I mentioned a few days ago that I really like it when I can find the same story, either repeated by the same person over time or when the same story is repeated by two different people. I particularly like the latter because it helps to improve the accuracy of the story on its own.
Below are two descriptions of what is very likely the same FFI 4th Company event.
The first was written in 1955 by Dr. Michel Planas (the son of the commanding officer), who served as the main medical officer for the unit. It is almost certain that Dr. Planas was working from memory because he wrote that on August 25, 1944, the company archive that my grandfather helped Captain Planas keep had been destroyed:
At the time of leaving, we collect the survivors of the group which had committed to the North of St Marcel-les-Valence. This group had fallen on an ambush set up at the exit of the bridge under the Valence-Grenoble railway line. The chief muleteer Farnetti had been killed, two mules killed by incendiary bullets, the rest of the troop had been able to fall back and the two mule-drivers - PINOT and DEFAYSSE - brought back the two remaining mules. DEFAYSSE was slightly injured. One of the mules killed led by FARNETTI carried the box which contained all the archives of the Company held by the Captain and the Radio LUBINSKI.
Alas, that tells us that very few contemporary records for my grandfather's FFI unit still exist. While that makes me a little sad, this story was particularly exciting to me personally because it directly mentions my grandfather: "Radio Lubinski."
Here's how my grandfather described the death of the men and mules in 1974:
During the night the cooks of the 4th Company carrying on mules their equipment and supplies have been ordered to follow the Company a few hours later. In the meantime, after the American tanks withdrew and we were asleep in a field, the mule convoy passed by and for some unexplained reason has not been stopped by any patrol. As a result the cooks alone approached the critical highway No 7. Suddenly they found themselves under enemy fire. Two were killed, two others escaped, the mules were killed and some of them burned by a supply of gasoline they carried and which caught fire.
Grandpa didn't give the date for that event, nor did he mention the archive he helped maintain. But between the two stories, I have:
Possible date: 25 August 1945.
Confirmation of the gruesome deaths of the animals
Additional info about my grandfather's responsibilities with the company archive (which I didn't know about).
Probable location: Near RN-7 between Valence and the Chabeuil Airfield
Approximate location of the event. National Route 7 ("N7" on the map) between Valence and the Chabeuil airfield
One of my favorite things when researching my grandfather's story, is when I happen upon the same story, either written at different times or written by different people. The details often vary a little from version to version, but comparing them allows me to get a better feel for what really happened. Here's a particularly exciting story that happened to my Grandpa Arthur, written over a period of 44 years. I'm going to present them in the order that I encountered them. At the end, I include an excerpt written by Dr. Michel Planas that I believe describes the same hike.
1988: I recorded Arthur's oral testimony:
Then we had a long, long march up the valley because a parachuting was coming, and the same night we went up the mountain. This was very, very … I had to carry my submachine gun, my radio, ammunition for the submachine gun, grenade – not plastic grenade, but ordinary grenade – and food and my personal belonging. I was loaded by I don’t know how many pounds, but this was very, very heavy and we had to walk very, very fast, because they expected Germans to be behind us in a hurry, and it was extremely hard.
I love mountains, but that day I hated them. I thought that an additional few steps would not be possible – we came to the end of our endurance, and we kept going and going and going, faster and faster and faster. Well, okay.
Well then we came back down again.
1974: In 2021 my mother gave me a written account that she found in Grandpa's effects after he died. I believe Arthur wrote this in 1974, just before his oldest daughter (my Aunt Lilly) died of multiple sclerosis.
Almost at the same time a news reached our commander through intelligence that Germans were preparing an expedition in our direction. Did they know about the parachuting? In any event we had to move at once and fast and climb the mountain. Pack mules and men formed a long line on the hunter’s trail, sometimes in the open, sometimes hidden in timber. I was heavily loaded. “Biscuit” box, not heavy but unhandy with sharp corners, submachine gun, cartridges (or bullets?), knapsack with personal belongings and some food, a canteen with wine, hand grenades. We had to carry a lot of ammunition, much more than regular infantry soldiers, because we had no supply service and had no adequate means of transportation.
