"i Would Kill For You" "i Would Die For You" Okay But Would You Forgive Me If I Forgot Something Important

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 go to bars and coffee shops and breweries and libraries and thrift stores all the time by myself and i have a chill banger time i love my own company. so why is the grocery store a warzone. im fighting for my life. barely make it out alive. if someone even looks at me i want to blow them up with my mind

richard siken admitting to writing johnlock and supernatural fanfiction was not on my 2023 bingo card but like could he drop the ao3

nonblack people hush. this is not your “history being made”. this is not your victory. i know children who attend MY school who were brutalized by police YESTERDAY and thus the battle continues. black people are still being oppressed and affected by generations of trauma, so seeing you rejoice in a sliver of accountability from a system that functions to fuel mass incarceration of our people offers no joy, solace or solidarity. continue to amplify OUR voices and OUR activism keeping our people alive, safe and thriving rather than trying to claim progress over our corpses

moments in bottoms (2023) that have permanently altered my brain chemistry in no specific order

"omg ive always wanted one of these" *holds up a normal grey hoodie*

hazel's "why would you lie to me :(("

when complicated by avril lavigne started playing and we got a scene of josie walking broodily and sad while kicking a can on the ground

"so maybe ill buy a gun" "noOo"

"im gonna fuck up some football players and im buying a gun"

"YESSSSS YESSSSSS QUEENSSS SLAAAAYYY YESSS"

"is it because i said amelia earhart was a fake hero?"

when pj basically attacked hazel with her tongue

that kiss also being like the best kiss ive seen on tv in the last 10 years like unironically im so serious

josie and isobel making out covered in blood

the guy who wanted to blow the school up and literally wrote "BLOW UP SCHOOL" in his diary

"i know you're a black republican but you're the smartest among us"

"im not (gay). i just like gay porn"

hazels mom sleeping with jeff

"i FUCKED your mom" when the mom joke is actually real but also it makes your gf break up with you

hazel

just hazel she's so pretty pls give me a chance

that whole final fight scene

the football team that would kill a player every 20 years and was going to kill jeff by putting pineapple juice, to which he is deadly allergic, in the sprinklers???????????????????

"yes hazel, let's do terrorism"

*does the terrorism*

TWICE

again the guy that wanted to blow up the school who went THAT WAS MY THING after the tree blew up. he was holding a bomb button thingy. where was the bomb. what. let's go back to that for a second. hello. where was the bomb

horny freak #1 horny freak #2

did you know i could break beneath the weight

of the goodness, love, i still carry for you?

i hope olivia’s therapist is getting paid well

idgaf if my parents are disappointed in me I'm not impressed by them either

school spirits is definitely one of the best shows out there right now because there really was an episode that had an A plot that was kidnapping a ghost who stole a body and a C plot of a david bowie dance number and you know just some minor stakeouts and also hell personified