Oppenheimer (2023)

 

Christopher Nolan makes complex films, with complicated story about conflicted characters. It’s no surprise that he chose to make a film about the Father of Atom Bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer, controversial figure in history. I wouldn’t say that Nolan is no stranger to controversies, he had mostly been in the safe territory and in fact, have been steadily gaining fans, some fierce defender of his complex, abstract and sometimes confounding works.  Yet, Controversies have already started, especially on whether the character has been lionized, and the use of that verse from Bhagavad Gita.

Yes, that verse: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of world”.

Offended many Hindus, it did. Well, let me say having brought up in that culture (they call it Sanadhana Dharma, though my birth certificate says I am a Hindu.) I have understood in the early days that Hindus are mostly very “open minded” (yes, the quote marks are very intentional) and have been taking punches, kicks from those belonging other faiths with smile and blood trickling down their lips (like Rajini in Baasha).

But as I grew up older, there’s this whole generation of folks who went on to gleaning and garnering “facts” and pointers from books and other mediums (yes, medium here also refers to some dudes who do a lot of sitting around and spouting philosophies that usually never get challenged by the so-called followers, who would jump to another guru as soon as the offer is a lot more appealing to their self-ish needs).

So, I was surprised that Hindus got their knickers twisted over this. My parents are Hindus, my brothers are Hindus, I know friends who named their pets Hindu names, instead of the usual Johnny or Whiskers and we would least be affected by a filmmaker who made films about a man dressed up as a bat,

I digress. The use of the verse, ticked many off by those whom I believe have digested the Bhagavad Gita in its entirety. I have only read the Tamil version of Mahabaratha, and that moment was probably in Act 4, scene 35.7b, and I missed it. Damn me for being an insufferable fool for having not taken note of that.

But I watch the film as a fan of the medium, for the entertainment value more than the messages, the jibes against non-religion religious folks, and it worked for me. The presentation was immense, the experience derived from it is something that will stay with me a long time.

It is an experience and I watched it in an ordinary theatre, and would be seeing it on IMAX next week, hopefully. It is very talky, yak, yak, yak and Nolan is, I am afraid, not David Mamet or Quentin Tarantino, for that matter, in the dialogue department. It can frustrate you when you can’t penetrate the words exchanged throughout the three hours runtime, and Nolan knows that. This is where the man also remembered the rest of us poor semi-literates.

The music. The background score was there almost all of the time. I have complained about how this device was overused in Tamil films (with exception of those scored by Ilaiyaraja, who knew how to play with silence too). But here, the music helped us to understand the gravity of the situation. I bet Nolan was telling Ludwig Göransson, who also composed Nolan’s Tenet, “Dude, suspense here….more suspense there….intolerable suspense for this scene”. His previous collaborator Hans Zimmer may have been hiding under the bed when Nolan came looking for him for Tenet, if you know what I mean – how much suspense can that poor German born composer take.

Nolan, clearly a contender for best Hitchcock’s “visual participation shtick” heir after de Palma, also got himself a bevy of heavyweight casts and none of them disappoints. Robert Downey Jr finally gets to kick himself out of the comic book world and prove why he had always been in the A-List for a long time (remember Chaplin, yeah, he knows a biopic when he sees one), and Mat Damon gives a welcome presence, as, at least, we get a bit of humour from him.

And Cillian Murphy. What a casting coupe, to use the cliché. He has always been around, usually in the second class carriage in the train of Nolan’s casting, and this time he was pushed forward as the leading man. It’s as if, Nolan had been waiting for this film to happen to finally give Murphy that break. And the actor never wasted a single moment. If you have watched the clips of actual Oppenheimer you can tell that, though Murphy does not look like him at all, but he nailed the stoicism with that glazed eyes, staring over the horizon. He’s almost in every scene and he commands attention. I send a message to a friend saying that this is an Oscar bait film, and especially in the acting department. Murphy, RDJ and the (sigh, this is frustrating) completely unidentifiably Gary Oldman as Harry S. Truman. I have said that before, the latter should be banned from any award list…he’s too much for the competitors, leave them alone willya Gary?

