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Helen C. Page's avatar

I loved this piece on so many levels.I thought I was the only person on the planet who did not see the brilliance of Nolan's film Oppenheimer. Last summer I watched a documentary called (I think) Trinity on a website called the Criterion Channel that made it's site free for the month of August so viewers could watch Trinity in advance of the release of the Nolan film.

Trinity was a very detailed film about the making of the bomb and after I watched it I didn't feel I needed to see Oppenheimer. Now that I've seen both--Oppenheimer became available to me on someone's Peacock channel-I believe the documentary is a better film for the reasons you so eloquently state in your piece.

Trinity doesn't contain the tense courtroom-like drama of Roger Robb grilling Oppenheimer to strip him of his security clearance, but it does show many of the scientists who worked on the project suffering life-long guilt for their part when they realized they had no idea what they were doing after the films and numbers of the dead and suffering were released.

That is what shocked me the most about Trinity. The scientists had the means to destroy civilizations but basically didn't know what they were doing. They had closed their eyes to the hell they would cause. Sure, their guilt and sorrow is moving but what good does it do all those afflicted in Los Alamos and Japan who were victims of the bomb?

And as we know now, Edward Teller got his way. The effects of the atom bomb are laughable compared with the destruction available today at the push of a button, or a bad decision as evidenced in Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.

So thank you again Andrew for doing what even an Oscar winner couldn't, showing what greatness means, and it's not a little gold statue.

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Styndall's avatar

I saw both films, and really appreciate your deep analysis of each. Fascinating! Your argument for Barbie made me look at that movie with new eyes - it was hard for me to get past the explosion of pink and the sense that it was not worth two hours of my time. I saw Oppenheimer, as well, and just love your juxtaposition of the two films. The New Yorker cover says it all, doesn’t it?

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