'Oppenheimer': immersive, thought-provoking

By OSV News - OSVNews

By John Mulderig

NEW YORK (OSV News) | If writer-director Christopher Nolan's impressive but uneven portrait "Oppenheimer" (Universal) is anything to go by, famed theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer was a highly complex man. As portrayed by Cillian Murphy in a layered performance, he was at once charismatic yet naive, by turns a champion and victim of his times.

Just as its protagonist had his highs and lows, so Nolan's three hour-long film has its strong passages and weaker chapters. The depiction of Oppenheimer's collaboration with the U.S. Army's hard-driving Lt. Gen. Leslie Groves (Matt Damon) in the race to develop the atomic bomb during World War II, for instance, is compelling.

So too is the recounting of his far more complicated relationship with former patron-turned-critic Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.). A wealthy businessman who reached the rank of admiral during his time in the Navy, in the late 1940s Strauss served on the newly-established Atomic Energy Commission alongside Oppenheimer — and the two came into conflict.

Strauss' eventual opposition to him contributed to the travails the left-leaning Oppenheimer faced once anti-Communist sentiment became prevalent during the early stages of the Cold War. These troubles culminated in a hearing to see whether Oppenheimer's temporarily suspended security clearance should be permanently revoked.

Less intriguing than the sequences devoted to these subjects are those detailing Oppenheimer's early career and his murky personal life. Though in some respects devoted to his feisty, bibulous wife, Kitty (Emily Blunt), a biologist, Oppenheimer doesn't hesitate to comfort his troubled psychiatrist ex-girlfriend, Jean (Florence Pugh), by carrying on an affair with her.

Needlessly frank scenes of their erotic interaction, both before and after Oppenheimer's marriage, not only prevent endorsement of this biography for youngsters but constitute material that even some mature viewers may wish to avoid. That's a shame because, as an absorbing historical retrospective, the movie might have had considerable educational value.

If its treatment of bedroom behavior is questionable, "Oppenheimer" is on firmer ground in its balanced approach to the morality of war. Enigmatic and noncommittal, its namesake wavers between rejoicing over Japan's belated surrender and meditating on the horrors required to bring it about.

It may never be definitively established how many soldiers and civilians would have died in an American invasion of the Japanese homeland. But it is safe to say that hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people alive today would never have been born had their forebears fallen in that struggle.

As one of the figures primarily responsible for averting such a catastrophe – at however great a price – Oppenheimer, who died in 1967, aged 62, has left a weighty legacy. While this extensive profile of him may have its flaws, it's an immersive and thought-provoking experience that touches on both the best and worst in human nature.

The film contains strong sexual content, including graphic activity and recurring upper female nudity, an adultery theme, brief gruesome sights, about a half-dozen profanities, a couple of milder oaths, several rough terms and occasional crude and crass language. The OSV News classification is A-III – adults. The Motion Picture Association rating is R — restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

NEW YORK (OSV News) | Life in plastic may be fantastic but the tedious ideology-driven comedy "Barbie" (Warner Bros.) is not. Although genuinely objectionable elements are relatively few, moreover, this is distinctly not a movie for the age group to which the figurine of the title is primarily marketed.

Margot Robbie plays the famous Mattel doll that first arrived on store shelves back in 1959. Together with her sidekick Ken (Ryan Gosling), Barbie inhabits a pink-hued feminist paradise where the president, the nine justices of the Supreme Court and all Nobel Prize winners are women.

Troubled and bewildered by hitherto alien thoughts of death as well as by a sudden physical imperfection — a patch of cellulite on her leg — our heroine consults one of her many alter egos, Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon). The problem, it seems, is that whoever is currently playing with Standard Barbie is sad and her sorrow is affecting her toy.

So it's time to journey to the real world to meet the cause of the difficulty and, presumably, cheer her up sufficiently to restore the status quo. Ken stows away in the back seat of Barbie's car and thus gets to share in the adventure.

Arriving in Los Angeles, Barbie discovers the tribulations — and Ken the joys — of patriarchy. Barbie also learns to her surprise that, far from being revered as a symbol of female empowerment, she's reviled as the embodiment of women's subjugation.

Ken manages to return to Barbie Land first and proceeds to imbue it with male dominance. Thus, by the time Barbie gets back to her natural setting, it's not only been tainted by warped values but turned topsy-turvy.

Barbie will need the cooperation of all her many eponymous iterations to avert cultural and political disaster. Fortunately, she'll also have the help of Gloria (America Ferrera) and Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt), a mother-and-daughter duo from the realm of human beings.

As scripted by director Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, the picture bemoans the plight of women while blithely stereotyping men as selfish, childish and aggressive. With the rivalry of the sexes raging, little of the humor (Will Ferrell plays the dizzy CEO of Mattel) and less of the sentiment (Rhea Perlman plays the wise granny who co-founded the company) works.

Despite all the controversy that continues to swirl around her, Barbie has undeniably proved a long-lasting source of enjoyment for youngsters. Her namesake movie, by contrast, is too closely focused on its own agenda to provide older viewers with much entertainment and too freewheeling to be acceptable for little kids.

The film contains stylized physical violence, a few instances each of mild swearing and crass talk, mature wordplay and brief sexual and anatomical humor. The OSV News classification is A-II – adults and adolescents. The Motion Picture Association rating is PG-13 – parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13. 

John Mulderig is media reviewer for OSV News. Follow him on Twitter @JohnMulderig1.