world should continue building atomic weapons, the gnawing loneliness of yet another genius man pervades the film. A tense, humorous exchange between Oppenheimer and General Groves (a very good Matt Damon) right before the Trinity test highlights that disconnect, as Oppenheimer assume the near zero chances of setting off a chain reaction that annihilates the entire world will appease the general. While we never see the horror of Oppenheimer’s work, Nolan does make it known through descriptions of the Japanese and Korean casualties as well as Murphy’s depiction of Oppenheimer’s breakdowns and imagining of his friends suffering the same fate.

At the center of the film is a tragedy, and rather horrific one at that, as Nolan’s lonely genius reaches out for connections in the most explosive ways possible finding the same hole that forms a link throughout so much of Nolan’s work.

Personal Recommendation: B

Amadeus

Year of release: 1984        Directed by Milos Forman.         Starring F. Murray Abraham, Tom Hulce, Elizabeth Berridge, and Jeffrey Jones.

Originally published as part of the Arts & Faith Top 100 Spiritually significant films.

There is little, if any, historical accuracy in Amadeus. The portrayal of Mozart (Tom Hulce) as vulgar libertine is certainly based in much historical fact, but as seen through the eyes of Antonio Salieri (F. Murray Abraham), the film’s antihero protagonist and unreliable narrator, even the extent of the genius’ crassness can be called into question.

More importantly, Mozart’s genius—as portrayed by the film—can be called into question, since it is equally tainted by Salieri’s envy-saturated vision. The notion that Mozart wrote note perfect first drafts of his compositions is ludicrous and factually wrong. Naturally, it’s how Salieri remembers the composer he wished he could have been.

That merely summarizes the film’s inaccuracies in regards to the portrayal of Mozart, to say nothing of the fictious account of Salieri, consumed by a murderous envy toward a rival composer. Nonetheless, the historical fiction of Peter Shaffer’s play adaptation under the direction of Milos Forman creates not only a brilliant cautionary tale about the danger of envy and pride, but also a stunning testament about how God’s love manifests itself in the most unexpected ways.

One of the most important aspects of the film is its title, a word which the aged Salieri lingers over in his mockery of confession that frames the film. “I didn’t [write Eine kleine Nachtmusik],” he tells the priest pathetically trying to counsel him. “That was Mozart. Wolfgang…Amadeus…Mozart.” Abraham’s delivery of that one word summarizes the tragedy of the film more than anything else. Salieri cannot accept a loving God who bestows His gifts freely on humankind with all their imperfections and mediocrities.

In Salieri’s mind, love is something that is earned, which obviously means it is not love. In many ways, Salieri believes the same heresy as the prosperity gospel: if one is pious and prayerful enough, God will grant them a life of success and fame. In the case of Amadeus, that success and fame is music, which is why even in death Mozart’s genius continues to haunt Salieri.

As perfectly cast as Abraham is, the flippancy and crudity of Tom Hulce’s Mozart is an essential thorn in Salieri’s side. The earthiness of Mozart’s introduction as he plays a vulgar word game with his future wife Stanzi (Elizabeth Berridge), while unknowingly spied on by Salieri sets up the contrast between his personality and his music, which Salieri cannot reconcile.

However, Mozart’s real introduction comes in the first scene of the film when Salieri slashes his throat underscored by the opening of Mozart’s Symphony No. 25 in G Minor. The gravitas and darkness of the syncopated rhythms and minor arpeggios expresses Salieri’s despair and his lifelong obsession, once again making him subservient to his self-created rival. In that choice of underscoring, the film itself comments on the tragic and pathetic nature of Salieri’s decision to take revenge against God for making Mozart more talented than he was.

Obviously, there is no need to reconcile the profundity of Mozart’s music and the coarseness of his conduct except in Salieri’s poisoned worldview that God only loves the deserving, and that love only manifests itself through worldly success. Thus, Salieri’s envy gave way to pride. Since God obviously loved Mozart, as can be seen through his impeccable talent, Salieri decided to destroy God’s beloved as revenge against God. It’s a tragedy of Greek proportions, and the horror of watching it is seeing a man knowingly accept his own damnation.

The priest is rendered speechless by Salieri’s unrepentant admission of his hatred for Mozart and God, but the film is a perfect inversion of St. John’s admission, “He who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.” (1 John 4:20)

That Salieri’s attempted revenge concludes with his plot to steal Mozart’s Requiem and pass it off as his own is yet another perversion of something sacred, in addition to his rejection of repentance or absolution. That arrogance is carried through to the famous final lines of the film. Unable to realize that success and talent are not metrics of God’s love, Salieri sets himself up as the arbitrator of forgiveness and absolution, proclaiming his own judgments of everyone’s abilities.

