Oppie and Me

I recently watched the 2023 cinematic blockbuster Oppenheimer, a three-hour montage of set- pieces based on the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer. I thought it was pretty good, in the sense that it held my attention for three hours.

Its flitting back and forth between multiple time-frames might have been a bit much. I thought it could have been more effective as a mini-series with only occasional flashbacks but then it would have been over 12 hours long!

One scene that did catch my eye, however, was when Oppenheimer gave a speech to the scientists who had developed the bomb (after its successful test.) It was in a hall and it was not a movie set: it was the actual main building of the Los Alamos Ranch School. I had been there ten years ago as seen captured in my stylized rendition above. Oppenheimer wasn’t the only person of note whose presence graced this space, the writers Gore Vidal and William S. Burroughs were there before the war—as students!