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Hello, this is going to be an encore episode from last year, July of 2023,
where we talked about Oppenheimer, the movie by Christopher Nolan, and you know, I watched it on
the day it came out and discussed with Masako shortly after. Now that Oppenheimer is available
in Japan and people are talking about it, I thought why not share this old episode again
to sort of put my two cents in there. And don't worry, there will be no spoilers,
no ネタバレ. So if you haven't watched it, you're safe, basically. And just a little
public service announcement, the お便りフォームは引き続き4月中は開けておこうと思っていますので、ぜひ質問・リクエスト・感想 or just say hello, anything.
I'll close this お便りフォーム at the end of April, so it's anonymous, you can spend
however long as you want. And we will appreciate and read every single one of them. Thank you.
Enjoy the episode. All right. Hello, Masako.
It's been a couple weeks since we last talked. I am 30 years old now, as of yesterday. So I'm
older than the last time we spoke. Okay, happy birthday. Thank you. But as you know, I don't
have friends in this town since I just moved. So my birthday, I was all alone, 100% solo,
which is not that bad. I've done something like this before. My birthday is in summer,
which means there's no school. So usually, it's just family. Or, you know, if I'm like,
away from family, and there's no school, I'm just by myself, or, you know, my friends. So this is
not new. That's okay. But the biggest problem I had was, which one do I watch? Barbie or Oppenheimer?
Okay. Are they promoting these two movies in Japan? I don't think so. Yet.
Neither of them? Okay. Yeah, I guess. I guess. I don't know. It usually takes a little bit of time.
But Barbie is by Greta Gerwig, who did Lady Bird and Little Woman most recently.
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It's her new movie, and it's got Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, Sim Liu, Michael Cera,
like funny all-star casts. It looks very funny. It looks very satirical, you know,
making fun of the perfection obsession that Barbie symbolizes, right? So I thought that was
fun, too. And Oppenheimer is a completely different kind of movie, but also an A-list
caster movie. You know, Cillian Murphy's playing it, Emily Blunt's in it, Matt Damon's in it,
and it's Christopher Nolan's movie. I don't know if you watched his Inception or Interstellar.
I did. Yeah. So his newest movie is this one, Oppenheimer. And Barbie is all pink,
Technicolor, fuchsia pink, happy vibes, and Oppenheimer is all depressing,
dark. I don't know, in case you don't know who Oppenheimer is, he is a physicist credited for
the making of the atomic bomb, so he's often referred to as the father of atomic bomb.
He was the director of the Manhattan Project, who did the development of atomic bombs and
you know, made it possible to have this technology. So it was a story about him, his,
you know, rise to the sort of, you know, America's national hero, right? Like,
ended the World War II, effectively, to like, fall after that. Like, he struggled a lot with the
moral conundrum of the impact that his bomb had, and his project had, and so many sort of political
messiness that he got himself into. He lost a lot of friends doing this, and his reputation
basically was tarnished after, you know, being credited as one of the national heroes of
America, right? And the ally forces in general. So he, it's a complicated figure, you know, and he,
on all accounts, he seems, you know, pretty brilliant, but after the Manhattan Project,
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together with him being, having to be busy with other sort of more political interests of his,
like, I don't think he did much research after that. I don't think he was able to really go
back to doing physics full time. You know, like, neither his sort of fame nor his reputation
allowed him to do that. So it's like a biopic, like a story of a scientist. So I like both of
the directors, I was really curious, and they were both coming out in the same day. So the biggest
debate in America was like, which one are you going to watch first, Barbie or Oppenheimer?
Right? Because those are two extremely different vibes for a movie. But as a solo movie to watch
on your birthday, I felt like Oppenheimer is a little bit less sad than watching Barbie alone.
Because, like, I feel like I want to watch Barbie with my friends and comment on, you know,
exactly, like, I want to be able to chat and like, laugh at the movie theater if I'm going,
and I want to go there with my friends. Whereas like, Oppenheimer, I can just like,
depressing too. Yeah.
Yeah. Like, I mean, I'm sure plenty of my scientist friends would have loved to watch with me.
But I'm okay with, like, watching on my own. Like, I do, not frequently, but I have watched movies
alone in movie theater, and I don't hate it, that experience. So it just that it was very weird,
because this is kind of like a blockbuster, blockbuster, I guess, but like, highly anticipated
movie of a very famous director. So it felt a little bit funny to go alone, but I did anyway.
And it was great. I think it was worth it. Worth it, because it, like, I wouldn't say it was like,
the best work of his. I mean, I completely love Inception and Interstellar. Like, I think those
are really, like, interesting film who are like, that are using very interesting techniques to
convey complete new stories. I love his Batman too. But like, so if you're like, live it, you
know, did he live up to that level? Not for me. But it was definitely a solid biopic, I think.
And every time I watch a biopic that's based on scientists, I have a few things that, like,
comes to my mind. And it did this time as well. So the first thing is, how unrealistic
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the Jikken scene is, or like, the Eureka moment part is. I think, I mean, okay, given that
Oppenheimer is a theoretical physicist, so, you know, they're, like, sitting around a table,
like, scribbling equations on paper, like, that part was, like, realistic, and it's fine.
Like, I actually, I think this movie did a decent job of showing how unglamorous that process is.
You know, there was no, like, random writing on a board, like, dramatic music in the background,
and like, lightbulb moment, you know, none of that was there. But I thought it was funny,
as an experimentalist, that it's like, no real theoretical physicist would get,
would even be allowed to get so close to the experiment. Because like, there's a scene where
he's, like, actually in the lab, like, touching the bomb or something, right? I was just like,
dude, no one would do that. No theorist would do that. One, they'd be scared out of their mind,
and two, no experimentalist will let any theorist touch their experiment.
So I thought it was funny. But of course, you know, cinema has to happen. So that's fine.
The other thing is, I am so glad that my line of research is not that controversial, you know, ever.
That's it for the show today. Thanks for listening, and find us
at EigoDescience on Twitter, that is E-I-G-O-D-E-S-C-I-E-N-C-E. See you next time!