In my mind, Amadeus is one of the most terrible tragedies ever filmed. And also one of the most perfect ones. The ability to recognize God’s goodness and love in music is a great gift. Salieri’s choice to let it inspire uncontrollable envy makes his corruption of that gift all the greater. The contrast between that corruption and the beauty of Mozart’s music highlights Salieri’s pathetic revenge, which doesn’t destroy Mozart or God, but only makes him more of a mediocrity that he so despises.

Streetlight Harmonies

Year of release: 2020                            Directed by Brent Wilson

How many people know who Lina Wertmüller is? I doubt many. Going a little further back in film history, do the names Lois Weber and Alice Guy mean anything? Some readers may know John Singleton, but I’d be surprised if anyone other than highly astute film enthusiasts knew Oscar Micheaux. To be honest, I didn’t know who he was until I looked up some black film history to write this review.

At the same time, if I mentioned D. W. Griffith, the chance of recognizing the name of the director of Birth of a Nation and Intolerance is much higher than the five directors I mentioned in the first paragraph. Those two films receive much higher acclaim and critical study than Falling Leaves, Hypocrites, or Suspense, even though those films predated Griffith’s and pioneered some of the same techniques he claimed to invent.

The difference, of course, in addition to Griffith being an aggressive self-promoter, is that he was a white man, and the history of art in most genres consists of the study of white male creations.

Music is not an exception, and Streetlight Harmonies functions as a sort of missing chapter in a music history textbook. That is not to make this documentary about the origins of doo-wop sound dry and pedantic. On the contrary, the interviews with the musicians who were recording and pioneering new sounds in the ’50s and ’60s are a lively and insightful testament to the joy of creating music and the injustice of the lack of recognition they received at the time, and to much extent still do.

Perhaps the best part of the interviews is that each musician gets to tell their story, which for years was either told for them or ignored completely. We see the harm of cultural appropriation as white musicians released covers of black musicians’ songs, and the songs became associated with the white performer. Listening to performances of those covers juxtaposed with the original versions highlights the differences and the simplifying of elements that would have been less accepted by white musical traditions.

Just as importantly, listening to the performances such as Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers is an incredible experience, both for those who remember or know that music and as an introduction for anyone who did not. The performances are soulful and vibrant, and director Brent Wilson selects some truly inspiring excerpts.

Part of the film fittingly focuses on the civil rights movement, showing the hypocrisy of Americans who accepted black music but not black musicians. At the same time, the artist can never be entirely divorced from their creation, and that music began to partially change minds, at least of younger generations. Even though there was and is still a long way to go in terms of progress, listening to stories of how these artists challenged the racist status quo is nice to watch.

The influence of a genre of music that originated as friends singing on street corners is enormous. In no way to downplay the incredible achievements of The Beatles, whose legacy influenced countless artists, but without the harmonies and sounds of doo-wop, they would not have had the groundwork for many of the sounds they created.

One of the most notable things to learn in undergraduate music history courses is how many of the things we revere Johann Sebastian Bach for were ideas he learned from his predecessors and contemporaries. What makes Bach’s influence so long lasting is the way he flawlessly incorporated those ideas. However, in music school, we still learn about those other influences.

Streetlight Harmonies teaches its audience about one of the most important twentieth century musical influences, without which artists from The Beatles to The Backstreet Boys would not have succeeded. It is a music history lesson that is still badly needed, even in 2020.

The Favourite

Year of release: 2018              Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos.          Starring Emma Stone, Rachel Weisz, Olivia Colman, Nicholas Hoult, and James Smith.

The first time I watched The Favourite, around thirty minutes into it, I gasped and turned to the friends I was watching it with, unable to believe what I was hearing and seeing. The compiled score had begun employing an organ piece, one that I knew and loved: “Jesus Accepts His Suffering” from La Nativité du Seigneur by Olivier Messiaen.

At this point in the plot, Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) had decided to attempt suicide, because her sufferings were beyond endurance since her favourite lady in waiting, the Duchess of Marlborough Sarah Churchill (Rachel Weisz), had left her alone for too long to run the state.

I cannot think of a more perfect musical commentary on the vanity, shallowness, and manipulative character of the Queen as portrayed here. It was at that moment that I knew I was going to love this film.

Given my past experiences with Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos, my love for The Favourite is surprising. Dogtooth remains one of the five worst films I’ve ever seen; I hated it so much I resolved to skip The Lobster until two friends said it was their favorite film of 2015. After hating that, I was going to skip The Killing of a Sacred Deer until I acquired a screener by chance, so I watched it, and while it was the first time that I thought Lanthimos allowed his absurdism to be a little bit playful, I still found the overarching misanthropy tiring.

