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Oppenheimer (2023)
The Man Who Dared Disturb the Universe: J. Robert Oppenheimer
When I watched Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, I never thought I would discover I had much in common with the "father of the atomic bomb" (apart from the fact that we had both studied at Cambridge). Our admiration T. S. Eliot and John Donne. As soon as I got home, I opened my poetry books and reread the lines mentioned in the movie, trying to understand how Oppenheimer was inspired by them. They all had a common theme: destruction & rebirth
Let's take a look at Eliot's poem, Waste Land, which was published in 1921
April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire
April, which is the symbol of awakening and rebirth, is cruel because when the birds begin to sing and the fields begin to bloom, our narrator feels the darkness, death wish and fear more intensely. While he tells about death, destruction caused by war, loss of faith and hope, loneliness and barrenness with references to Dante, Shakespeare and mythological texts, he also gives signs of rebirth by making references to rain and the rooster that heralds the morning:
Only a cock stood on the rooftree.
Co co rico co co rico.
In a flash of lightning.
Then a damp gust.
Bringing rain.
Oppenheimer collects the particles of reality he finds in the middle of the wasteland and seeks ways to reassemble them differently, Maybe he was after a new and different state of being, like Eliot, like the cubist painter Picasso he admired.
Another poet who inspired him during the design and implementation of the Manhattan Project is John Donne. When General Leslie Grovers asks where the name "Trinity" comes from, Oppenhaimer replies in a letter to him: "There is a poem I love that John Donne wrote just before his death: Hymn to God, My God, in My Sickness. Invocation of My God)." This poem describes a man who is not afraid of death because he believes in rebirth... There is another poem: Batter my heart, three-person'd God'..."
Then he tells that Trinity got its name from this poem of John Donne's best known and most discussed. Trinity in Christian theology, the name given to the divine trinity consisting of the . In this poem quoted by Oppenheimer, the narrator begs the three-person'd God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) to blow, bend, break him. Only if he is chained, he truly will be free, if he is burned and destroyed, he will be reborn.
Based on the assumption that rebirth is not possible without disintegration, destruction, burning, and extinction. And inspired by poets and painters, he "dares to disturb the universe",
Bembeyaz (2021)
"Is the Driver God's Driver?"
The character of Vural Beyaz in the movie Bembeyaz (2021), which I watched on the plane this week, made me think about the concepts of crime, conscience, sin, punishment and faith; It took me back to the books I read years ago, to the theories we discussed in ethics classes during my university years.
(Contains spoilers)
Our hero works in his father's photography studio across from the American Consulate. He is married, has a son. He does not drink, prays, collects the crumbs that fall on the table, carries amulets around his neck. When his son confesses that he cheated and stole money from the local store, he says that this behavior is "wrong" and that God will see it, even if no one else does. He insists that he return the stolen money, saying "I found it on the ground". It teaches him to repent.
Yet he never hesitates to lie while he teaches her son about being honest. When his father says, "Did you smoke", he answers without hesitation, "It's over, you know" He says to his wife "I'm going to brush my teeth" and meets his childhood friend Kartal at the tavern. Saying that the stone that the customer threw at the window of the shop during the fight also damaged the plaster of the wall, he tries to inflict the cost of the crack that has been standing for months. He leaves the shop by making up all kinds of excuses and meets Sonay, whom he has been with for a while.
The murder of his pregnant lover in one of these meetings is the turning point of both the film and Vural's life. There is no question mark in the minds of Vural or the audience that the murder he committed was a "crime" in the sense that Karl Jaspers defines as a "legal crime" in his book The Problem of Guilt. This murder is a crime against existing laws.
Well, when we consider the murder under Karl Jasper's concept of "moral crime", is Vural's action a crime? According to Jaspers, when moral crimes are in question, the decision maker is not the court, but the individual himself, his conscience, his "deepest answer in his heart".
After the murder scene, we begin to witness Vural's conscientious reckoning, which I think is when the movie really begins. Alf Ross says that the determinant of guilt and our answer to this question is the moral universe we live in. According to the Islamic morality that Vural learned from his father and his environment, murder is a sin. However, in a dialogue between them, we witness how they both use the concept of "predestination" to convince themselves that they are morally sinless:
Vural: "You said, 'No one can prevent what will happen and who will die', "When the time comes no one can stop it'," he begins to speak. "If you get hit by a car and die, is it God who brings death?" "Is the driver God's driver?"
We can see how this example disturbed Ibrahim, as he had caused the death of his wife in an accident while driving drunk years ago:
"God's will", "Close this topic, don't ever open it again"
One of the important dialogues of the movie takes place between Vural and the imam:
"Your father also came. After his wife. "Is the door of repentance open?" he asked. This time he repeats for Vural what he said to Imam Ibrahim: "The door of repentance is always open."
In this way, Vural, just like Ibrahim, is convinced that he is "not guilty" as a result of his conscientious reckoning and that he is forgiven after repentance: Sonay was pregnant, she threatened him with going to Ibrahim and telling everything, he was afraid, Sonay's time had already come, it was God's will.
The film made me think of Raskolnikov, another criminal who did not consider himself "guilty" even while in prison, and his arguments. I think the director Necip Caghan Ozdemir wanted us to remember him with the ax symbol.
Does the snow falling on the ax at the end of the movie cover the sins of Ibrahim, Vural, Raskolnikov and the society that allows us to use religious and moral teachings "as it suits us"?
Watch this movie, which also shines in acting and cinematography and them let's talk discuss.