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Nolan’s Forthcoming “Oppenheimer”: A Historian's Questions, Worries & Challenges
- ggm 3y agoI'm not seeing anything new on this front, since Richard Rhodes. Oppenheimer was hubristic in the extreme, and evidence he was at least misleading about things done and said abounded. I don't have to like that his security clearance was revoked to also think it was inevitable, given the people he'd put offside. I think it extremely unlikely he collaborated with Fuchs or anyone else, or operated off his own bat, despite his history of involvement with the CP. I don't find notes from inside a post soviet Russia say much in that regard. What he said or thought about them, as holders of the keys to bombs is quite distinct from his (non existent) role in helping them get there. At best you would say he was insufficiently cautious. I know Rhodes has been superceded by a more recent Biography, I tend to prefer the older ones. Rhodes was more complete in his writing than Jungk, but I still like "Brighter than a thousand suns" as a book. And again, in the matter of Robert J Oppenheimer, I don't think very much as changed since Jungk wrote his book. It's a mistake to see Hollywood as capable of holding up a mirror to society. It has to distort to achieve it's goals. If you look at how history treats well documented things like Enigma, Turing, Even Facebook and Zuckerberg they get too close to the subject to do it right. I can't rid myself of Rod Steigers face when I think "Napoleon" and I doubt many can get over George G Scott's Patton, or Tom Hank's portrayal of the D-Day landings. We're all going to have to get used to Cillian Murphy photos being "Oppie" despite the differences from reality and fiction being clear. It doesn't take a Historian to say "yea.. careful with what you read into and take from that"