This is a revised 2016 article focusing exclusively on Wiley's art and its relationship with craft and labour.
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Some weeks ago I posted a glowing review of SAM's recent Kehinde Wiley show, which I loved. I stand by that review, but wish to add some context which I find troubling enough to consider necessary.

I knew when I saw the show that Wiley didn't paint everything in the paintings, but the implications of both Wiley's and SAM's blasé attitude toward this enormous fact didn't hit me until after taking in the show a second time.

The most disappointing element is the lack of demand by writers, thinkers and viewers to know who made the paintings and how. When concept takes center stage in the appreciation of art, talent, skill, and craftsmanship get relegated to secondary levels of importance, which means the authors of that skill and how they accomplish their work becomes less consequential. 

To look through every one of the books on Wiley at the show and have none of them even address the multiplicity of authorship question is not simply an insult to viewers (does SAM really expect us to think a thirty-six year-old is this skilled and prolific in painting, glass, bronze, and marble?), but an embarrassment on the part of the authors and curators themselves. It guides the discussion into that tiring realm where concept is king, and craftsmanship is discussed only with superlatives because critics who have no experience in the art form can't talk about it in depth, and thus focus only on what they, and anyone else with extensive knowledge in realms besides painting and sculpture, can: content. 

This divide becomes immediately apparent when listening to the difference between how tour guides talk when discussing art before vs. after the Modern period. Take a look at Fred Wiseman's mammoth fly-on-the-wall documentary National Gallery and listen to how the tour guides discuss Vermeer and Hans Holbein II. They talk about 1) craft and 2) how it expresses ideas. Tour guides of the Wiley show are saddled with the awkward task of discussing only the second part. I recall a particularly embarrassing moment at SAM wherein a viewer who happened to be a skilled stained-glass artist asked how a human hand could possibly accomplish the texture and shading of denim jeans on a single pane of glass, to which the poor tour guide had to reply that she had neither any idea how that was accomplished, nor who, or what, had accomplished it. 

We can be blunt and overstate the point by quoting Tom Stoppard: "imagination without skill gives us modern art." But I argue the real villains in this case are not the artists but those who shape the discussion. Tom Wolfe's The Painted Word is instructive here. To forget that content and form are inextricably linked is to miss much of what is beautiful about art and the decisions artists make. We've heard the phrase "style over substance" leveled against films as a criticism; as I've written elsewhere, you generally hear that phrase from people who aren't filmmakers. The style in a worthwhile art piece is the substance. Style, or form, is the language through which the content is relayed to a viewer. Form lives and dies on the strength of the artist's talent. 

Wiley's works would remain striking, in my opinion, after learning that he only paints touch-ups on the faces and some of the skin tones, that the figures and floral pattern work are painted by Chinese laborers, that the sculpture work is done by assistants, that the models are only paid a measly $20, and that the stained glass works are created entirely by individuals skilled in that realm (using photographs by Wiley as a base). The only thing that would suffer is Wiley's massive ego. We might also more easily understand the strange lack of passion one always detects upon inspecting a Wiley up close; an intricate but flat, uninspired collection of brushstrokes. No wonder. That the above authorship information is difficult to come by is disappointing on the part of Wiley and SAM, but so too is the lack of outcry on the part of viewers. 

It thusly becomes understandable that Wiley declines journalist's visits to his studio, unless it's to have Martin Schoeller take a picture of him dabbing at a canvas while sitting atop a horse; that he tells reporters he doesn't want us to know to what degree his actual involvement is in the painting process, evading questions with coy comments about preserving his "secret sauce." This is where he differs from Brueghel and Botticelli. No artist of great skill hides his talent behind a cloak of coy false modesty. If you didn't paint it, but your students did, it gets signed "School of Michelangelo." There's an understanding that it was a group effort. Practices like these have remained better documented throughout history in part because the students et al nearly always, unlike the case with Wiley, hail from the same language and culture as the primary artist.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, Chihuly. Koons. Crewdson. I say close, but no Kehinde. They're not quite  corollaries; these artists and others like them, who heavily involve assistants, don't shroud their processes in secrecy, but hold it open for all to see and determine the worth of the works. For heaven's sake, we all know Koons doesn't make his own stuff. 

