What did you all think about how the communist party USA was depicted? I think Nolan really nailed the smug sense of self superiority, a trait which the dorks over at Lemmygrad seem to share.
They certainly came off poorly, to say the least.
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The first 2/3 of the movie seems like a different movie than the last 1/3. The last 1/3 is basically courtroom drama over a congressional hearing about the cabinet confirmation of Lewis Strauss. (I had to look up his name on IMDB because even though he’s a focus of the last 1/3 of the movie, I keep forgetting it because I don’t really know why I should care).
Yes, Strauss and how he interfered with Oppenheimer’s security clearance is key to understanding Oppenheimer’s life… but does the part of his life after the atom bomb really matter? The post atom bomb part of his life is really something that should be done in a 5 minute montage, rather than an hour-long courtroom drama. Oppenheimer’s impact on history is due to his time leading the Manhattan Project, and that should really be the focus of the movie.
As for the ways the communists were depicted, at first it was sympathetic. They seemed like well-meaning if a bit naïve. Later on, they seem more like victims. The movie makes it seem like they were under surveillance right from the start, and that after WWII and during the cold war, their lives were being destroyed for innocent flirtations with communism decades ago, long before the USSR and the USA were enemies. That seems to track pretty well with reality, where the McCarthy era was one where right wingers were rabid about destroying the lives of anybody who had ever had any sympathy for communism. Powerful companies used that sentiment to destroy powerful labour unions, massively changing the balance of power away from workers and towards corporations.
The movie doesn’t seem to really take a position on whether communism is bad or not. It just shows how Strauss uses backroom deals and dirty politics to wield anti-communism as a weapon to settle a grudge against Oppenheimer.
I think the demonization of communists in the end was meant to contrast the persecution of the Jewish people in Nazi Germany. Not in the way that the two things are the same, but in the way that many of those contributing to the Manhattan Project were also of Jewish heritage, like Oppenheimer, who ended up disgraced due to the politics of McCarthyism allowing for weaponizing prejudice against those associated with communism. That is why I also think the last part is not too long nor unimportant. It reflects on the consequences of the project, which was in many ways Oppenheimer’s most important work, along with the personal consequences he endured from voicing his opinion on (limiting) its uses.
Didn’t you say in another thread that you don’t like comparisons to Jews in Nazi Germany?
Nope, I said comparing things to Holocaust suggesting similarity and by extension reducing the importance and scale of what happened. Here I did not say it compares explicitly, but that it is an important context contrasting later development in Oppenheimer’s life.