However, The Favourite is different. For one thing the outside influences of screenwriters Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara mitigates Lanthimos’ tendency to bludgeon his morbid jokes to a point well beyond death. The historical setting also makes this much easier to swallow as a cautionary tale about the dangers of vanity and envy as depicted through the corruption of the early eighteenth-century British court.

The vanity of Queen Anne makes her a Lear-like figure, wanting to be loved but mistaking flattery for love. Her tragic arc mirrors his in a totally expected way. I even described this to a friend as King Lear retold as a dark comedy from the perspectives of Goneril and Regan. Here, those two characters are Lady Sarah Churchill (Weisz) and her cousin Abigail (Emma Stone).

The defining characteristic of envy, as distinct from jealousy, is the inability to be happy for another’s good fortune. As the two ladies in waiting vie for the favouritism of the Queen, they become obsessed with their own success to the point that the other becomes a threat who must be eliminated. It’s a backstabbing story that Rachel Weisz has fittingly compared to All About Eve.

Instead of being set in a dog-eat-dog world of show business, The Favourite ruthlessly critiques the political world of Queen Anne’s court for being the same. The historical basis for the film is the transfer of power in Parliament from the Whigs to the Tories toward the end of her reign. England’s two-party system emerged during Queen Anne’s reign, and the inevitable reality of a two-party political system is that one side’s success means the other’s misfortune. The envy between the two women plays out on a less personal and more political level between the leader of the Whigs, Lord Godolphin (James Smith), and the leader of the Tories, Mister Harley (Nicholas Hoult), as both Sarah and Abigail form alliances to their advantages.

The reality of two women manipulating a power system designed by and for men is that they must work behind the scenes while letting the men think themselves still in charge. It takes a toll on the female characters, which can be seen by the absence of any Cordelia-like character in this twist on King Lear, since this sort of world has no place for such kindness, as Sarah warns Abigail in an early scene. The cost of navigating such a world comes to a climax when the results of Abigail’s nastiest act are crosscut with a debauched party among the foppish men of the court.

Naturally, sexuality features prominently into the attempts to control and use other people. In a world where the wisest choice is first and foremost staying on your own side, using people as sexual objects to get ahead makes perfect sense. Both Abigail and Sarah exploit the loneliness of Queen Anne through intimacy, compounding their envy. Abigail’s desperate state began because she was sold into an abusive marriage by her drunken father, and she reverses that fate through a second marriage which culminates in an hilariously loveless wedding night.

However, as caustic as the humor is throughout the film, there is real sympathy for all three women and their misfortunes. Queen Anne lost seventeen children, and Olivia Colman achieves incredible pathos in her portrayal of the monarch in the midst of the absurdity of the court. When Sarah is forced to reckon with the consequences of her envy, Rachel Weisz brilliantly depicts an unrepentant woman who has lost the only life she has known. As Emma Stone’s Abigail absorbs the manipulative mentality of the court, she transitions from wishing to better herself to harming others in a way that evokes pity for the other two women who grew up in such an environment.

If anyone is unfamiliar with the British history that forms the basic plot points of the story, the fantastic compiled score hints at the eventual outcome. Didascalies, a minimalist work by Luc Ferrari consisting of only two pitches occurs at two crucial moments, linking the characters who most deserve one another. Messiaen’s La Nativité features prominently whenever Queen Anne makes a decision that changes her relationship with her two ladies in waiting, usually because she believes she is the center of the universe. As a means of suggesting the one character who is gradually falling out of favour, three increasingly ominous organ pieces by J. S. Bach, who is notably different from the other composers, serve as underscoring for significant events affecting her.

There’s a fine line between tragedy and comedy, and The Favourite walks both sides of it, acknowledging the absurdism of the decadent British court and its cruelty while not shying away from the destruction wrought by both.

 

Personal Recommendation: A

Content advisory: Several sex scenes (mostly out of frame), nudity, harsh obscenities, gruesome aftermath of an injury, animal cruelty, and abusive behavior throughout.                 MPAA rating: R

Suggested Audience: Adults with discernment

Mary Queen of Scots

Year of release: 2018              Directed by Josie Rourke.       Starring Saoirse Ronan, Margot Robbie, Guy Pearce, James McArdle, Jack Lowden, and David Tennant.