There's another, more troubling reason why Wiley stands alone here. Unlike the folks above, Wiley's work is explicitly intended to counter the subjugation of marginalized (black) people in Western Art. Personally I love the idea. So far, so great. How does he accomplish this? 

By subjugating and rendering nameless the marginalized (Asian) peoples who create these artworks for him. 

He's eliminating subjugation one heroic step at a time, using: subjugation. Let's flip the races around and see how it sounds. The twenty-first century's wealthiest white artist creates enormous volumes of high-impact portraits of Asians, rescuing them from repression and facelessness, by farming out the work to nameless black laborers in developing countries worldwide. In gut-busting levels of hubris, said artist refuses to credit or acknowledge the specific contributions of these black men and women in the name of preserving the mystique of his "secret sauce." 

We're in the middle of what should be the biggest conversation in art right now.

Most items we consume are created by hardworking poor people across the world who get zilch recognition. As China continues to develop and labor costs gradually rise, many manufacturing entities are opening plants elsewhere in the continued search for cheap labor. I don't appreciate this exploitative trajectory, but I can understand it. Wiley follows the trend, citing cost savings. However, he's in a financial position where this behavior is unnecessary. Kehinde Wiley is quite possibly the richest American artist of his generation. He doesn't need to be using social constructs of oppression in order to righteously attack social constructs of oppression. As one of many thousands of struggling artists of Asian descent, you can guess my perspective here.

No, the fact that Wiley is barely involved with the hands-on element of his final works is not the scandal. The scandal isn't even that the authorship is kept an unanswered question. It's that the laborers, painters, stained-glass workers and sculptors are kept nameless and repressed, and no one notices, or even thinks to ask about it.

That's the scandal. 

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Further reading:

Outsource to China, a detailed NY Magazine piece on Wiley, who candidly admits he often abandons his celebrated "street-casting" process.
Kehinde Wiley's Dilemma: How the Artist Painted Himself Into a Corner With His New Works​. Ben Davis explores Wiley's portraits of women at Sean Kelly.
Background Considerations: Christian Frock considers the issues during Wiley's 2013 launch at the Contemporary Jewish Museum. 
Nay Sayin': John James Anderson explores the degree to which Wiley "keeps it real."
Stop Lionizing Kehinde Wiley's Paintings. Stop Dismissing Them, Too, ​by our own Jen Graves.

Art Access, the longstanding monthly catalogue, is comprised mostly of lists and announcements, informing readers of the month's Pacific Northwest art events. In addition to these listings, there are always (about) three feature articles which open the issue. You can pay to be listed in the directory of announcements. You can pay to have your artwork in the listings, or shown on the cover. But you can't pay to be the subject of one of those three feature articles. They decide that. How do they decide? No one knows. It's their secret sauce. I didn't invest any thought into even hoping they might choose me for their July 2023 issue, back when my solo show (more here and here) was happening. What made them decide to? How did they even know about me? Who knew Elizabeth Bryant and I would get along so well, spending an afternoon looking over work and discussing everything under the sun, going well over our allotted time in excited bonding.

Like most of the special things that happen to us, I can't explain what led to this all transpiring. To some eyes it's just another article in another publication, quickly forgotten and replaced by other matters. But for me it is a thing I cherish, not because of the publicity boost it no doubt brought (my show had record attendance), but because of the serendipity involved, the people involved, the celebration of art and a fleeting but meaningful moment of connection. More than any other piece that's been written about my work, Elizabeth gets what my work is about, and what it aims to achieve. This is the best articulation so far of what I'm hoping to do with my practice. It's short and sweet, like everything about Art Access, but what Ms. Bryant conveys in a short space is admirable for being so accurate, and so succinct.

Read it here!

I was lucky enough to meet Dr. Wirth through a mutual friend. Some people strike you deeply, if such a thing is possible, not with their prestige or accolades but with their unassuming nature. You know beforehand of their significant accomplishments, but upon finally meeting are most impressed by the their warmth and humanity. Where their CV isn't the crowning definition of their identity so much as, quite simply, their kindness. Their humanness. People like to hide behind accomplishments. I'm more impressed when someone prioritizes not their resume but goodness, putting people first. It's so easy to get caught up in what we do; but what about who we are? This blurb of his accomplishments–

"Dr. Wirth, PhD, is an American philosopher and professor of philosophy at Seattle University. He was the Theiline Pigott McCone Chair in Humanities from 2014 to 2016, and his books include Commiserating with Devastated Things: Milan Kundera and the Entitlements of Thinking, Schelling’s Practice of the Wild, and, most recently, Nietzsche and Other Buddhas: Philosophy After Comparative Philosophy."