The presentation. The one film that came to my mind for comparative purposes, not that it needed that, was Oliver Stone’s Nixon (1995), the biopic of a much maligned historical figure. It is not so much the character but the way the story was told, jumping from flashbacks to flashbacks, use of colour, grainy images that Stone has known for deploying to keep the audiences at the edge of the seat. Here, flashbacks are told in colour and the contemporary setting in colour. This is not exactly path breaking story telling technique, it has been done before, but Nolan was again being kind to us. With the story jumping from past to a nearer past, then back to present, the switch of colour among others really helps to keep us on the page.

The cinematography has always been Nolan’s biggest strength and he doesn’t fail us here. It glides through from one moment to another, to that explosive section two thirds and yet kept us firmly interested as the following proceeding could have bored the heck out of the attention impaired.

This has to be the movie of the year, as I gauged even before the trailer was released. There’s something about the subject and the director’s credential that told me that this is gonna be huge. And it is. It’s gonna garner lots of notice come awards season next year. The whole Barbieheimer “fight” was not for nothing. The heaviness of one complements the simplicity of the other, and the filmmakers of both films were sporting enough to play along with the “competition” and by the look of it, both films are really reaping lotsa moolah it in… and most importantly, bring more and more folks back to the movie theatres.  

no p.A.I.n no g.A.I.n: AI and penmanship: Part 1

Q: Would I be worried about Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a writer?

A: What is the opposite of artificial intelligence? If you say “politicians”, you are wrong because most of what’s floating on consciousness are artificial as well. My answer would be: Human intelligence of course. While artificial limbs and parts make up for none, would artificial intelligence do the same, considering that in hundreds and  thousands years of existence, homo sapiens still rely on some magnificent force in sky to help them pass their exams, and bless their sandwiches.

Do we need AI? And without bothering about the flow, I’m gonna jump to it: what the fudge will AI do to my job as a writer?

Seriously. The notion that AI would (permitted to?) infiltrate and take over many jobs is both a threat and a joke. Threat, as in, you will become redundant and will soon be kowtowing to robot overlords. You will be waste products, mostly used for amusement of the android or slaves doing work like reaching for the coin dropped down between the grilles of a drain cover. 

Joke, as in, who’s gonna curry favour with the boss? (do, what in a more vulgar language involve lifting of the male reproduction organ pair). Actually that’s not funny…. It’s even “threat”ier than the aforementioned doomsday scenario. The sentinel being will replicate, even mutate with the bosses gene and go predator on our collective asses. 

But that’s me, most of my favourite sci-fi flicks are dystopian in nature and has either Sigourney Weaver or Ron Perlman in it – AI is hardly shown with saintly glow. Think of HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). AI can take over some functions, but writing is not an assembly line product, and it will never be like how machine took over productions of many manufacturing entities No, I actually welcome it. Here’s why:

I have had my ups and downs as a writer over the years -  yet worrying about competing with other writers, or dealing with  heated rivalries had never been the issues I had to be burdened with. At most, it was the insecurities with my own work. I recall now the time when a sub-editor who works second shift, coming in the next evening with a face that seemed to have joy sucked slowly through a straw overnight, told me to be more careful as my writing were full of mistakes.

Couple of months later he was no longer working there, possibly out looking for joy transfusion.

But that struck me. Hit me hard. It always does. Having had no formal education in English outside of the standard English they teach here in primary and high school, till today I have this insecurity about my grasp of the language. In the final exam in school (SPM), I scored higher in Malay than English. And I never even had a Malay girlfriend in school. The tragedy! Well, almost….

Thankfully, over time (quite a long time, actually) I managed to accept that I can go on writing with all those mistakes because everyone does that. Even most seasoned writers make mistakes, or write terribly. Back then, I have corrected my seniors and handed them the proof-read page and they just went on as if the red-inked scribbles were specks of dust on windshield. As I got older, I have my own writing corrected and I never felt as bad as I used to, but damn it. It sure do hit you a bit, especially when the one that corrected you is a young punk. 