Orders kept coming “faster, faster please”. Soon the muscles started aching. Still faster. It seems that two hundred yards more is the maximum the human strength could stand. And we kept going for miles. Faster, faster please. Each step caused a pain, an acute pain, an actual suffering. What else could we do? Germans were perhaps behind. Abandon part of the load, a few grenades? No! No! No!
Finally we are on the plateau, breathing heavily. A few patrols are dispatched around. The antenna of my biscuit radio is soon supported by the branches and leaves of an oak-tree. Everybody remain silent, so the enemy could not spot us easily. I fell asleep.
Midnight. The night is cool, very cool indeed, on the mountain top. Somebody wakes me. Get up! What is the matter? We are going back down! But parachuting? There will be no parachuting. Why? Nobody knows, but Captain Sanglier, perhaps.
1944: In 2022, my aunt sent me a folder of materials that had also been in Grandpa's effects, and in that folder, I found an article that Grandpa had written in the fall of 1944. It was handwritten in French, on the back of a police report, of all things.
But here's the version of the story he wrote in October of 1944 (I've updated the punctuation and and capitalization a little). The language is often poetic, and any awkward phrasing is due to an imperfect translation:
The order to march has just been given. The company leaves its advanced position facing the plain to join its comrades holding the plateau some thousand meters above. The interminable column winds its way along mountain paths and tracks, sometimes visible from afar, sometimes rushing into the woods, where the friendly foliage hides it, one might say materially, from foreign birds of prey.
Little by little, the pace of our progress slows. A growing fatigue takes hold of each man, whose shoulders bend under the burden of the mountain bag, weapons and as much ammunition as it was humanly possible to carry. The march has already lasted several hours, and the company is not yet halfway there. Time passes. Each step begins to cause muscle pain, which rapidly increases. Another couple of hundred meters, and we can't go any further, it seems. But at the end of this distance, the willpower wears us down, and we're still moving forward... We're still 10 km from the goal, drops of sweat flood our faces, drip into our eyes, blinding us, but we're still moving forward....
A storm hits the mountain. The sky is furrowed with lightning. The thunder seems to want to burst the rocks. A torrential rain floods the woods. It seems that the earth and the heavens merge into a single chaos. There's not a thread of dryness left on us. The shoes, weighed down by the water they absorbed, wade through the sunken path, which suddenly became a torrent. But we are moving forward, we are still moving forward….
Night has fallen by the time the company finally arrives at its destination. It will occupy two farms and a sheepfold. In near-darkness, as there is no electricity on the plateau, the various groups hunker down in the sheds and haylofts. We organize the guard service and the kitchens.
1955: Michel Planas wrote a history of the the maquis unit both he and my grandfather served in, and this is what he wrote about what I believe is the same event:
We leave at nightfall and we take, above our cantonments, the forest path which cuts LA RAYE obliquely...
Night had fallen very dark.
No more road, we advance painfully while dragging the heavily laden mules.
After four hours of effort, we arrive in the grassy areas of the plateau where we find the Marquet farm which was still burning.
We set up the locations for automatic weapons and establish the guard tower. Then, we enter a small sheepfold that served as a grain shed and we take a few moments to rest a few tens of meters from the road...
At dawn, we have the visit of MERMOZ from the BARBU Community who resided in the farm located below the road to the South West of our position...
We go down again with Richard on OURCHES ... After an uneventful descent and a short hello to Compagnie PIERRE, we arrive at OURCHES where a few hours of sleep seemed welcome.
Some of the more interesting times in Uncle Paul's SOE training, happened while he was at Specialist Training School (STS) 52. He was there far longer than normal, over 3 months, instead of the more typical six weeks. Why was he posted at STS 52 for so long? My best guess is that it's because D-Day happened, and the Allied forces needed all hands on deck, both in Normandy and also for the coordination of Operation Overlord back in England.
I have reason to believe that he was indeed being kept busy during that time. First of all, he was promoted to "Local Sergeant" on June 5th, 1944 (the day before D-Day). From what I can tell, that would have been an unpaid, temporary position given to more senior/responsible individuals, to cover the group's needs at that time. In other words - they needed someone to step up and take on some sort of effort. Sometimes it was given to different students during training to see how they did with command responsibilities. Since there was formal paperwork existing, and that it happened immediately before D-Day, I favor the former.
Click to enlarge:
Paul's promotion to Local Sergeant. "Lebeque" was the name Paul used as a trainee in the SOE.
