Oppenheimer

 

When a Christopher Nolan film opens, you can count on a fan base to show up, regardless of the subject matter. Nolan has established himself as the preeminent film director of the last fifteen years. Ever since "The Dark Knight", film fans have looked forward to a film with his name attached, regardless of the acting talent involved.  His technical excellence, commitment to film and theatrical presentation and his intricately plotted films have given him a reputation deserving of respect. That said, there is such a thing as overhyping a film, and that is exactly the defect that I had with this movie. 

“OPPENHEIMER. The best, most important film of this century. If you see one film in cinemas this year it should be Oppenheimer. I’m not a Nolan groupie but this one blows the doors off the hinges,” wrote Paul Schrader. This sort of statement will raise expectations beyond reason, and should be a flag that the writer has an agenda in his praise. My guess is that the subject of the first Atomic Bomb and the impact that achievement had on subsequent weapons development, is what generates this type of enthusiasm. Look, no advocates a nuclear war. Everyone recognizes the dangers to the planet should such an event occur. This has not been a secret for the last  78 years. So a movie that warns us of those dangers, is not groundbreaking, and how important it is depends a great deal on what issues matter to you personally. Writer/Director Paul Schrader has tipped his hand at what he sees as critical, I don't know that the film lives up to that standard. 

None of the reservations I have expressed so far are intended to suggest the movie is unworthy, quite the contrary, it is an excellent historical biography about a misunderstood giant of science from the last century. You should certainly go and see it, just tame your ambitions for the film to a practical level and focus on the film making and story telling. The people who are writing about how gut punched they were by this movie, must not have seen a Cold War Thriller in the last fifty years. "Nuclear War=Bad" , got it.

Nolan's films are famous for the use of time manipulation to tell the story. In this film, there is the smallest amount of that approach in any of his films since "Insomnia". There are black and white segments that distinguish timelines in the story from the vivid color sequences, but it is more a technique for indicating flashbacks and flash forwards than it is for advancing the plot. The plot of the movie is basically the rise and fall of Robert Oppenheimer. This is surely a valid project because Oppenheimer was indeed a critical figure in science and the key figure of the Manhattan Project, which developed the first atomic bomb. His complex life lead to his successes and ultimate embarrassment in being denied an extension of his security clearance, in spite of his service in creating the bomb. 

The first third of the film is a long recap of his academic and personal quagmires. Many of the incidents are relevant to later criticism of him, but as a film subject, they feel like they are slowing our progress to the subject of the Manhattan Project itself. As a biography, these segments are acceptable, but the film is sold in part as a thriller concerning the development of the weapon, and that part of the story takes a long time to arrive on screen. The time at Los Alamos is the most effective  act in the film. This is where Nolan's expertise with visuals seems key to the movies success. Seeing the film in the large screen IMAX format with the XD enhancements, made the audience feel like they were there with the other observers at Trinity. The sound design is outstanding and the visual largely eschew CGI in favor of more practical effects.

Other than the weapon itself, the two hearings  that bracket the story, provide the fireworks for the plot. Lewis Strauss, from the Atomic Energy Commission, becomes an antagonist to Oppenheimer, and his plotting to deny the security clearance produces blowback several years later in his own hearings when nominated to be in Eisenhower's Cabinet. It is the crossing of these two men's paths that sustains the film since we largely are familiar with the bombs results. The drama surrounding Oppenheimer takes place in the early fifties and the Strauss confirmation hearings were in the late part of the decade. 

Cillian Murphy is Oppenheimer personified, with his thin and tall build he is a physical match for the scientist. The makeup team does a terrific job helping him play a character that moves across thirty years of time. His youthful gaunt looks in the early years are echoed by a more skeletal visage in his later life. Murphy has a way of speaking that sounds authoritative, cocky, and inquisitive. The one time that it is suggested that Oppenheimer was showing off was when he demeans Strauss's reservations about sharing isotopes with a friendly country. Otherwise, Murphy plays him as respectful of other physicists and intellectuals, although in private he could be dismissive. The personal moments are the least clear in the film. He has a passionate affair with Jean Tatlock, played by Florence Pugh, but other than their physical connection, it was had to see how these two triggered one another. Oppenheimer's wife is played by Emily Blunt, and she is seen as a fragile woman with deep problems, but one who is fiercely committed to her husband and his legacy. Her best scenes are in the hearings where she listens to derogatory information about her husband and she looks like she wants to stab the people testifying, without having to move.  

