Oppenheimer and Barbie are kindred spirits?

So it turns out that Barbie (the doll) and Oppenheimer (the physicist) have something in common.
Neither one liked math. Nor did Einstein.
Barbie was famous for once saying “Math class is tough.” That drew controversy and was soon eliminated from the talking doll’s repertoire.
But now the terrific “Oppenheimer” movie (shown here) – which arrived on the same day as the “Barbie” one – offers a key scene: J. Robert Oppenheimer has been given fresh computations, saying an atomic bomb would be far more destructive than first imagined. He shows them to Albert Einstein, who has no opinion; both men are theoretical physicists, not math men.
Even the way-different movie protagonists have some things in common:
— Both are rail-thin. In the film, a friend suggests Oppenheimer eat something – anything; Barbie occasionally has a kitchen, but nothing seems to happen there.
— Both (we assume) are lustful. “Oppenheimer” affirmed that verbally – and, at times, physically. We’ve never heard that about Barbie, but why else would she have a beach house?
— Both find math tough. Many people do.
— And both sparked the weekend that revived the movie business. Strictly in the opening weekend in the U.S. and Canada, they totaled almost a quarter-billion dollars — $182 million for “Barbie,” $82 million for “Oppenheimer.”
Some people immediately saw both – their senses hitting an overload of pink one moment and brown the next. I settled for one movie (“Oppenheimer”), but I won’t be ghosting Barbie. I couldn’t do that.
As for “Oppenheimer,” I’d been disappointed by Christopher Nolan’s previous historical epic, the 2017 “Dunkirk.” As a director, Nolan was brilliant, as always; as a writer, he didn’t manage to tie it together.
“Oppenheimer,” however, is able to unlock a story of opposite extremes.
Here is joy (the sudden end of a world war) and despair (the unleashing of horror). Here are Americans at their best (linking to achieve something at astonishing speed) and worst (biases and betrayals). How do you turn that into an ending that feels satisfying? In this case, by tying it into a cabinet-confirmation hearing. With quietly perfect performances by Robert Downey Jr. and – suddenly appearing in the final minutes – Oscar-winner Rami Malek, this works powerfully.
Alongside the clever plot, there are moments of whip-smart dialog. The scenes between Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) and the colonel in charge (Matt Damon) are beautifully written and played.
Oppenheimer comes across as a man who juggles pragmatism, humanism and a ceaseless scientific curiosity. He was lacking, perhaps, in people skills … and his specialty, we’re told, wasn’t math.
That’s true of many people, from Barbie to great physicists. Many, instead, co-authored papers with Richard Field, a physicist who is known for his math skills.
Some “Field-Feynman” papers are classics in the physics field. Richard Feynman (Sheldon’s hero in “The Big Bang Theory”) was esteemed. So is Field … who was also a champion gymnast … and whose sister Sally is an actress with two Academy Awards. Pretty people can be smart sometimes; that might even be true of Barbie.