Paul was also given several leaves during this period. Here's one dated June 1, 1944, at the height of pre-invasion preparation. He was on a week's leave when the entry was made. I believe that leaves during wartime and particularly during training, were very unusual.
June 1, 1944: "and is at present on a week's leave."
Also of note, there was a list of four 2-day leaves, and the address where he stayed during those leaves in 1944: June 10-11, June 24-25, July 8-9, and July 29-30. That last one is a guess due to an unfortunately-placed hole-punch. I can see that it's 20-something, and due to the fact that the other leaves were two days, I assume that one was too.
Scarsdale (not "Searsdale") Villas is a street in London and #60 is relatively near Kensington Palace.
I tried to construct a bigger timeline, and it looks something like this (all dates came from UKNA file):
May 19, 1944: Arrived at STS 52 (which is located a couple of hours NW of London by train)
May 30, 1944: Paycheck was authorized by Sûreté/SOE, and it mentions Major Amies and Lt. Ides Floor, both important people within the SOE organization.
June 1, 1944: Training record indicates:
This student arrived on 19.5.44 and is at present on a week’s leave. I am at the moment unable to make a detailed report on this man his reaction to the initial security talk was satisfactory. As far as can be judged at present he seems to be quite a reasonable type.
June 5, 1944: Promoted to local sergeant
June 10, 1944: Training record indicates:
Arrived 19.5.44. Keen and enthusiastic about his work. Is a quick thinker and should be able to take care of himself in an emergency. Temperate in his habits and not easily attracted to the opposite sex. He has common sense and should give no trouble with security.
June 10-11, 1944: On leave in London
June 17 1944: Training record indicates:
Nothing to add to previous reports.
June 24-25, 1944: On leave in London
July 8-9, 1944: On leave in London
July 15, 1944: Training record indicates:
This student is very keen and enthusiastic. He possesses plenty of common sense and his character is stable. His habits are moderate, he is a good mixer in a quiet inconspicuous way. His security is good and he understands its importance at all times.
July 29-30, 1944: On leave in London
July 30, 1944: Training record indicates:
Always in a good humour. Takes a few drinks now and again and when he is a little merry sings obscene songs in French, of which he has a huge repertoire. This he does only in the School canteen. When in the village, he is well behaved.
August 24, 1944: Training record indicates:
Will attend course at STS 35 on 27.8.44.
August 25, 1944: Training record indicates:
No security objection to the above.
August 26, 1944: Training record indicates:
Departed 26.8.44. Previous impressions are confirmed. His morale is excellent. Furthermore, I believe him to possess certain qualities of leadership.
So my best guess is that Paul was essentially working two jobs, commuting regularly between Thame and London, helping with Operation Overlord coordination, and receiving advanced training in wireless security. I suspect the 1 week leave mentioned on 1 June 1944, was a leave from school to help in London, and not time off. I think the Scarsdale Villa leaves were actual time off. I imagine he was working 18-20 hour days for weeks on end, and he needed time off to rest.
As for the 60 Scarsdale Villa address, I suspect the Allies kept places for their people to crash when they needed it - almost certainly easier to guarantee safety and security for the war effort, and this was probably one of those places, very temporary, short-term housing.
The address still exists, but it either wasn't built until the late 1970s or early 1980s (suggesting the original building was torn down at some point), or the outside is original, but the inside was completely rebuilt. The wording on the real estate page linked below isn't clear: "60 Scarsdale Villas, London is a 5 bedroom terraced house with 2,433 square feet of internal space built between 1976 and 1982." Was the structure built 1976-1982 or was the internal space built in those years?
Image source: The Move Market At the MoveMarket URL, scroll to the picture, then use the slider bar underneath it to see more pictures.
I didn't link to internal pictures because that space is fully modern, and photos can't reveal what he might have experienced when he stayed there. But if you want to see pictures of the inside, click on the Move Market URL above.
A friend pointed out some interesting possibilities though:
He was probably not really on leave, as he was sent to the same downtown London address that many times? He was doing something official with the Belgian government in exile, probably as a translator.
My other vanilla ice cream reviews can be found here.
