Does Oppenheimer (2023) believe that J. Robert Oppenheimer was a Bad* man, or, is it simply impossible to honestly and accurately portray the events of Oppenheimer's life in such a way that a Good* audience comes away seeing him as anything better than a Bad* man?
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i saw oppenheimer yesterday in the theater, as you do, and while i have not fully processed my thoughts on it because it is three hours long, very dense, and i have adhd and thus i could not possibly do so after only one viewing, i have seen people react to (mostly) fairly media-illiterate teenagers on tiktok saying the movie doesn't do enough to vilify it's protagonist. and these reactions are mostly abridged versions of the reactor's reading of the film which see the film as vehemently opposed to oppenheimer as a man and a symbol. and i can't help but wonder if we're seeing some degree of confirmation bias here?
i am operating from the (correct) belief that any Good* person sees the use of nuclear weapons against japan as one of the worst things the united states, or any other country, has done in the history of humanity. and based on my admittedly weak understanding of the film, i don't feel like it's really super committed to a view on oppenheimer. more accurately, i don't feel like it's super committed to having a view on oppenheimer at all. idk it is incredibly likely that i am wrong to some extent about the movie and i will have a clearer take on it whenever i get around to seeing it again. but i don't know that an accurate portrayal of events necessarily means a film endorses the logical endpoint of assessing those events.