–like many blurbs (including my own), reveals very little about the person in question. Yes, those are indeed excellent works he's written. But my desire to share his words on my film stem from a deeper appreciation for his personhood. Where the books are merely an extension of his being. I aspire toward something like that. The film is an amalgamation of things I've reflected upon while in the presence of giants. Here are further musings on those reflections, by one I'm lucky to have met.

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Reflections on Men I Trust

I have long thought that in the face of death, especially the death of another, we all become, at least for a few minutes, philosophers. Given that philosophy opens the possibility that we might speak to death and face it directly, we typically turn away, revealing our philosophy to be merely the kinds of self-deceptions that had already governed our living.

This deeply moving film, free of all sentimentality and, for that reason, all the more moving, derives its power by standing in the white heat of this moment as death exposes human living as without “why” and cancels for the dying all of the scientific “hows.” Just as life does not need to be filled with the extraordinary and the spectacular to be precious and intrinsically good, so this film concentrates on the supposedly ordinary, which, cast against the background of its loss, reappears as sufficient in themselves and boundlessly precious.

Without retreating into the abstract, this is also a film about time—yes, death proves time. As such, however, it is allows the power of the moment to appear: not how something is, or why it is (as if explaining death either justifies it or renders it more palatable), but rather the infinite preciousness—and fragility and impermanence—that it is. Mahayana Buddhists call this suchness, things just as they are—fleeting, impermanent, and yes, enough. It is enough that they are simply what they are. They did not have to be more to be worthy of cherishment.

Technically, the editing is also a marvel as it layers and juxtaposes moments of time, each moment suddenly appearing precious: drinking water at the bar, dancing with your sister, speaking French, discussing whether to have children (and the problem of legacy as if we can cheat death by leaving something behind). Even walking in the forest to scatter ashes. Despite our ecological rapacity, there are still sword ferns and western red cedars and western hemlocks and Douglas firs, and their power remains in this moment irrefutable: that they are there.

I loved this film. It is beautiful and honest and it moved me to my core.

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Read other reviews of my film here. Learn more about the film at its official page, or check out the trailer below.
Contact me via the About page if you'd like a secure link to see the film!

I. Repulsion

They slobber past you with their bodies, at once aimless and committed, a sort of slow-motion resolve in that stumbling post-COVID gait we now know so well. Never before have they existed in such casual profusion. There were more closed doors back then, places to hide, institutions to rely on. Now things are different. As long as drugs are more accessible than solutions, people will medicate their problems with the former.

You can kill yourself at Third and Pike now for eighty-eight cents.

It is easy for we the sober-minded to laugh, to marvel at the stupidity of strangers. Look at them, sagging their pants below the knees, fishing through litter, pawing at the cement not for scraps of food but for the smallest, most unlikely hint of a fix. Here is one sitting in a pool of his own excrement, another huffing down stolen ice cream to rebalance his blood sugar, snot glazing across his mustache and lips, feeding into blood from open sores. “They pay money to look like that,” a scruffy but drug-free passenger on my bus chuckled as he watched them outside, incredulously. “They actually pay money to fall asleep! Idiots. Dumbasses!”

Look at their muscles collapsing from the hips up, a new generation that stands with head and knees at equal height, legs bent and bending lower, keeling over from a high finally, reaching for the earth’s opposite horizon. The comical walk and Dickensian squalor of their clothes and skin, almost a dress code by this point; we call them lost, these haphazard solipsists, slinking ever onward in their knock-kneed gait.

They are so easy to ridicule. 

II. However

There is always a however, and never moreso than here. We the Sober can involve the future in our decision-making. We can consider others. The addicted brain does not. Its comprehension of the future only extends as far as acquiring its next fix: an hour maybe, or less than that. Life is measured in blinkered minutes. Only in such a tunnel can the decisions we see out here begin to make sense.