This ice cream recipe doesn't have a sweet syrup, so it's likely to freeze harder, but it does use a texture agent, which grabs free water molecules and helps prevent the ice cream from getting icy. It also has more vanilla than most - it calls for two Mexican vanilla beans and 1/2 teaspoon of Mexican vanilla extract. I like the more intense flavor, and the lack of eggs in the custard is barely noticeable.
Making the custard works a bit differently: you cook the sugar, vanilla and 3/4 of the milk until it reaches a simmer. Then you add in the reserved milk with the cornstarch (there's a LOT of cornstarch - 1.5 tbsp), and when it's thickened, you stir in the cream after the cooking is done. The result is a much thinner, easier-to-pour custard, and it was a lot easier to get into the churn the next day.
I used both vanilla beans and Pure Vanilla Extract by Villa Vainilla. The extract is great (though the amber color is surprising - I'm accustomed to vanilla extract being the color of coffee). The beans, on the other hand, were a little small and more dried out than I'd like, but they still produced a good flavor. I prefer vanilla beans from Vanilla Bean Kings which are by far my favorites, but they happened to be sold out of Mexican vanilla at the time I was purchasing ingredients for this recipe.
Substitutions and Techniques:
Turbinado sugar instead of white sugar (always) as I prefer the flavor.
I used tapioca flour/starch in place of corn starch, 1:1 ratio.
The recipe directs you to pour the custard through a sieve before chilling. I ommitted that step, and let it chill overnight with the vanilla beans in place. I fished them out before pouring the chilled custard into the ice cream maker.
Results:
Same day: The soft-serve stage is silky smooth and the vanilla flavor is great.
Next day: The flavor is quite good, particularly given that it's an eggless custard. I definitely prefer the strong vanilla flavor that this recipe provides. However, while the texture is good, it's definitely not as smooth as other recipes I've tried, both with or without eggs.
The recipe is small - it barely makes a quart.
Uses:
I stirred in some candied pecans and layered in some leftover caramel sauce to make a ripple.
Chris's review:What do I say about Poor Things? It's like Sid and Marty Krofft got together with David Lynch and Larry Flynt to film a fairy tale. The result is a bizarre, amoral, phantasmagoric reworking of Big. The acting and visuals were just superb. I find myself especially impressed by Mark Ruffalo's theatricality. I imagine people are going to hate or love this movie.
As an aside, a lot of uptight viewers, I think, are going to cite the frank sexuality as a reason kids shouldn't see the film. I don't think that, but I'd be uncomfortable trying to explain the abusive power dynamics on display to at least some kids, even if the portrayal is entirely reasonable. And I'd be even more uncomfortable NOT having a discussion and just letting them take it in uncritically.
Cathy's Review:Poor Things is a deeply, deeply weird movie, and it gives David Lynch some serious competition for the title of Weirdest Movie I've Ever Seen. It may even be weirder than Sorry to Bother You about the equisapiens (after we finished that one, my daughter stomped around the house for a good 15 minutes exclaiming, "What the f--------ck?!?")
It's hard to know what to say about it. It's a retelling of Frankenstein, but without the constant handwringing of the creator, who in this case is ironically named Godwin but often referred to as God), who is loving and matter-of-fact toward his adopted daughter. It's also a gorgeous surrealist steampunk Wizard-of-Ozzy sort of film with more nudity and sex than I've ever seen in a movie without an X rating. One reviewer (who loved it) wrote, "Absolutely batshit, utterly filthy and a true original." Another reviewer quoted that same line but hated the movie, adding, "See it and hate yourself in the morning." While the movie made me uncomfortable at times, I'm on the side of the first reviewer and loved it. I am a little uncomfortable using "filthy," to describe sexual themes, but it does seem to fit here (more on that later).
The acting is fantastic, the cinematography is beautiful and fantastical, and the costumes are excellent. Like several other movies this year, Poor Things plays with black and white as a storytelling technique. In this case, it mirrors the character's development, starting out in black-and-white (to reflect an infant's vision) and then turning to color as she matures.
The movie is set in a fantasy Victorian time, but only sort of. No one cares about Bella's weird dancing, nor even seems to notice her constantly bare legs (it's common for her to be dressed in Victorian fashions from the waist up, but with shorts on her lower half or see-through outfits that allow you to see her limbs through the cloth. It also uses modern swear words with surprising frequency (a comedy of manners this is not). Yet when Bella sets out on a sexual quest in a brothel, her lover calls her a whore (as does the maid back in London).
