Cinematic Biographies

Over the course of the last few months, I have subjected myself to two cinematic biographies, both of which examined the life of a major twentieth-century figure. The first of these was Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer (which I was encouraged to see in the IMAX version). Mind you, this was a narrative I had encountered several times on television (not to mention the number of Los Alamos scientists that I came to know during my undergraduate years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology).

The second was Bradley Cooper’s Maestro, whose title referred to the polymath Leonard Bernstein. This was a case in which my knowledge was limited to Bernstein himself. I never crossed paths with him, nor did I ever attend a concert that he conducted. However, thanks to his many television programs, I encountered him far more often than Oppenheimer (whom I knew only through different biographical accounts). Where Nolan was objectively detached for the sake of providing a narrative that was both accurate and engaging, Cooper came off as determined to provide a warts-and-all account of Bernstein, perhaps not realizing how many warts he would encounter as he advanced through the narrative.

From the viewpoint of a social network, my “path of links” to Oppenheimer was short. Where Bernstein was concerned, the paths were fewer, if not lengthier. They were also decidedly negative. One link led to a member of the faculty at the Juilliard School, who completed the path with a single sentence: (“Such a sweet boy; it’s a pity he’s incompetent!”). I also encountered a revue performed at the Plaza Hotel, which recorded a long patter song about the plans to create Lincoln Center. The only line I remember is the description of Bernstein: “The only man to perform both Creation and Messiah in an autobiographical style.”

As I began to follow the path down Cooper’s narrative, I felt sympathetic to his efforts to provide a warts-and-all account of Bernstein. Unfortunately, there were just too damned many warts. By the time I was about halfway through the film, I felt as if they had already overwhelmed me, leaving me to wonder just how much more-of-the-same I had to endure. I also felt frustrated at how few of the other members of the cast were clearly identified.

(I saw Oppenheimer with a former colleague, whose academic experience was similar to my own. After the film had ended, she asked if I had recognized Richard Feynman. I replied by asking if she saw Kurt Gödel! Feynman was easier to track, thanks to the photograph of him with a bongo drum in The Feynman Lectures on Physics. I was able to identify Gödel standing next to Albert Einstein, with his back to the camera, thanks to an anecdote passed down to me by one of the Bell Labs researchers. Yes, Gödel was a member of the cast; and anyone that checks the Full Cast & Crew IMDb Web page will find him there!)

I suppose that the difference between the two films amounted to the you-had-to-be-there experience. My guess is that Nolan wanted to account for as many Los Alamos personalities as he could manage. That endowed his narrative with a rich diversity in his “cast of characters,” even if the “social network distance” to any of those characters becomes longer for each new generation. Watching Bernstein made me thankful that music had always been a secondary area of study, meaning that I would never have had to deal with Bernstein’s conducting technique as a member of the New York Philharmonic!

Now, about Einstein going for long walks with Gödel …