Do you know what an accomplishment it is, to resist a pill? To flush your supply down the toilet, say no, ask for help?  These are actions harder and more worthy of our praise than winning the Nobel Prize. The trepidatious tender courage needed moves me more than those who win elections, run companies, more than lofty resumes and mantles stuffed with trophies. Is an achievement somehow less, because it goes unrecorded? Particularly with what I know about addiction’s effect on brain chemistry, I bow to the person who finds it in themselves to refuse a drink, pill, straw, needle, powder, patch. 

These are the silent accomplishments. Imagine regarding your strung-out self in a bathroom mirror (at a gas station, at a mansion), and seeing those gaunt eyes staring back, as you remember who you thought you could one day be. Not this. You remember you can still start over, and then you do so. You act.

That is the battle these people are trying to win. It is a shameful and humiliating battle but they fight it in public, ignominiously, while the rest of us shake our heads and judge. These people deserve pity, not ridicule.

“They” were all you and me once, children with prospects and dreams, things that made them excited and sad and hopeful. They did not know they would one day start fights over nothing, soil themselves in public, walk into the road not caring if they live or die. 

They did not know the halfway point of their lives when it whizzed right past them.

III. Personally

I attended elementary and junior high school with a girl named Alana. Being the same age we shared many classes, sitting next to each other in Math and Language Arts, and again in Social Studies. She was pretty and kind and smart enough. Many years later she'd board my 3/4 with her Shih Tzu in tow, surprised when I remembered her full name. She recalled mine as well. We trundled down Third Avenue in good spirits. She was searching her cluttered bags for her phone, thrilled when it began ringing. “Bye, Nathan Vass!” she called out as she left. 

Everything seemed fine.

Then I would see her intermittently, across several years. A decline was underway. I began seeing her in the unforgiving back alleys of the city, too much makeup now, a puffy jacket and flip-flops in cold weather; with different men each time. Shame crept into her gaze, and then the rest. The only constant was her smile to me and the dog, always her faithful Shih Tzu accompanying her. 
“I'm glad he's always at your side,” I'd say.
“We've been through a lot together,” she'd reply.
Alana would die before either of us reached twenty-five. Alana McCrawley from Math class and Language Arts, who remembered my full name. Her dog would end up outliving her.

What was her final thought?

I stop for the people at 12th and Jackson. I don't pass them up, and they know that. I want them to know that. Somebody there will always wave if they want me, almost frantically, because they’re so used to being passed by. I respond with my own wave. Some of my favorite passengers out here. “Aw, it's Nathan,” one said recently, with happy relief. “He's not gonna fuck with us!” I want them to know my bus is a little different. This is the guy who cares, who doesn't look down on us. That's what I'm trying for.

Some of them will make it out and live to tell me about it. Some already have. Others of us don't know that we'll unravel, a paycheck or a bottle of pain medication away from Western society's most slippery slope. Maybe it'll be us one day, stumbling against glass and concrete dirt, another slipshod pants-sagging drifter in search of joy, meaning, conscience, belonging… wondering where it all went, baffled by how elusive those things are now. Who among them used to have it easy? Who among them once snickered, looking outside, really believing themselves as they laughed, that'll never be me.

Do not be too quick to sneer. The story is not over yet.

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More on this whole situation here: State of the (Seattle) Union

We are still in the era of virtual events. Here's another, now passed but recorded for your pleasure– wherein I discuss all things transit, COVID, writing, kindness, and the condition of the street. Like all Zoom videos it's not up to snuff in terms of the cinematography and image quality that we might prefer, but hopefully the content is enough to maintain interest. Huge, huge  gratitude to Brock Howell and everyone at SnoTrac for putting this together and hosting me. It was an honor and a treat to meet you all!

For more speeches and talks of mine click here.

Enjoy!

I get as many, if not more comments about my book now than I did when it was a bestseller four years ago, back during those long-lost pre-COVID days. We see differently now, and know to value certain things which we previously took for granted. With the advent of certain social justice movements there are obvious ways in which the book has become more topical, but there are also other things the book celebrates, which feel rarer now and thusly more precious, more worth cherishing. It isn't just institutional competence which has faded from view. There are actions we can take as individuals, ways of choosing to see, which feel deeply valuable in this new time. It is lonelier to realize them, and sometimes feels more hopeless, but it is worth it. It is worth it for the occasional burst of joyful light. It is worth it because like attracts like. We find each other by being our best selves.

