As much as I like Florence Pugh, I'm glad they made fun of her sex scenes:
Please understand: it would be a pleasure and an honor to be sexually ravaged, pillaged, and left for dead by the likes of Florence Pugh and her plump, perky nipples. She really is a looker; she's all the sexier for being a legitimately talented actress, and I'm a filthy old creep for thinking any of this (she's only 27 as of this writing). But you really need to see "Oppenheimer" to understand what I mean when I say that Pugh's two or three sex scenes in the movie feel gratuitous, unnecessary, exploitative and, dare I say, ridiculous (not because Pugh is a bad actress). It galls me to say such prudish things, but God help me, there really was no story-advancing reason for her to be naked aside from giving Christopher Nolan a chance to dangle Pugh lasciviously before audiences ("playing with time," my ass—playing with ass, more like, eh, Nolan?). Maybe one of my readers who has seen the film can leap to Nolan's defense and proudly argue how Pugh's nude scenes are vital to the story. I'm open to persuasion. For me, Pugh's character, Jean Tatlock, is important because, as the "side chick," she shows us how Oppenheimer's wife Kitty tolerates the situation. Kitty is the wife of a maverick genius tasked with the biggest national-defense project in history up to that point, and she sees up close that one of the side effects of Oppenheimer's rock-star status is his tendency to play the field. Beyond that, what purpose does Jean Tatlock serve in the story? Oh, yeah—she kills herself because she's mentally unstable, so we get a moment where Oppenheimer grieves for her in front of his wife—again making the situation all the more poignant for poor Kitty, who probably could have saved thousands of Japanese lives by killing her wayward husband. Maybe I should read the book American Prometheus to see how Jean Tatlock is handled there, but I can't bring myself to see the cinematic version of Tatlock as much more than eye candy incarnated by the admittedly fetching Florence Pugh.
Wait, so are you arguing against Pugh's sex scenes or against the character of Tatlock being in the story at all? It sounds like you start out with the former but finish with the latter.
ReplyDeleteTatlock was one of my minor gripes with the film that I mentioned in my review; in essence, my reaction was that the relationship between Oppenheimer and Tatlock didn't get enough time to develop to the point that her suicide would have been as emotionally impactful as we apparently supposed to think it is. But I also hesitate to say that the relationship should have been given more time given how long the film already is. Given the choice between cutting Tatlock's character entirely and making the film even more unwieldy by giving the relationship the time it needed to develop, I would honestly choose the former.
As for the sex scenes themselves, I agree that they felt gratuitous. Not to be a prude or anything, but I honestly don't think you ever really need nudity in a film or television show. I suppose there are probably exceptions to that, though. Actually, one scene comes to mind: in Amadeus, when Mozart's wife Constanze goes to Salieri to beg for his help, he tells her he will help them if she sleeps with him. Later, though, when she strips naked in front of him, he just dismisses her. I think for the absolute humiliation of that scene to work, Constanze kind of needs to be standing there naked in front of him. The vast majority of the time, though, nudity on screen seems little more than titillation to me. Not that I think sex scenes are unnecessary, but you generally don't need nudity to tell the story.
I wrote:
ReplyDeleteFor me, Pugh's character, Jean Tatlock, is important because, as the "side chick," she shows us how Oppenheimer's wife Kitty tolerates the situation.
I should hope that it's clear I see Jean as important to the story and not to be jettisoned. Later on, I ask what further purpose she might serve, which isn't a denial of her importance, but is an implication that Jean functions as little more than a plot device.* I think Kitty is a crucial character, and part of her character development comes from the presence of Jean.
My "eye candy" remark at the end refers back to the crass issue of having those sex scenes in there at all.
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*This puts me close to your sentiment that the Oppenheimer/Tatlock relationship could have been fleshed out more. But I agree that that would have bulked up an already-bulky narrative.
Sounds like we're more or less on the same page.
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