Girls Lives Be Falling Apart

i posted last week about how i went to watch oppenheimer as part of barbenheimer & then ended up writing a 900 word essay about it. three people asked to see the essay so here it is:

a three hour anxiety attack

i watched oppenheimer; had dinner, watched barbie and then showered. i cant stop thinking about this movie. the thing about christopher nolan movies is that there’s always a part of them that makes me remember why i love movies, a part of me that is reminded of their power in the way that they make me feel things. most succinctly, yes, this movie is a three hour anxiety attack because i spent the entirety of the movie anxious, knowing little about this film other than that an atomic bomb is going to be made and dropped on hiroshima and nagasaki.

while i was much too dumb to understand the timeline of events, christopher nolan still makes such a foreign experience feel personal and familiar. relatable even, even though the times have changed. people have always been people, flawed and trusting and selfish. there’s the case of the spy, a jewish man, much like oppenheimer, that oppenheimer initially trusts out of community in hard times. you can understand oppenheimer’s devotion to the war, as someone so personally affected by it. there’s something personal, in the orchestration of the betrayal by robert downey jr (i cannot remember his characters name, truly, he was not that memorable), and how oppenheimer goes from respected to blacklisted. people are petty and cruel. i don’t think i’ve ever seen a movie with a sex scene that i found added to the plot of characters, but there is something so powerful in jean’s death being the only one explicitly shown on screen: humans are selfish and will be our own demise because we, more often than not, cannot find the empathy to care for people who we don’t know. it’s the trolley problem - the death of a lover or the death of hundreds of thousands, or even, the very end of the world.

there’s one line of dialogue that hasn’t left my mind since i finished watching this movie, almost ten hours ago now. it’s the moment in which they’re discussing what cities to bomb, and one character goes ‘not kyoto. there’s too much culture. plus my wife and i honeymooned there’ or something of the sort. it’s the kind of moment that shocked me, how the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians were held in the hands of a guy making decisions based on his honeymoon. it’s the most memorable example of the question ‘who had the right to power’, regarding people’s lives, that consumes this movie. who has the right to create and use a weapon of mass destruction? another that i think of, is the scene with truman. i think that christopher nolan has portrayed a president more accurately than any other piece of media in the past: the president is not just some boss man, he is a guy appointed to look over entire fields he could not possibly understand the weight of, not even if he tried. truman’s depiction in this movie - as does everyone’s, honestly - feels so real because every single person has flaws. everyone here is so deeply flawed and insufferable, even oppenheimer, who likely is only slightly better because he’s aware of it all.

in high school, i was forced to spend two entire years studying world war two and the cold war from every perspective - japan, germany, italy, the united states, the soviet union, china, france and england. so of course, the questions of the ethics and necessity of the dropping of the atomic bomb came up, and there are so many discussions to be had within that. and yet, there wasn’t enough in this film. maybe this is a good thing, given that would require the opinions and analysis of the work of many historians that would likely derail the vision of nolan’s film, it would’ve meant a lot to the little nerd in me specifically.

oppenheimer opposes the hydrogen bomb because if the united states has one; the soviet union, their enemies at the time, would be forced to make one too. on a side note, another moment in this film that made my gut wrench was when this claim is denied on the belief that russia does not have the resources, or knowledge to compete with the united states. and god what a fucking blessing and curse is hindsight, as underestimating russia and the soviet union during a war is just as relevant today. this makes an interesting biopic to me because everyone knows about the atomic bomb. everyone knows about chernobyl and nuclear power. in fact, in the very basic level science classes i took, the world nuclear power became synonymous with chernobyl. bad things happen, and we know it, and this movie helps to warn us a bit about it.

enough on the history nerd stuff i truly did forget how much of my life i spent studying history, even if i only stopped just over a year ago. the sound design of this movie was fucking insane. every piece of audio, the line delivery, everything, made me feel so much (besides rdj - i get what people say about people having faces that know what iphones are) the shots were fucking masterful and despite being a three hour film, there was not a single moment (beyond the sex scenes mayhaps) that i felt dragged on for longer than they needed to. once again, just to end this off, god i fucking loved the sound of this movie, the build up, the anxiety, everything. while i most certainly have not seen enough christopher nolan to say definitively that this is his best work, i can most certainly see why people would say it is so.

i made this tumblr post almost three years ago and i think it’s very sweet that it’s their birthday today when this is getting notes again :)

but sir that’s my emotional support mutual who’s way cooler than me that i can’t believe actually follows me 

babygirl i can romanticize toxic behaviors you can't even imagine

episode eight, a bad summary.

when I block people it's because they're annoying and I can't hire someone to kill them. when people block me though it's because they're obsessed with me and they needed to block me or else they'd jerk off to how funny I am for the rest of time

"it's so fucking over" yeah dude it's 11pm it's the end of the day it's time for you to go to bed. and tomorrow you'll be so fucking back because you'll be awake. go tuck yourself in dude you'll be ok

god, girlhood is just something so special. when i went to watch barbie yesterday i ran to the bathroom during previews and some mom turned to her daughter and said ‘look other people are wearing pink’, and all around the theatre people were commenting on each others outfits, and it was so nice to just have that sense of community and support with absolute strangers you would never see again

they’re best friends

george floyd is not a martyr. he is not a hero. he didn't sacrifice his life. he was murdered. stop thanking him for bursting your bubble of ignorance. stop talking about his legacy as if he chose to die. stop ignoring that police violence continues to exist and continues to murder people.

remember that black lives matter. all over the world.