I Really Relate to Oppenheimer Part III
Going to museums all by myself and being a superfan of Manic Street Preachers
I know what you guys are thinking. (1) This nutcase again with her unhealthy Oppenheimer obsession. (2) Who/what are Manic Street Preachers? (3) or maybe Yes I know who the Manics are, but they were nowhere to be found in the movie, so again, what is up with this crazy Oppy groupie?!
Since we are now in Barbenheimer Week #3, I feel it is totally justified for me to write my third article about the Christopher Nolan masterwork. Eventually, I will write about Barbie too, but she will have to wait because honestly, I have so much more Oppenheimer material to work with. I will probably keep doing this until my boy Oppy is out of the theaters, so you lot may as well get used to it cuz so far, it is doing gangbusters at the box office. Yay Chris!
As my readers can surmise by now, my ego is huge like Oppenheimer’s, but the similarities by no means end there. Not many people may have noticed through the extremely stacked cast, but Kenneth Branagh has a couple of scenes, particularly one close to the beginning of the movie where he asks Oppy, “It’s ok if you can’t read the music, but Can You Hear the Music?”
Oppenheimer then replies,
Why Dr. Bohr, respectfully (and if I’m being honest, I am not appreciating your insinuation about my auditory abilities), I most certainly DO have synesthetic powers. I will show you rn. Off I go to the museum where they have a bunch of Cubist paintings, which will then inspire all manner of cantatas in my brain, even if I can’t play one note on a clarinet to save my life.
Unable to secure a Communist Party member of either sex to be his date for the British Museum, Oppenheimer is then forced to go by himself to see if visually consuming artwork will help him devise a plan to escape the evil Cambridge University laboratory. He is looking at a Georges Braque, and then a lightbulb goes off in his head…
Braque…Picasso…Spanish Civil War…Guernica…
By golly, I think I’ve got it! “My Guernica” by Manic Street Preachers. This is what will eventually lead me to get with a hot Commie babe, who will in turn provide the inspo for the name I shall give to the QA test of my newfangled atomic bomb that uses fusion instead of fission — Trinity.
Note to self: must send Niels some flowers to thank him for setting me on this metacognitive path. I am SOOO glad I caught him in time before he bit the apple that I injected with a lethal dose of cyanide. He will just love the bouquet I’ll pick up at the chemist shop on the way back home (along with 2–3 packs of ciggies cuz I’m running low). As will my future Communist Party member gf. Who doesn’t love flowers?!
All kidding aside, there really was a blink-and-you-miss-it montage in the movie where images are dancing in Oppenheimer’s head of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, a book of poetry by Walt Whitman who inspired many (mostly British) composers like Delius and Holst to write symphonies, and in either that scene or one later on that showed or mentioned T.S. Eliot, whose epic poems planted the seeds for scores of musical classics, like Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats — the good version that was on Broadway, not the movie where THE QUEEN Jennifer Hudson’s talents were totally wasted. Taylor Swift and Idris Elba were excellent, though.
From my usual post-viewing research on IMDb, I learned where Nolan first heard Oppenheimer’s name, which is where I had first heard it too. Since the invention of the atomic bomb and the subsequent failure in dealing with the human consequences (in some people’s view — Nolan wisely chose to focus on the Trinity test and hearing/trial aspects, and not go further into this matter of ongoing debate), people who are Gen X and older have grown up knowing about The Cold War. Including Sting, whose “Russians” features the lyric
“How can I save my little boy from Oppenheimer’s deadly toy?”
I want to conclude with two things — one is a Spotify playlist where I added selected tracks from Ludwig Göransson’s Oppenheimer OST:
…And just one more reference to my favorite band in the world if I had to pick only one: MANIC STREET PREACHERS.
As I mentioned in the inaugural post of my I Really Relate to Oppy series, in the end, I had to take a beat in order to process what I had just witnessed. I was having way too many thoughts and memories racing in my mind.
But the main one I am left with in terms of the music is that the invention of “Oppenheimer’s deadly toy” was a Pyrrhic victory. That is the phrase that is currently living rent-free in my head. I’m thinking it had to be like this for Oppy, as well.
And so I’ll leave you with the Manics’ tour de force “P.C.P.” where I first heard that phrase, almost thirty long years ago:
This article first appeared in ’s excellent pub The Riff.
Thanks for shouting out The Riff!
Also: Homeland is fantastic. Lots of intriguing subplots & tight writing.
As always Marmi, you had me chuckling throughout this whole piece.