Movie Review: Oppenheimer and the Great Man Theory

Great man or simply in the right place at the right time?

Finally watched Oppenheimer. Next is Barbie I guess.

Something that Squirt and I have talked about enough that he actually knows my opinion by heart is my disdain for the Great Man Theory. This is the theory that there are extraordinary individuals and they drive history. I think it's mostly bullshit.

The opposite of this is the Theory of Multiple Discovery (or, apparently, Germans call it the Zeitgeist Theory). In this theory, inventions and revolutions come when the time is "ripe." There are many instances of things being discovered at the same time: calculus, evolution, relativity, and the light bulb are all great examples.

And what about the atomic bomb? What about Oppenheimer? It's a goddamn three hour movie about this asshole so you would assume that the stance is probably that Oppenheimer was extraordinary.

And yet.

In the end so very much of this movie was petty human flaws. Not just Oppenheimer, though I think it's fair to say he was a bit of a piece of shit, but all the rest as well. There is an honesty for the humans of World War Two in this movie that really resonated. In the end I think the there was quite a bit of an argument that the Atomic bomb, and the Hydrogen bomb, were showing up no matter what.

Because we're humans and we grasp for power and prestige and we need to be able to kill our neighbor, or at least convince ourselves that we should be able to defend ourselves from our neighbor so why not have the bigger stick.

The thing about history is that every individual that came before sucks just as much as those of us living today. My faith isn't really reserved for the individuals. For the "great" men and women of humanity. My faith is instead that we just stumble into something better despite our flawed nature.

Three steps forward, two steps back.

Anyways, it was a sort of interesting story but I doubt I'll be watching it again.