But I realise this, of course. What makes writers unique is the voice. Sure, there are all types of writing, but you can still make your voice come through in the most droll academic pieces no matter how sleep inducing it is. 

Which would be lost as AI takes over the entire writing assignments, no matter if its academic, or industries like media and advertising/public relations. Feed the sonovabitch some stuff and see it vomit out copies, speeches, press releases and worryingly, scripts. Sleep inducing looks more prospective now. 

Collateral 

Which is why the type of writing that are most affected happen to be the ones that doesn’t require that “voice”, Namely, where drones of writer churn out mass manufactured copies, like Buzzfeed, where the headlines itself was meant to keep you staring at it for more than ten second: some of these headlines are longer than excuses heard in bedrooms. I mean, look at an actual sample of a headline:

“Kim Kardashian’s 7-Year-Old Son Saint West Said He Often Tells Her That She’s “Nothing” To Him, And People Have Many Thoughts”

That is, if you are curious about the “thoughts”, you click the bait (yes, that’s what these pieces are known as, clickbaits) and fall into the rabbit hole with ad banners and more link tunnels and secret pop-up doors to sealing a deal with the bankruptcy court, or even better, run afoul with the law.  

Sooner or later, the discerning ones are going to boycott all forms of clickbaiting. In fact, when it comes to all things online, look at the websites. The whole damned thing is dying – simply because the contents sucked platypus ass. The ones that are strong and surviving, are e-commerce platforms and ones that actually got bigger are the media sites, where I am sure, AI cannot get hold of in its entirety thanks to….writers.

Creative how?

So, would AI make writers redundant? Some, yes. Copywriting will go the way of the dodos for lesser products and services – they can all be dealt with by even Chatgpts. Creative writing would still be handled by the hands that can. There’s a reason why only Arthur can wield the Excalibur. And authors, their creative calibre. See, I can make it rhyme, try and beat me, AI. 

AI can be the maids, slaves, if I may, to do the cleaning up bit, touching up a grammar there, removing the misspelled trashes, and replacing with fresh fragrant ones. They will be the R2D2s and C3PO combined, intelligent but are subject to our whip lashing. They would still be tools. Maids. But not the type Schwarzenegger sleep with.. 

We use them to be precise about our “voice” in the writings. With dead writing, no matter how creative it can program itself into being,  I am sure many would clamour to hear those human ”voices” in writing, as inn performances based on those brilliantly written scripts that has its own unique colour. Especially scripts, in fact. No AI can do the verbal machine-gunning that David Mamet is known for, nor could create genuine hilarity ala Mel Brooks, which stemmed from his own unique worldview and upbringing.

Features with interviews, unless written in Q&A format, can never have the flair that a writer who throws her character in the mix when fleshing out the page detailing the encounters to the readers, who will see the colour and taste the flavour the author had intended in the piece.

This is where, In fact, I welcome AI. It is gonna separate the real writers from hacks. It will filter the gold nuggets from the muds and sand. The pretenders and the hoaxers will be weeded out. The shells once occupied by hacks will be filled by the AI bots. The ones with real panache, the ones that grind away at night, spurred by increasingly loud growling deadline – they stay!

It all goes back during the moment when automating and mechanisation was taking over the lives at the beginning of last century. A perfect example of that paranoia would be Charles Chaplin’s 1936 masterpiece film, Modern Times. A strong satire on technology taking over our life, and aims at the heart of it all – capitalism too, can be cruel, cold and as inhuman as socialism/communism is seen from the other side of the fence. The heart is missing. We always want that. Digital is cold, analogue is warm – just ask sound engineers.   

Like all tools, AI is starting out young, earnest, innocent. But age corrupts, vile corrupts absolutely. It was a writer who warned about artificial intelligence, if one were to recall 2001: Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke, filmed and released in 1968 by director Stanley Kubrick, in which the central villain was a sentient AI, named HAL. A bloody red light, that’s it.

Now, how will impact journalism. Well, I am confused with my own argument now. I shall tackle this another day. Or get the ChatGPT to write part two, I’m just too lazy.