The movie was also often funny but with incredibly dark themes. For one thing, Bella is a toddler in an adult body, so she has no boundaries; she says and does whatever pops into her mind in a wonderfully matter-of-fact, though very socially unacceptable, way.
Her childishness also makes the sex scenes feel a little rape-adjacent, yet she's undeniably an enthusiastic and willing participant. Later, she is willing but less enthusiastic when she discovers that some men don't care about the woman's pleasure. And, of course, there's sex work (always a light-hearted topic), though Bella handles it with a curious and businesslike (ahem) approach.
Another dark theme is unethical and even abusive medical experimentation. Bella's creation is certainly problematic, but at least she is treated in a loving (if not always kind) manner by her adoptive father. Godwin's father, however, was the real monster, and it's particularly bittersweet when Godwin sees the good that came from his father's abuses. The movie depicts these issues in a slightly funny, poignant manner. I found myself chuckling at first, then saying, "....ooooh," as the implications hit me.
Ultimately, the movie allows Bella to discover herself, her agency, and her freedom, and in showing us her journey toward independence, she reveals (almost too many of) the problems within our modern society. This is why I don't like using the word "filthy" to refer to the sex in this movie; we should be abandoning our prudish Victorian attitudes towards something normal, fun, and not inherently immoral.
(Pithy Reviews; and Ranking of 10 out of 10 nominees):
American Fiction(Brilliantly ironic smart comedy; Cathy: 1, Chris: 4)
Past Lives (Excellent exploration of love and human connections; Cathy 2, Chris: 3)
Cathy's Review:The Zone of Interest isn't a typical Holocaust movie. It doesn't show even a single explicit horror. There are no mass graves, no scenes of people being herded into the gas chambers, no beatings, no rapes, no horrific human experiments, no walking skeletons with rotting teeth. In fact, it doesn't depict a single death. It's a slow-burning movie that builds and builds, and because of that lack of overt horror, I didn't raise emotional barriers to it, and it got under my skin in a way that something obviously horrifying couldn't.
It reminds me a little of Ring Lardner's classic unreliable narrator story Haircut. What the town barber tells his new customer, and what he actually reveals are two very different things. This movie isn't at all unreliable, however, when it portrays the commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss, and his wife Hedwig, as people who just want what everyone wants: a happy marriage, a nice home, and a good place to raise their children. Höss is a family man, who lovingly carries his sleeping daughters up to bed and reads them fairy tales such as Hansel and Gretel (notably the scene where Gretel pushes the witch into the oven).
And they create an idyllic oasis together in the countryside of Poland. It's a beautiful area, with rivers to swim and boat in and open fields to ride horses, and they live in a villa with a wonderful walled yard with extensive gardens, massive greenhouses, and a pool for the children to play in. They even have servants with whom Hedwig generously shares some superfluous silk undergarments.
The movie reveals so much more, through implication and oblique references. The viewer slowly realizes the servants receiving Hedwig's largesse aren't servants but slaves taken from the camp right next door. And those superfluous luxury items? They were stolen from other victims.
The movie focuses on this idyllic life and only shows the horror indirectly - displaying the red glow of the ovens at night, the smoke pouring from the smokestacks, which can always be seen over the garden walls and through the windows, and the constant sounds of horror. Screams, gunshots, and sobbing. During the worst of it, a motorcycle revs its engines -- evidently, the commandant had a soldier ride his motorcycle up and down the road to drown out the worst of the sounds.
The business of the camp is handled matter-of-factly, with inventors showing Höss the plans for a ring crematorium that allows for the efficient cyclical load-heat-cool-unload process that will allow it to operate 24 hours per day, and the movie leaves the audience to realize the implications. And this was just a regular day for a man just doing his job.
The look and feel of the movie was quite weird. It was all filmed with hidden fixed cameras (the actors didn't even know where they were), so there are no closeups, no zooms, and no panoramic vistas. The voice track was deemphasized and quiet, allowing the sounds of the camp to have greater prominence, and those two things together made the viewer feel like a spy peeping at them from a distance, almost as if you are in the camp itself, watching the family live this idyllic life. The movie kept me feeling weird and off-kilter because these were just regular people, and it's horrifying that it's possible to identify with them. The phrase "the banality of evil" gets tossed around in articles about the movie, and, well ... yeah.
