Today is Friday, August 11, 2023. As I mentioned in Wednesday’s blog, yesterday was our ninth anniversary, so we spent the entire day out, beginning with having brunch at Russ & Daughters on Orchard Street and then seeing Christopher Nolan’s three-hour biopic of J. Robert Oppenheimer at the Regal Essex Crossing movie theater located on Delancey Street. Then we had dinner at an Italian restaurant called Lavagna, located at 545 East 5th Street. We had eaten there pre-COVID several times, and we particularly enjoyed it. Even though we had dinner reservations at a French restaurant called Boucherie at eight, but we got out of Oppenheimer around 5:30. So we just canceled this reservation when we got to Lavagna.

As for the “father of the atomic bomb,” the three-hour biography directed by Christopher Nolan succeeds in delivering the goods, despite some reservations. It is based on the biography called The American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherman in which the title character, played to perfection by Cillian Murphy, earns the appellation because he created fire in the guise of the A-bomb that forever changed humankind. Just as Prometheus was punished by Zeus because he stole fire to give back to mankind, Oppenheimer is wracked by his decision to drop the atom bomb on Japan and is also denied his security clearance by the very same government that secured his brilliant mind in the development of the weapon that led to the conclusion of World War II.

The film is populated by many characters who were in Oppenheimer’s orbit during the early years of the Second World War. There is Emily Blunt who plays Kitty Oppenheimer, the professor’s long-suffering wife; Florence Pugh who portrays Oppenheimer’s mistress, Jean Tatlock, who was an unrepentant communist and femme fatale in the vein of Hollywood’s Gloria Graham who would have played the role in the 1940s or 1950s; Matt Damon as General Leslie Groves who became Oppenheimer’s military supervisor during the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos in New Mexico; Robert Downey, Jr. as Lewis Strauss, the Atomic Energy Commission chair who is later revealed to be Oppenheimer’s mortal foe while pretending to be an ally of his all throughout their long association. (Here Downey smolders in his hatred of the mild-mannered mathematician and University of California, Berkeley, professor. )

There is a very long section of the film devoted to Strauss’s unveiling as the person who made it possible for the U.S. government to rescind Oppenheimer’s security clearance and thus tarnish his reputation post-World War II. This occurs in a black-and-white longueur of a Senate hearing devoted to getting Strauss appointed to Eisenhower’s cabinet. There is also the simultaneous hearing in which Oppenheimer is denied his security clearance which effectively ends his access to the government’s atomic secrets and thus his career as a nuclear physicist.

Some friends who have seen the film thought the film too long. Elliot and I somewhat agreed. The earlier scenes of Oppenheimer as a student in Europe seem to lag and the last half of the film, with too much emphasis placed on both hearings, could have been clipped a little, but overall, we thought the film was a very satisfying account of one man’s reluctant contribution to the nuclear age in the latter half of the twentieth century.

There are critics of the film, I’m now reading, who feel that by not showing images of Hiroshima or Nagasaki, the film’s message is blunted. The only way we see some of the terrible effects of the bombs is through Oppenheimer’s nightmares of scarred flesh and his haunted expression shown throughout the movie. These critics contend that the film “plays into a problematic pattern of whitewashing both the history and threat of nuclear war by appropriating the trauma of the Japanese victims.” (This quote is from a new online article by Mike Worby for Looper entitled “Oppenheimer: Why Some Critics Are Accusing Christopher Nolan’s Film Of ‘Sanitizing’ the Bomb.”) Why don’t you see the film and decide for yourself then.

In the world of news, or, more specifically, Trumpland, today District Judge Tanya Chutkan treated former president Donald Dumpf like a “truant child” in a hearing before her in court this morning as both lawyers for the defense, Dumpf, and the Department of Justice, represented by special counsel Jack Smith, met for a pretrial hearing today to discuss the details of the upcoming case against the former president. An online article for Talking Points Memo details what occurred in the judge’s courtroom by Emine Yucel entitled “Judge Repeatedly Reminds Lawyers Trump Will Be Treated Like Any Criminal Defendant.”

The judge, Tanya Chutkan, issued a protective order related to the massive trove of discovery materials Dumpf and his legal team are expected to receive – as early as today – from the government as part of special counsel Jack Smith’s January 6 criminal case.

Throughout the hearing, where the parties made a case for what they would like the order to include, Chutkan largely sided with the defense, but also made a point to emphasize that Dumpf is a criminal defendant first and foremost in her courtroom and that he will have restrictions like every other defendant.

Chutkan put the “truant child” in his place, by saying, “He is a criminal defendant. He is going to have restrictions like every other criminal defendant.”

She specifically noted that “inflammatory” comments about the case from the defendant would not be tolerated and will lead to efforts on her part to speed his trial, as she wouldn’t want any potential jury to be influenced by his remarks.

Addressing Dumpf lawyer John Lauro, Chutkan said, “I caution you and your client to take special care in your public statements about this case.” She offered this warning to the big-mouth lawyer who has already been interviewed on far-right news outlets, “I will take whatever measures are necessary to safeguard the integrity of these proceedings.”

The no-nonsense Washington judge even threatened to take the case to trial sooner rather than later which would be an anathema to the defendant who prefers to stretch out the inevitable reckoning he might suffer at the hands of an impartial jury before the election of 2o24. This should scare the former president into adhering to her conditions. If not, she could expedite the case as early as possible.

The bulk of the hearing was focused on figuring out the specifics of how the tranche of documents the defense team will receive from the government will be handled.

When the defense team requested that their client be able to review sensitive material without a counsel present in the room, the government lawyer objected, saying, “Defense counsel has a certain level of trust in the defendant that the government does not.” The lawyer indicated that Dumpf could try to photocopy or otherwise reproduce or take a picture of the sensitive materials when he’s only by himself. The prosecutor said something unintentionally humorous, when he stated, “He has a tendency to desire to hold onto material he knows he should not have.”

Eventually, Chutkan sided with the request to permit Dumpf to review sensitive evidence without a watcher from his legal team, but added a clause to her order that said Dumpf would be required to review information without any electronic devices that can be used to make copies of the material.

The judge also added that the defense team will be responsible for ensuring that any notes Dumpf might take while reviewing the evidence won’t include the “personally identifying information” of witnesses.

The judge did side with the prosecutors who wanted to include “hundreds” of recordings of witness interviews and transcripts in “sensitive” materials that are barred from public disclosure.

So it would seem that from today’s hearing that Judge Tanya Chutkan is no Eileen Cannon overseeing the documents case in Florida. This judge appears not to be impressed with the former television personality of The Apprentice. We should be comforted that this judge has been assigned to this momentous criminal case involving a rogue former president.

Have a nice weekend.

Stay safe and be well.