The cast is packed, and I won't take time to salute everyone who probably deserves it, but there are two other performances that stand out. Matt Damon, in a second film this year (Air being the first) is terrific as Leslie Groves, the military commander in charge of the project. He has to be persuasive, belligerent, patient and intelligent in a lot of sequences in the film, and he nails it every time. If I were taking bets on the Academy Awards for the year, I'd put a large wager down on Robert Downey Jr. for supporting actor. I literally did not recognize him in the film, I did not even know he was in it until the credits rolled. As Lewis Strauss, he is venal, powerful and ridged in his persona. The conniving scheme may be an exaggeration of the real events, but Downey Jr. sells us on Strauss as a villain, at least in regard to his dealings with Oppenheimer. Nolan as writer/director and Downy combine to make an accomplished man with insecurity issues, feel like a vindictive bureaucrat with petty personal animus toward Oppenheimer. 

So the film is overlong, over praised, but still a great achievement. Like his other films, especially "Interstellar" and "Inception", Nolan is showing off his intellectual credentials a bit, but it would not be undeserved. He has clearly put in the work to understand the basic physics of the atomic process, as well as the political landscape of Washington D.C. . The movie could have been as compelling as "Dunkirk" was, if we had a little more story devoted to the competition with the Nazi group that the Manhattan Project was trying to catch up to and beat, instead of the personal drama that does not feel very clear in the long run. The technical details, production design and performances compensate a bit for the flagging story, but if you have a realistic expectation of the film, you will enjoy it a lot more. 

Don't Worry Darling

 

There are a hundred beautiful things in this film, and the craft trades have much to be proud of when they point to their credit here. Florence Pugh will add to her reputation as a fine actress with an interesting look and talent to spare. Harry Styles probably should not quit that very successful day job, but I did not find him to be the disaster that others have labeled him. Director Olivia Wilde has an eye for creative visuals, but she has not found a way to turn that vision into a tool that advances a coherent story. Katie Silberman, Carey Van Dyke and Shane Van Dyke have created a screenplay and story that resembles a number of other films. The reality of the characters is not reality. The question that comes up immediately, what the heck is going on? I'm going to tell you now, you will not be satisfied with the answer. 

Maybe they thought that what they were telling was an allegory on women and men and their roles. It starts off as if it were an update to "The Stepford Wives", since it seems the men have a secret and the women are all at home taking care of domestic issues. That however is as close to any obvious commentary as you are likely to get. There is one point where it sounds like it is going to be commenting on the men's movement which has been widely discussed in the past few years. There is a hint of that in one of the speeches that the leader of the community is making, it almost comes off as a parody of those advocating that men return to their traditional roles. It turns out those words are gobbledygook and the point is even more obscure after that. When we finally get to the explanation of what is going on, it seems almost to go in the opposite direction, because the ineffectual men that make up the community are apparently not employed in something nefarious, unless work is somehow evil.

So what happens in the movie is aggressively stupid, and it gets more annoying as it goes along. The surface of "Victory" the town that all the characters occupy, is glossy and chic in a retro 50s style. Having grown up in the sixties in Southern California, I saw plenty of homes that looked like the ones in this film. I think there are probably stretches of Palm Springs that look like this. The sheen on the cars is so bright you could get blinded by it. Unlike in Stepford, the wives do not appear to be zombies with the same dull faces, except when the director wants them to be during repeated ballet lessons. If this is a message about conformity, why do the women have different styles, why are some of them pregnant, why does our main couple have a sexual appetite that is so insatiable they abandon dinner or have sex in the bosses bedroom?  All of the characters take note of the differences as well. When Alice, the character played by Florence Pugh points out the similarity of the couples first meetings, there is a stamp of conformity, but instead of it being a problem in their behavior, it is a flaw in the mechanism that supposedly created this perfect community. If a video-game can have countless resolutions based on the programming and performance of the players, how is it that the system we discover can't even create different backgrounds for characters? It makes no sense. 

Speaking of making no sense, when the twist gets revealed, the first question that popped into my mind was "where did the plane come from?" It is not clear if this is an open system or a closed system. Sometimes, as with the sexual adventures of our main couple, it feels like there is an ability to influence the environment of  the program.  Other times, as when another wife has a breakdown, it feels like the system is in control. How much influence Alice has over what happens is not clear, ever. The power of the system is sometimes supposed to be implacable, but clearly it is not. When Chris Pine, as the cult like leader of the community, confronts Alice, he makes it sound like he and she are in some kind of battle, but that would undermine everything it looks like he is trying to accomplish.  Also, the completion of his story is completely inconsistent with what the twist has revealed.  It is difficult to talk about how stupid some of this is without crossing a spoiler line. When it is covered on the podcast, you will hear more if you tune in. 