And it is worth it because you don't change the world by trying to change the world. You do it by changing the person next to you. And how do you do that? Not by trying to change them (you can't), but by being your best self. Leading by example. Motivating the people around you to observe, reflect on, consider how you choose to live life. You can be the light. I know that's harder to do now, but it's in exactly these sorts of times when it's most needed, valuable, and inspiring. Thank you to the people around me who glow, who inspire me every day and night, from my closest friends to my colleagues down to the faces on the street which beam out gratitude and present verve.

Please enjoy the video above, which is two stories from my book, along with an introduction situating how the book plays in today's landscape. Many thanks to the fine folks at Chin Music and AWP at large for hosting me.

I post new material here at the beginning of every month. Check back every 1st!

“Researchers detected methamphetamine in 98% of surface samples and 100% of air samples, while fentanyl was detected in 46% of surface and 25% of air samples. One air sample exceeded federal recommendations for airborne fentanyl exposure at work established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.”

These facts, and a host of others included in UW’s excellent new study, will surprise only those who don’t use transit. For the rest of us they confirm, finally, in concrete terms for all to see, a sense of what it is to work with the public on street level in post-COVID Seattle. I encourage reviewing the report itself, not just the press release or even the executive summary. There's a lot in there, and it can't be summed up in a word, other than to say that Marissa Baker, PhD, and team’s study is the first of its kind. No entity has studied the presence of airborne drug fumes in public spaces before, and Seattle is the ideal metropolis to start with: a city where non-users are forced to inhale fumes of the deadliest street drugs in existence, day after day. Some of the findings are comforting; some of them aren't.

We will continue to hear compelling pieces of political rhetoric, well-crafted speeches and declarations. We even have a brand new law allowing prosecution of public drug use (though no plan for how an overburdened judicial system would accommodate those arrests). It can all sound so promising on paper. 

But then you walk outside. 

What defines an activity as legal, or illegal? While a piece of legislation may declare a given activity unlawful, what matters is what the real-world consequences are. Needles, fumes, torches, foil, straw, brain damage, overdose– it is all 'legal,' practically speaking, because it is tolerated in broad daylight without consequences. My first experience with fentanyl was returning to the E Line after ten years away from driving Aurora Avenue. A young mother came forward to apologize for her toddler son, who'd vomited on the bus floor due to fumes coming from the teens smoking right next to them. Neither she nor I knew what fentanyl was back then. The mom escorted her sick child off the bus in bewildered confusion. An off-duty security guard riding homeward had to explain to me what just happened. This was the new status quo.

Third Avenue is populated primarily by commuters; the unhoused; street people; first responders; police; cleaning crews; and bus operators. These are the individuals most qualified to have an opinion on the state of the street. They extend over all political backgrounds, but there’s one thing they all agree on: Downtown Seattle is in terrible shape, and has seen no meaningful improvement in over three years.* If anyone’s telling you Third is now safe enough to take your kids or your grandmother, they’re not spending enough time outside. I’m waiting for change I can discern outside of a newspaper.

Studies like UW's are at their most valuable when they reveal ongoing institutional incompetence. There is more research to be conducted, and we should keep asking questions. But we know enough to know things need to change. What action besides words will we see? After the dutifully fervent press releases and concerned memos have aired, what then? Will my colleagues still have to call off sick on the road because of the resultant lightheadedness fentanyl causes? Will they, many of them new parents, see their long-term health impacted? Some have failed drug tests as a result of the work environment (which, now that we have the above data, should no longer be shocking). Will they have to face consequences they don't deserve? And all the while, my friends on the street. Will they still tell me of their companions overdosing? Will I continue to have conversations with parents where there is more silence than words, where what is communicated is too devastating to speak out loud? 

We were the city of the future. What no one in our past could have anticipated was a world wherein a public crisis is met by leaders not with outrage, not sophistication, not solutions… 

but indifference. 

Hand-wringing, squabbling, and lip service– that is, the appearance of action– has taken the place of action. When the only entities with the power to exert widespread change are structured like corporate bureaucracies, you know you’re in trouble because no organizational structure is better suited for abdicating responsibility.** Top-heavy managerial hierarchies seem designed for such abdication. It’s always the fault of some other department. They’re looking into it. We’re so sorry. 

Let me redirect your call. 