“Better a live rat than a dead lion.” So says a character in one of the best plays and movies about the religious convictions and subsequent conflicts instigated by the English reformation. Mary Stuart (Saoirse Ronan) lives by the conviction “better a dead lion than a live rat.” In 1561, with tensions between Catholics and Protestants still high in Europe, that is a dangerous principle to hold, and for anyone who knows their British history, it is one that cost Mary dearly.

The latest cinematic telling of that history assumes that knowledge, and it opens with brilliant crosscutting between Mary processing to her execution in 1587, Elizabeth I approaching her throne, and then back to Mary’s return to Scotland from France in 1561. The imagery draws a powerful parallel between the two queens, foreshadowing the ensuing conflict with a bookend that suggests their inevitable fates. Unfortunately, it’s the only time in the film such thought is given to the editing, and the rest of the film settles into a fairly rote history lesson, highlighting the main points in the power struggle between England and Scotland, Protestants and Catholics, Elizabeth I and Mary Stuart.

That is not to say Mary Queen of Scots is a bad history lesson. With grandiose and austere production design, stylish costumes and makeup, a talented cast, and some beautiful cinematography of the Scottish countryside the whole film remains watchable. However, the script and pacing are too pedestrian for the film as a whole to rise to the level of its parts or themes.

This is a strongly feminist take on Mary Stuart and her desire to unify England and Scotland, which I believe is not unusual for films about her. What is unusual is something that I’ve only seen in one other film, The Girl King from 2015. Both these films about strong female monarchs who are Catholic or wish to become Catholic, which functions a rebellion against their patriarchal Protestant courts, not only link Catholicism with protagonists’ feminism but also with their liberalism and anachronistic pro-LGBTQ beliefs.

As bizarre as this may seem, especially in twenty-first century America, I think there are parallels in that comparison worth exploring. In England and Scotland in the latter half of the sixteenth century, Catholics were a persecuted minority, much the same way LGBTQ people were for nearly all of the twentieth century. If a misogynistic patriarchy is the established norm throughout most of Western history, linking that to the dominant religion of a period film’s setting is not an illogical decision—after all, religion has often been abused to rationalize power struggles. Continuing this dramatic license, if a minority religion is then linked to the ways in which a female protagonist challenges said patriarchy, I think there is a dramaturgical basis for the comparisons made here.

However, I think the ideas themselves are more interesting than the film’s handling of them. That above paragraph is probably more thought than any of the filmmakers gave to those themes, as the driving force behind most dramatic choices seems to be: Mary is a progressive rebel.

The recurring motive throughout the movie is that Mary is too independent, and her taking agency of herself like a man threatens the toxic masculinity of the Scottish and English lords. As a contrast with Mary, Elizabeth I (Margot Robbie) defers to her council and allows herself to be parliament’s pawn. In one of the film’s better exchanges, she tells her chief advisor William Cecil (Guy Pearce) that the throne has made her more of a man than anyone else, but she has just embraced the desires of the power-hungry men surrounding her. The woman who acts as an equal with the men is Mary, and she is detested for it.

This power struggle mostly plays out through the determination of the Protestant nobles to prevent England from ever having another Catholic monarch. Overlaying the sixteenth century religious conflict with a contemporary feminist angle creates a parallel between the bigotries of five hundred years ago and those of today, as can be seen in David Tennant’s frothing at the mouth, right-wing fundamentalist portrayal of John Knox.

The one performer who really stands out is Margot Robbie. Her final two scenes walk a perfect balance between Elizabeth’s compassion for her cousin and the role she has embraced in serving her council. It’s probably the best example of the film’s themes of religion and gender roles in a society dominated by men.

I am a huge fan of Ronan, and I firmly believe that she was robbed in losing awards for both Brooklyn and Lady Bird. However, her performance here, while very good, lacks the empathy those other characters had, and as fitting as her austerity is for Mary, it pales next to the range of emotions Robbie achieves in her portrayal of Elizabeth.

As a story of two queens caught between men’s games of political intrigue, the film never quite achieves the urgency and tension it should. Nonetheless, telling this chapter of history solely from their perspectives makes for a thematically fascinating subversion. Since the winners get to write history, the losers of conflicts are often reviled, sometimes rightly and other times not. Mary Queen of Scots was viciously reviled by the English and her subjects during her lifetime while Elizabeth I was beloved. The film’s modern lens invites us to consider the reasons behind that, and it is an idea I appreciated even as I wish the film did more with it.

 

Personal Recommendation: B-

Content advisory: An off-screen rape, a bloody assassination, several consensual sex scenes—one rather violent, non-graphic wartime violence, and fleeting nudity.             MPAA rating: R

Suggested Audience: Adults