Oppenheimer: Price of Being Useful
This year, Christopher Nolan’s successful movie Oppenheimer shocked people with an explosion located in everyone’s head since it takes a biopic into a whole new standard. But what makes the movie as majestic as the name of Oppenheimer himself is how it takes everyone becomes part of the story.
Oppenheimer movie starts with the time after The World War II, J. Robert Oppenheimer was facing a trial to determined how faithful he was to USA. Cillian Murphy played the scene brilliantly for his long-gazing look showing how deep the sadness Oppenheimer had to drown himself into. At that trial, he remembered his time back when he studied Quantum Mechanics in Europe. Nolan gave us no place to breathe when he beautifully showed just a small amount of what Oppenheimer had thought all the time. At that moment, he was confused with his thoughts, he couldn’t even sleep.
But as we know, what Oppenheimer saw everyday was any other brilliant saw and thought for every moments on their life, until Niels Bohr asked him:
“Can you hear the music?”
And boom, suddenly Ludwig Goransson’s was dancing in our brain, without telling much word about how easy for Oppenheimer to understand the world he saw with melody he listened. The scene may look simple, yet I believe that scene is one of the most important scenes in the whole movie.
The term of can you hear the music represents the most important questions all great thinkers had been thought: the true reason of why do we live. Music put a certain tempo to create melody to move the heart, body and our soul. Living in the world with as much movement and constant thinking is not easy, but Oppenheimer could finally hear the music to understand the world he live in.
The scenes swiftly changes like a parade of Eureka moment: Oppenheimer was known as the quantum mechanic’s expert in America, opening his own class, and marrying his loyal wife, Kitty. But I think the scene’s sequences show that once he heard the music, Oppenheimer was unstoppable. His thirst of curiosity is fulfilled, and lots of his peers cheered him for his unique mind.
But the movie is just to get started. The war came, and Oppenheimer was offered to join Manhattan Project. Little did he knew back then, he would lose his music. Shortly, Manhattan Project worked and USA chose to blew the bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. At this time, Oppenheimer finally realized his music had been long gone, leaving him in a desert of nothingness.
Yet, nothingness wasn’t the one waiting for him after the bomb. As his legendary talked with Einstein, he acknowledged that the bomb had changed everything. They might avoid the explosion chain reactions, yet Oppenheimer knew finally, it happened anyway, gave the impact to everyone in the world. Once again his long-gazing sad eyes was shown, yet this time his sadness was bigger than anyone could imagine.
“Prometheus stole fire from the Gods and gave it to man. For this he was chained to a rock and tortured for eternity.”
The movie showed the tragedy when one of the smartest scientist in the world felt tortured after his biggest invention, slopping down too low from the hill of Eureka. He should had celebrating his invention just like any other world’s greatest thinkers, yet no, Oppenheimer faced his silent torture in darkness and still be questioned about how loyal he was to USA. Only one person stood tall with him until the end: his wife.
“You don’t get to commit sin, and then ask all of us to feel sorry for you when there are consequences.”
Kitty knew before USA prepared the bomb that Oppenheimer would be the one made it. Kitty knew from all this time that his husband would committed a sin so heavy, yet she chose to be with him, by all of the consequences. Her loyalty was perhaps one of the purest love in the world.
At first, I thought what a tragedy to have a mind so great yet it was dragged down only for the human’s greed. But to see the complexity of it, we have to understand how important it was for USA to won The World War II. USA knew Japan wouldn’t surrender. To won the war, USA had to hired two anthropologies whom said any country who could knocked Japanese warrior’s spirit would won the war. So, the bomb was made…
Watching Oppenheimer is like watching a biopic about all of us: humans after the war. We are all the victims of chain reaction the bomb had created. Yet, Oppenheimer was only a victim too. I hope he could hear the music once again…