Pardon my scathing tone. I do not wish to offend, but to awaken, like a parent who knows she must use a firm voice, who does so because she wishes to impress upon her child the gravity of what’s at stake. By now it should be obvious that the powers that be (I’m not pointing fingers at Metro but at a far larger and more directly responsible municipal government power structure) do not care about their constituents. In this approach they benefit themselves in the short term… but not in the long term. Street people vote. People who are afraid to go out also vote. People concerned for the welfare of their fellow citizens, for the health and safety of themselves and their children… all vote. If a politician’s primary goal is to get reelected, they would do well to remember this. You need people to believe that you care. One way to start is by effecting discernible change.

Metro made its name on addressing a public health issue. James R. Ellis and others tackled a problem in 1960– wastewater treatment– and handled it so well the newly-formed group was given 100 days to put together a transit system. They succeeded mightily, starting a tradition of “failing forward” with innovative, concrete action and demonstrable results. 

Metro is now faced with another public health crisis. I believe if it had the autonomy to solve the situation itself, as it once did, it would by now have done so. But it no longer has that freedom. Metro is more or less run by the King County Council, who is itself beholden to abide by state laws governing what can and can’t be done, and for how much money.

As ever, the ultimate decisions will be made by people who don’t ride buses. By politicians who never set foot on Third Avenue. They don’t know the state of things out here. They don’t know our faces, lives, troubles. They haven’t lived the risk, felt the exposure, the wounds of mental and physical pain. If they did, things would've been fixed long ago. Most humans empathize with only the people they see in real life.*** And these powerful, well-meaning, and probably genuinely concerned folks aren’t coming out to see us in real life. If only they had the requisite courage and brass nerve to come down here and see. How will Downtown Seattle look and feel one, five, ten years from now? Time will tell. Since my long term health– that is, my life– quite literally hangs in the balance, I'm as curious as the rest of us.

Meanwhile. 

What are we individuals to do, besides vote? What am I doing, out here in the maelstrom? What I can. My arms reach a few feet on either side of me. That is where I can effect change. I greet the passengers at 12th and Jackson as the fellow humans they are. (Remember, fentanyl users aren’t dangerous. They’re generally catatonic. People with schizophrenic disorders, on the other hand….) I treat the people around me as if they’re already my friends, and it works wonders like you wouldn’t believe. I do it because it makes me feel good. Interacting with strangers has been scientifically shown to improve one’s well-being, sense of belonging, and overall happiness. I give, and give, and give respect, love, acknowledgment, and on a long enough timeline it comes back around in spades. It rejuvenates me.

This beautiful cycle does not require a functioning government, nor a city with its municipal affairs in order.

Thank goodness!!!

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*Further reflections (and nuance) in my deep dive on all things drugs and Seattle, here.

**Anna Patrick at The Seattle Times reveals which promises made on homelessness were broken, and how, in these two excellent breakdowns from 2022 and 2023.

***If you’ve been wondering why empathy’s been on the decline, this may be a factor. People spend less time with others in real life (or IRL, as the kids say) than they ever have. This is also why depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation are higher among young people than they’ve ever been. More here and here. Lecture by me on this subject, with works cited and further reflections, here.

"Mr. President, I feel that I have blood on my hands."

Dir. Christopher Nolan
180m9s.
Synopsis: An exploration of J. Robert Oppenheimer's evolving feelings on atomic energy.
Trailer.

I had to go and see it again, a third time, a final time, surrender once again to its hypnotic rhythms of music and dialogue. It is a thing you do alone, not obsessively but passionately, like a warmer version of the museum patron described at the beginning of Delillo’s Point Omega.

1. About Everything

Other people will write about the film's topical relevance, how good the acting is, or the stupendous construction of that sequence. But none of those are why I had to go three times.

Oppenheimer begins and ends with a man, at two different points in his life, watching raindrops fall into water. In between those two moments it somehow manages, despite being almost exclusively a series of scenes of mostly men in suits talking, during a distinct time period, following an exact narrative… to be a film about everything. In its specificity it becomes universal.

What does it mean to live with ourselves, in this world? 