Let's just say that this is a "Twilight Zone Episode", expanded to two hours and given an indulgent budget. It would be better as a 22 minute black and white episode. It would still be middling in terms of story but it would be less annoying. Just because a Busby Berkeley dance sequence looks interesting, does not mean it belongs in the movie. If you are not tired of a world built around the premise of "The Matrix" and you enjoy songs from the 1950s, then you might find something here to enjoy. I felt  it was a weak sauce retread of concepts that have been done better before. It's dipped in a nice candy coating, but it's full of empty calories and the more of it I consumed, the less I enjoyed it.   

Black Widow

 

Here is my take on this long delayed film, I will try to explain why but I am not sure I can articulate it as clearly as I would want. Black Widow is an entertaining, mid-level MCU film. It left me unmoved by the events but I can live the action scenes and over all story. There is very little connecting it to the Avengers, except the presence of Natasha, Scarlett Johansson, and the fact that she is an Avenger. All of the other characters are new to us and although there is an attempt to develop character for all of them, some of it is a bit rushed.

For those of you dying to know, this takes place between "Civil War" and "Infinity War". While hiding out after thwarting Secretary Ross's attempt to arrest her, the Black Widow is lead by to her origins by a mysterious package that shows up in her effects. Several chase scenes and hand to hand combat sequences later, we get a clearer explanation of what is going on. The totality of the Budapest story that she and Clint made reference to back in "The Avengers", is not revealed, but there is enough detail to understand why she has regrets and feels that there is so much "red" on her ledger. 

Maybe the reason I had difficulty connecting to this emotionally is that the secondary characters are all new. There is one, a fixer that Agent Romanoff has used before, who is treated as a longtime ally and associate. This is the first time in any of the films he has been referred to. He is not really given a backstory but the character is represented to us as one we should appreciate without knowing anything more, and that does not quite work for me. The movie starts with a flashback story to 1995 and we see a family coming together for dinner and suddenly taking flight from pursuing dark forces. Maybe the fact that we are being asked to sympathize with a Soviet Sleeper Cell, operating in Ohio, which is killing pursuing FBI agents, just does not sit well with me. This is a Post Cold War world, but those of us who lived through that war may have a hard time deleting the suspicions that we have. The character of the Red Guardian is slipped into this segment only vaguely, and when he returns to the story, we have to build another relationship.

The one new relationship that works well is that of Natasha to her supposed sister Yelena, played by Florence Pugh. The combat ready reunion was a bit much but it does establish the creds for this character as well as the other Black Widow zombies that the villain is creating. Pugh does great with her action sequences and is a believable female badass who can get the job done and stand toe to toe with Natasha. I enjoyed their banter a great deal, and they need more time together to make this the key relationship of the story. Unfortunately, there is a Mother Figure, Father Figure and villain who also need time with the main hero and that makes the plot points feel a little repetitive and it sucks up a lot of time. 

Look, I know this is a comic book movie, and maybe I'm overthinking it a bit, but it needs some explanation. How did this Soviet Era Program continue, go private, and remain hidden? How was it funded? There is technology here that the Avengers would be envious of, but there is no Tony Stark or Russian version of S.H.I.E.L.D. visible. It feels like a 1970s Bond film with a secret lair that would be impossible to keep a secret. Maybe that's why the movie that gets interrupted on Natasha's TV is "Moonraker". It's a subtle attempt to nudge us more toward the fantasy world that exists outside of the MCU and use that to justify some shortcuts.

Hawkeye and Black Widow are master assassins, and they took on a job twenty years prior to this story. How is it that they could botch up their mission so much as to leave their actual target alive, much less the collateral damage that goes along with it. There is no explanation of why that happened, even after we have witnessed an explosion that is immense and would have killed any other character in this universe, except for those from space. It feels like lazy writing. There are three screenwriters credited, one was at least partially responsible for Thor Ragnarok, but also episodes of WandaVision and Agent Carter. Maybe the styles just don't mesh well or the fertilizer is showing and too much of what we are getting is set up for future projects. 

David Harbour and Rachel Weisz are able to play both young and older versions of themselves with only slight assistance from CGI. Harbour is doing comic riffs with a Russian accent and that is funny. The Prison escape is fun to look at but it does little to advance the plot, it was merely an obstacle that gives the two women a chance to run an elaborate action sequence and have some comic relief along the way. I like Ray Winstone as an actor but his part in this is underwritten and it consists almost entirely of monologuing with the heroine. 

