Two Thoughts (Part1)

I have two things playing on my mind today, both totally disconnected, so I'll just pen down two separate sections for both. On second thought, the second topic may warrant a new post, maybe several new posts, but I'll let my thoughts be my master. 

First finally watched Oppenheimer. At 3 hours some minutes, took me three sittings to get through it, not because it was boring, more so cause my neck can only take that much. I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and got reminded at several points of my love for physics in school. It was right on top of the list when it came to favorite subjects, followed by languages. I loved both Hindi and English and also Sanskrit for the 4 years we studied it. However, from the reviews I had imagined it would be a heavy hard to follow movie, but it moved along at an even pace, without indulging in any undue technical details, in a nutshell, it was a movie made for laymen, so was easy to follow. 

There were two things which kept me thinking by the end of the movie, first the lack of any moral scruples on the part of anyone involved in the dropping of the atom bomb. It was dealt with a bit, sort of indicating that Oppenheimer may have felt guilty, but it isn't completely addressed. From what I read post watching the movie, he never expressed any regret but his actions (on how he became a lobbyist for anti-arms race) seemed to indicate that he had a sense of guilt. Maybe there were political reasons for not calling out how wrong it was to use a nuclear weapon. To me nothing can ever justify what the Americans did, and it surprises me that no one ever asks them to be accountable or to apologize. 

The second think which as always amused me is the American fear of communism. For a country which bandies about the badge of being a "country of the free", they do suppress a lot of free thought. Perhaps I lack the context to understand this, and perhaps it was the era of the cold war, they may really have thought that the commies will take on the world. I remember long ago, I think when I visited Washington DC there was some monument built there which was dedicated to "the victims of communism". Made me wonder if there were actually a larger number of communist victims of Americans. 

So anyway that was my two bits on Oppenheimer, and finally I've always had this small little crush on Cillian Murphy right from the Dark Knight times! In the sense I noticed him in the film, inspite of a smaller role. 

Now coming to the next topic, like I said earlier, that's for another post! So let's fly right to it!