Justice For the Women of 'Oppenheimer'
glamour.comWarning: Oppenheimer spoilers ahead. Let me begin by saying that I worship at the altar of Christopher Nolan. From The Prestige to The Dark Knight, Inception to Dunkirk, I can never resist his particular brand of steely, high-concept blockbusters – their knotty plots, epic cinematography, thundering scores, sleek interiors, and mysterious and tortured protagonists.
However, these thrills are almost always accompanied by what I consider to be the auteur’s Achilles heel: namely, a penchant for populating his films with severely underdeveloped female characters.There are arguably a couple of exceptions—perhaps and NASA scientists in Interstellar though they, too, are largely defined by their relationships with the men in the film.
Beyond that, however, it’s a veritable wasteland of dead wives who serve to motivate the male leads (Jorja Fox in Memento, Piper Perabo and Rebecca Hall in The Prestige, Marion Cotillard in Inception, character’s wife in Interstellar); dead love interests (Lucy Russell in Following, in The Dark Knight); murdered teenage girls (Crystal Lowe in Insomnia); women desperately in need of rescuing ( in Batman Begins, Elizabeth Debicki in Tenet); dead villains (Marion Cotillard in The Dark Knight Rises, Dimple Kapadia in Tenet); and peppy sidekicks ( in Insomnia, in The Prestige, character in Inception, in The Dark Knight Rises).
Read more on glamour.com