To be uncomfortable with the film Oppenheimer?

[LKM23]

I haven't seen the film, I'm sure it's a brilliant thriller and will be a Blockbuster hit. I don't think I'll watch it though, it makes my feel really uncomfortable.

It feels like a man who at the end of the day killed thousands of people and damaged millions is being celebrated and turned into a hero.

I lived in Japan for 10 years in my twenties. I visited both Hiroshima and Nagasaki and spent a lot of time with people both directly and indirectly affected by the dropping of the bombs. Those scars are real and still there and will be for a very very long time. It changed Japan and the people who live there forever and at the end of the day I think he was an awful person.

AIBU?

I also noticed that the speech was very fast in this movie and then it is dealing with technical terms too.

A colleague just saw it and it and said it was dull. I'll give it a miss.

My husband went to Japan and went to a museum about the bombings. He recorded a playing of a children's song/lullyaby from one of the school's when the bomb struck. It still gives me chills when I listen to it. So much innocencse lost needlessly.

That is also true - it is a very heavy film dealing with a massive subject so there is a lot for people to get their heads around, which isn't your normal requirement for a summer blockbuster.

I went in to the film having read the book it's based on and with a science background and was still a bit lost in places because I was trying to sort out the science jargon and again getting distracted from what was going on on the screen; I went with a friend who has no science knowledge at all beyond GCSE physics from 20 years ago and a lot of it just went over her head, but she wasn't bothered as she wasn't interested in figuring it out and was happy to just tune that out as "scientists talk science"; and a friend of mine in the US who is studying physics at Caltech who went to see it loved how much science jargon was included as it really enhanced the viewing for her (and there were a few throwaway lines here and there that had more significance if you understood the science but didn't take anything away if you didn't).

A colleague just saw it and it and said it was dull. I'll give it a miss.

I get all the comments about face blindness, and not being able to keep up with all the characters - I think I'd have struggled a bit if I hadn't read the book, but dull? Dull?? I don't get this at all. I saw it on Saturday and cannot stop thinking about it. 3 hours went by in a flash. Best film I've seen for years.

I'm surprised by this. I do often struggle with distinguishing characters in films, but didn't find this to be an issue here at all! Cilian Murphy is notably distinctive, and the other characters had a wide range of distinctive features other than face shape: some had strong accents, some were notably tall or short, or notably less slim than Oppenheimer, or wore rimless glasses (Lawrence) or heavy-framed glasses (Strauss) or uniforms (Groves, who also sported a moustache) etc.

And I didn't find the amount of "science talk" off-putting at all. It wasn't necessary to understand it in any depth to follow the plot, and most of it was just background - e.g., we see someone delivering the last line of a lecture, then the point of the scene is the conversation they have afterwards. I'm not really sure how a serious film about this topic could be made with any less scientific detail, to be honest!

I don’t have face blindness (and haven’t seen Oppenheimer yet), but would agree that in some films several of the actors look very like each other and it can be confusing to the plot. I think at the very least casting directors should choose actors with different hair colours and styles.

... I think at the very least casting directors should choose actors with different hair colours and styles.

ProbIem is in the case of this film it is a WW2 supposedly fact based drama, and messing around with hairstyles just for the sake of easy ID would completely screw it's credibility in the eyes of those familiar with appearance of the historical figures being portrayed.

The military tended ever so slightly to have short hair, the "longhairs" at Los Alamos (the scientists) actually tended to be short/shortish hair as well (e.g. Oppenheimer and even the young rebels like Feynman at that time in his life) or bald (e.g. Fermi) .... TBH Einstein probably had the longest hair...

Not sure you can really change any of that.

In addition to what @notimagain said about hair style and length, it's a relevant to the story that many of the scientists at Los Alamos were Jewish. This helps in understanding why they may have been motivated to develop weapons which could be used to defeat Nazi Germany,* especially as they knew the Germans were ahead of them in trying to develop a nuclear weapon. It's therefore likely that they were mostly dark haired.

*Of course, in the end the bomb wasn't ready in time to use in Europe.

Come on now - would you be suggesting that in films where there is an obvious historical and ethnic cast too?

I don’t think they look anything like each other. Cillian Murphy is very distinctive at all times and as Matt Damon and Robert Downey junior are so famous you recognise them anyway.

Heh, in the clips/trailers I’ve seen I thought Matt Damon was Leonardo Di Caprio! Maybe I do have face blindness.

They are a bit similar - age, bit bloated in the face, heavy eyes on Matt but maybe that was make up.

er no, if you are face blind, you wouldn't recognise them..... and the point is, mot films are difficult for anyone severely face blind, this particular film is difficult for anyone even slightly face blind.

Hence the comments

so people who have no facial recognition difficulties saying they have no facial recognition difficulties with this film is not in any way relevant.

The two culprits

@Zippeedidodah agreed. My DGF was an allied conscript who probably would have been brutally murdered. It's conerning that the current fashion is lack of nuance. (Although overall I would prefer no nuclear weapons to have been invented and the Japanese army to have been defeated earlier in a non nuclear way)

Ha ha! Excellent. I suppose if you ain’t got the bone structure (Paul Newman, Clint Eastwood) you lose your looks as you age.

That was @Gingerboy22 .

That is so odd as the "white men in suits" are very identifiable by the very well known actors that portray them.

I have bad face blindness and there are very few celebs that I would recognise. I score really highly on any face recognition test. I had to stop watching the Sopranos as I had no idea who anyone who the main character was. I need extra things to hook onto, so women are often easier as they’re more diverse hair styles/clothing.

I find it really bad in real life. I work as a midwife and remember once looking after a woman in labour for hours and hours who had a friend with her. Both had dark hair. After the baby was born I had left them in the room for a bit and then went back in the room and started talking to the friend thinking she was the woman who had just given birth! The woman who’d just given birth was actually in the shower.

if I see someone out of context I will struggle to know that I know them. It’s awful when people come up to me and obviously know me. When Dd was at primary school there was a girl in her class with a similar brown bob and I couldn’t tell them apart when they came out of school.

I could tell who Oppenheimer was all the way through the film as he looked quite distinctive. I knew he was the guy from Peaky Blinders but if I hadn’t known that I wouldn’t have recognised him and I watched Peaky Blinders in lock down. I did recognise Matt Damon actually. You say there were other famous actors in it but I didn’t recognise anyone else.

See, I had no idea Robert Downey Junior was in it. Who was he?

Hopefully you didn't get the babies mixed up :-)

I don't have an answer to the face blindness issue, sorry, but looking the group image in the following link from the the Pocono Conference (one of my favourite images from the era) I can see why some people might have problems..

https://www.privatdozent.co/p/oppenheimers-letter-of-recommendation-511

Strauss - the guy right at the end who didn't get the nomination.

Ha ha, well babies definitely all look the same. I check the ankle tags! 😁

See, he looks nothing like this. 🤷‍♀️😂

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Strauss