I was happy to see the film finally open. I was thrilled to see that the theater was sold out and that people are going out to the movies. I was surprised by the number of people who have already forgotten that MCU films tend to have stingers at the end of the credits and lot of folks left before the last scene. I was just not blown away by the film. I will certainly see it again, but if you are looking for a ranking in the MCU, put this at the top of the bottom quarter of the films. I liked them all but let's keep some perspective, they can't all be the greatest thing since Ironman. 

Little Women (2019)

For forty years, I have gone to a movie on Christmas day with my family. Some of those choices were terrific ways to spend a family holiday, including "Galaxy Quest", "Dream Girls", and "The Greatest Showman". Other choices were dismal failures that we had hoped would be good but were in fact sad failures; "Toys" and "First Family" being the biggest let downs. Occasionally we made a left field choice, a film we wanted to see but was not exactly holiday fare, "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" and "The Hateful Eight" come to mind, not exactly heartwarming.

In 1994, our first year in the new house, I took my seven and five year old daughters to see "Little Women" starring Winnona Ryder and Susan Sarandon. It was a very fond memory and it stood as a pretty definitive version of the film as far as I was concerned. I was not particularly excited about this new version, even when I knew that it would feature Saoise Ronan and be directed by Greta Gerwig. Although I admired their previous collaboration, "Lady Bird", I was not blown away by it the way so many others were. I saw a few flaws and it probably did not quite resonate with me because of my age and gender. Well none of that effected me with this adaption of the Louisa May Alcott novel, this is a luminous telling of the story that is flawlessly performed, very well written, and may be the most beautiful film you see this year.

I must shamefully acknowledge that I have never read the original novel, in spite of the fact that my wife identified it as her favorite book when she was younger.  As a consequence of this oversight I can't say for certain how faithful to the book the story is, but it certainly feels authentic. The one minor criticism I have of the screenplay and direction is the non-linear approach to the material. It is structured as a series of scenes, some of which flash back seven years and some which are contemporary to the setting after the Civil War. The ages of the actresses in the main roles are such that they can pass for teens or twenties , but we don't always know which period we are in. A haircut helps in a couple of places, but a few times it took several moments for me to be able to contextualize what was happening on the screen at that moment.

The strongest addition to the film as told by Gerwig, the screenwriter as well as director, is the detail in the lives of two of the sisters who were often overlooked in earlier versions. Actress Florence Pugh infuses Amy March with more personality than any of the other versions, and the script shows her at both her worst and best. She is loathsome as a vindictive little sister who takes revenge on her sisters creative efforts but she is noble when it comes to choosing a husband and redeeming a character she has herself condemned. Emma Watson as Meg March also makes what is often a cardboard role into an important part of the narrative. Eliza Scanlen is heartbreaking as the sister with the darkest story resolution, but regardless of those characters, it is still a story about Jo. Saoise Ronan is front and center even when she is not on screen. Her frustrating petulance is matched by the frustrating limitations placed on a young woman of the time. You can choose to see this as a feminist screed but that is a mistake, this is a pretty accurate portrayal of a woman's life in the mid 19th century of the U.S. Ronan manages to be fierce so often that it is a shock when she is so effective as pitiful and desperate in a confessional moment with her on-screen mother played by Laura Dern. 

Some attention to the technical production should also be made. The set design is realistic and detailed. The selection of locations feels authentic and the world that the women occupy, even in a place that is hard to replicate like New York in 1865, is convincing. The number of extras in a scene, the mix of roads that are paved and unpaved and the signage on the stores will pass very critical inspection.

There are a variety of supporting players, such as Chris Cooper (my second film of his within a week) and Meryl Streep. Timothée Chalamet as Laurie was presented in the least sympathetic way I have seen in the four screen adaptions I will have on the podcast, but he does have a nicely executed scene of personal despair when he is rejected by Jo as husband material.

Maybe the one other criticism I have of the screenplay is the way the resolution is presented as a hypothetical writer's plot device rather than an authentic romantic climax. It plays out on the screen nicely, but it does seem to be tampering with the story for modern reasons rather than fidelity to the work. (Again, that may be inaccurate since I have not read the book).

"Little Women comes at the end of the year for the usual reason, it is a prestige picture that is hoping fpr awards attention to enhance it's potential box office and audience response. This is a strategy that should work. The theater was packed, there was a smattering of applause at the end, but more than that, I think I will be with the majority of critics who see this as one of the best films of 2019.