The movie also depicted the erosion of the Höss children's souls at very young ages. One of the most horrifying scenes in the movie shows one of the younger sons playing with his toy soldiers, and in the background, you can hear his own father ordering the executions of some problematic prisoners. The boy, who looked to be about five years old, just plays on with learned willful ignorance.
The movie also gradually reveals just what monsters Rudolph and Hedwig were, until at the end you hate them, but also know that each of us has the potential to behave similarly.
There is only one genuinely good character in the movie, a young Polish girl who hides food for the prisoners in the dead of night. Interestingly, her scenes are filmed with a thermal camera, so she literally glows with warmth, giving her the look of an angel in the darkness. It is a stark contrast to the coldness of the Höss family.
I only have three criticisms. First, the subtitles were problematic -- they were too low on the screen, so I constantly had to look down and then back up to see the whole picture, and they also should have used a color that showed up against the background better.
The second, (and this isn't exactly a criticism) is that the audience must have at least a little understanding of what happened at Auschwitz to fully understand the implications. For example, at the beginning of the film, Hedwig receives a valuable fur coat and carefully examines the lining, and someone who doesn't know about the Holocaust might not realize the coat is property stolen from a murder victim. In the next scene she hands the coat to one of her slaves and asks that it be cleaned and the lining be repaired. Does the viewer know that it was common for Jewish women trying to escape the Nazis, to hide jewelry and money in the linings or hems of their clothing? If you don't know that, you wouldn't see the implication - that she was coolly hunting for valuables, and she herself probably slit the lining to retrieve a desperate woman's treasure.
And third, the movie never explains the title. The assumption is that we see what we want to see and ignore the rest, which is certainly an important theme in the movie. But the term actually refers to the area surrounding the camp - the Nazis removed all the locals in a large ring around the camps, to create a buffer zone to hide their activities. But that zone also provided empty space for the Höss family to create their happy little oasis within sight and hearing of what was arguably the worst instance of human atrocity of all time.
Chris's review:I go back and forth trying to decide if it was a horror or a drama. The Zone of Interest was a dramatic handling of a horrific subject. The central brilliant feature is that the focus of the film remains 'just around the corner' from the Holocaust by concentrating on the mundane life of the commandant of Auschwitz and his family while vigorously including horrors in every shot -- the women casually joking about spoils of the victims next door, (not very) distant gunshots are constant in the neighborhood of the camp, and of course plumes of smoke and human remains appear routinely. The audio was amazing and very supportive of the movie -- distinct, stylistic, evocative, unsettling, simultaneously subtle and obvious. And the more I think on it, the more the display of frank callousness on the part of the participants both impresses and sickens me.
There is an inclusion in the story of a local Polish girl leaving fruit for the inmates. It stands out and is jarring and weird. It's also a ray of loveliness in a pretty bleak narrative. I think it didn't make the movie stronger and was a darling that the director couldn't bring himself to kill.
I'm a pretty emotional viewer. I empathize strongly with people and am affected strongly by narrative depictions. It's fairly common for me to cry a little in sadness or joy during powerful moments. It was weird and interesting to have a Holocaust movie that was creepy and atmospheric but mostly didn't doink with my emotions. It slid a creeping horror into my brain instead of getting me to grieve over specific people and tragedies. There was really only one powerful gut-punch, quite late in the movie. That slowly escalating discomfort spiked suddenly with a particular display of the magnitude and...industrialization of the German enterprise.
Chris's review:Whether due to forward-marching age or an ever more stimulating environment, my attention span is suffering and Oppenheimer is three hours long. It drags in a few spots that might have been filed down more, but mostly it's worth it -- even having watched it twice in just three months. It's an obviously interesting and consequential piece of history, but the film's artistry is what really got me. I don't think I'm a very sophisticated or perceptive viewer, but the successful use of repeated motif and audio techniques stand out starkly from the average movie and even among the best picture nominations. The acting is great and desaturating the image when telling Strauss' story is neat technique.
