I ventured out to a movie theater for the first time post-Covid for the annual Grateful Dead meet-up in November 2022 (here) and again this year in June (here). I wrote up my assessments for the benefit of commenters who can’t enjoy displaying their superiority with their derision. It is my privilege to share my enthusiasms on Power Line. The Grateful Dead is certainly one.
It took the Dead to draw me back into a movie theater. Over the past week I have gone out to two more films that are of current interest.
Sound of Freedom
Last weekend we attended the wildly successful — successful with conservative audiences, I take it — Sound of Freedom. The film stars Jim Cavelziel, whom I don’t think I have seen since his star turn in Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ.
We went to the film based on the urging of a friend who took the trouble to blast an email to 61 of his closest friends (he has a lot of friends). He advised us that we had made the cut. He and I have been friends since second grade, so it was good to know.
I really wish he had let me know that the email followed up on the appeal that Cavelziel makes in a statement following the movie’s credits. Cavelziel pleads with the audience to undertake word-of-mouth marketing on behalf of the film. We owe it to the children, or something like that.
Based on a true story, as they say, the film depicts the horrors of human trafficking. Cavelziel plays the hero, former DHS special agent Tim Ballard. There aren’t any shades of gray in the film. There are good guys and bad guys. Ballard is beyond good. He is a superhero posing as an ordinary family man. His superpowers are unfailing. The Department of State has posted a brief profile of Ballard here.
I (we) found just about everything in the film to ring false. Whatever was true in the film rang false to me, even the sound of freedom. It lacked the art to induce my (our) suspension of disbelief for a second.
When Cavelziel seeks to enlist the audience in the film’s marketing campaign as well as Ballard’s anti-human trafficking campaign, I wondered who supports the trafficking of children depicted in the film. I oppose it. What am I supposed to do, other than promote the film? I’m taking a pass on promoting the film.
For an illuminating, entertaining, and positive assessment of the film, see John Podhoretz’s Washington Free Beacon review. John is my favorite reviewer. He only goes so far as to acknowledge that the film stretches credulity, a statement that stretched my own credulity.
Oppenheimer
I went to see
Robert J. Oppenheimer is the physicist who was enlisted by General Leslie Groves to lead the development of the atomic bomb before the Nazis did. The film’s depiction of the work at Los Alamos is stirring and intense. I loved the character of General Groves (played by Matt Damon, whom I did not recognize). Groves is canny, shrewd, and even funny. The story of the Manhattan Project as depicted will inspire some viewers to check into it, perhaps via Richard Rhodes’s Making of the Atomic Bomb.
The film is structured around the 1954 hearing on Oppenheimer’s post-war security clearance and the 1959 confirmation hearing of Admiral Lewis Strauss for the position of Secretary of Commerce. See this Senate note. After the war President Truman appointed Strauss to serve as one of the first commissioners and ultimately as chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission. President Eisenhower appointed Strauss to serve as Secretary of Commerce.
In 1947 Strauss appointed Oppenheimer director of the Institute for Advanced Study, where Strauss served as trustee and Albert Einstein as one of the institute’s first faculty members. The film opens with Strauss welcoming Oppenheimer to the institute and directing him to Einstein. According to the film’s fabrication, Strauss believed that Oppenheimer said something to Einstein — something that caused Einstein to disrespect Strauss. Also according to the film, Strauss never forgave Oppenheimer for this. What a joke.
After the war, Oppenheimer and Strauss opposed each other on the development of the hydrogen bomb. The film would have you believe that Strauss’s opposition to Oppenheimer was a personal vendetta that all but drove Strauss insane. Robert Downey plays Strauss and has won great praise for his work in the part. I thought he chewed a lot of scenery at Strauss’s expense. Oppenheimer is the film’s hero; Strauss is the film’s villain. The anti-anti-Communist fog is way too thick for my taste. Neal Freeman’s NRO note on Strauss opens the subject for discussion.
The Institute for Advanced Study has posted a note on the film by IAS Director David Nirenberg including a photo of Oppenheimer and Einstein. The note is drawn from Nirenberg’s Wall Street Journal essay on Oppenheimer.
Again, John Podhoretz provides a useful contrast to my view of the film in just about every respect, although I agree with John that the film is for adults, that it is of high quality, and that it should be seen. John’s mostly positive Free Beacon review is posted here.