It was cool seeing all of these super-famous scientists actually doing stuff rather than merely looking down at us from their pantheon. I bet knowing more about them as individuals would reveal a lot of fun easter-eggs. (Feynman playing bongos mostly off-screen is one I recognized, but I'm guessing there's a lot more to get from it.)
It is also interesting for me to consider how the movie demonstrates the shift in zeitgeist over time. I'm not any kind of pacifist and I don't necessarily think that dropping the bomb on Japan was morally bankrupt, but I am part of modern society and we have a certain shared reticence toward nuclear weapons. The movie deals with some of the scientists burdened with doubt, but there's this scene when Truman announces the nuking of Hiroshima where crowds of radio-listeners erupt in cheers. The illustration is stark -- of the attitude difference between a nation engaged in a just and pressing war and one dealing with some guilt almost eighty years later.
Cathy's Review: It's difficult to write about Oppenheimer. It's a very good movie, and important. It's also a very long movie (but it is mostly mesmerizing). It's not a simple story; the topic is much too complex for simple or straightforward storytelling to do it justice, and the complicated interwoven structure reflects that. It is very well-acted (Robert Downey Jr. particularly impressed me with a restrained performance that both hid yet revealed his character's seething anger), and the cinematography and sound are nothing short of spectacular.
I firmly believe that a book or movie should be as long as it needs to be to tell the story and both films and books have been getting shorter in the last 15 years, and I'm glad this movie is bucking that trend. It took its time and told a big story, covering 30 years of a man's life and encompassing themes such as: what it is to be an American, McCarthyism, atomic bombs, politics, and morality. It also interweaves the careers of Oppenheimer and Lewis Strauss on the Atomic Energy Commission. The length ended up being OK, and the pacing was also pretty good, though not perfect, and my mind rarely wandered. It's an intense three hours, though, and both times I watched the movie, I did so over three nights - the intensity gets to me after a while, and there is no comic relief to break it up.
Perhaps the most challenging thing to describe is the structure of the movie. I prefer simple, straightforward storytelling, and this movie is definitely not that. There are (I think?) three primary timelines; the first covers Oppie's student days in the 1920s through his time on the Manhattan Project and ending in 1947, the second covers the hearings in 1954 where they are considering revoking his security clearance. The final timeline takes place in 1959 during the senate hearings to confirm Eisenhower's appointment of Strauss to commerce secretary. I believe that the main story is the second timeline - the security clearance hearings. The earlier timeline is told in frequent flashbacks, leading us to understand how the investigation came about, and the final timeline is depicted as flash-forwards, showing the fall-out (pun intended) of those investigations. The three timelines were skillfully woven together, and I never would have believed such a structure could be successful, yet Christopher Nolan pulled it off.
Along with Killers of the Flower Moon, and Maestro,Oppenheimer mixes black and white and color as a storytelling technique, and I think it does so the most skillfully. It also turns the "color in the present/B&W to show the past" on its head, using the B&W to depict the latest of the three timelines. However, that is a coincidence - black and white was used when Lewis Strauss was the scene's main character, and color when the action centered on Oppenheimer. The meaning is clear - Oppenheimer's worldview is complex and broader, and Strauss's is narrower and less flexible. That was perhaps unfair - Strauss is portrayed as the villain, and I believe he was in this instance. However, the real Strauss did a lot of good in his life.
One criticism I've read was that the movie failed to depict the efforts of foreign governments and scientists to help move the Manhattan Project forward, and I disagree - foreign involvement was suggested very well, given the many foreign accents in the movie. These people were clearly not all Americans (at least, not initially). Another was that it failed to depict the impact the Manhattan Project had on the local Native American populations in New Mexico, and this one I agree with. (They didn't bother to warn the locals to not drink the poisoned rainwater for a few days following the Trinity explosion). That shouldn't have been ignored.
(Pithy Reviews; and Rankings of 8 out of 10 nominees):
American Fiction(Brilliantly ironic smart comedy; Cathy: 1, Chris 2)
Past Lives (Excellent exploration of love and human connections; Cathy 3, Chris 1)
Barbie (Spectacular and sly doll's-eye-view of womanhood; Cathy 2, Chris 3)
Oppenheimer (Long, important, and explosive; Cathy: 4, Chris: 4)
The Holdovers (Very good teacher/student relationship story; Cathy 5, Chris 5)