Following a prologue hinting at the consequences to come, we begin with the subjective interior. The intoxicating rhythms of new possibilities, discovery, the excitement of innovation and youth in the 1920s. This leads to collaboration, competition; ideas, and degrees of allegiance to those ideas; to science, invention for its own sake, and the dangers and joys of such invention. To the horror of humans' capacity to commit evil when it's disguised as good. Love, friendship, ethics, theory– all are realized as the irresolvable, contradictory worlds they are. Victory. Hubris. Guilt. Regret. Self-flagellation as a gesture of recognition, a yearning for closure. The soul's unquenchable thirst for resolution, within oneself, between oneself and the world. 

I am deeply attracted to stories of guilt and regret because these emotions are almost always genuine. They weigh us down impossibly, and the suffering they cause within has the potential to make us realize our best selves like nothing else. A person without regret has not had to take stock of themselves. Who in our country’s history could feel more guilt, and yet be living in a time and political place when it could be less freely expressed, than J. Robert Oppenheimer?

Nolan understands that the moral quandaries facing his protagonist are altogether more dramatically compelling than the Trinity explosion itself. What other director would dare make a film wherein the atomic bomb explosion is not the climax of the narrative? Oppenheimer is three hours of people reflecting on past and future deeds, awash in a mood that is somehow both melancholic and propulsive without compromise to either; it admits the complexity of existence, and the soul’s capacity to change its views over time. Not every film allows its characters to live long enough to suffer the consequences of their actions.

Nolan constructs the film around two confirmation hearings of two very different men– one a conniving career politician hoping for a Cabinet position; the other a scientist with newly pacifist views hoping for security clearance. The two hearings are linked in ways that only become clear much later, and both have the same outcome, revealing just how diametrically contrasted the two applicants are. One seeks to destroy what he believes the other has, and wishes desperately to have himself; his aims are selfish. The other man wishes to correct a collision course he created. His aims are more than selfless; they represent those of a mind which has begun to think on a larger, longer scale. 

A line midway through reminds us that “genius is no guarantee of wisdom.” I think that in between the opening and closing moments, the man watching the raindrops has finally, somberly, tragically, transcended the former and acquired the latter. It has happened against his will. But he is better for it. I cannot express how compelling it is to watch this journey, how thought-provoking. 

Like last year's masterful TÁR, Oppenheimer withholds an opinion on its subject. We instead learn something about ourselves by considering what we conclude, and how it changes with each viewing. The film becomes a mirror, makes us question ourselves and our values, our beliefs and direction in this life. Art can hardly achieve more. For this and for its intricate, somber grandeur, for the intellectual and philosophical demands it makes on its audience, and for its unsurpassable execution, this is the best and most significant American studio picture since Schindler's List. I am aware of the ridiculousness such pronouncements, but after three viewings I still can't help myself. Forgive me! Large-scale films for adults have been anomalies for a while now, and that makes Oppenheimer is a rare bird indeed, one worth cherishing.

2. On Film and Form

Do you know what it is to look upon an original?

We do it in museums all the time, at galleries and plays and concerts. But in cinema, you are almost always looking at a digital projection, at a film that was shot digitally, or a film that was, even if photographed on film, transferred to digital to be color-corrected. And as you know, everything digital is in fact a collection of ones and zeroes. Digital can never capture light, or color; it can only translate it. A digital image can only be reproduced, never produced. It is always and ever a facsimile. 

Film emulsion, on the other hand, captures the actual photons of a moment, sealing them forever, as they transform the chemical composition of the silver halide crystals they land on; as you've heard me say elsewhere, film is in this manner closer to sculpture than digital photography. Only film contains the physicality of a moment. There is no need to translate reality into colored squares.

There’s also the fact that, after twenty years of digital experimentation, there can be no argument that film simply yields a better image. Although a digital picture plane can contain millions of pixels, its range of color is limited to the thousands. Film conversely has millions of colors. Only film can successfully capture the infinitude of color that flesh tones contain, or clouds; only cross-processed stock can even generate the colors I like to use, the greens and cyans which exist well outside the dSLR color gamut. 

For these reasons and others, many filmmakers* continue to shoot exclusively on film– Alice Rohrwacher, Sofia Coppola, and Mia Hansen-Løve being a few examples of directors for whom the format is never in question. 

But at this point, the only new work that is consistently analogue from start to finish, with no digital intermediate, no ones and zeroes whatsoever, are the films of Christopher Nolan, Paul Thomas Anderson, and Quentin Tarantino. These are the only remaining directors who as a matter of course not only shoot analogue, but do film-out edits** and color-time their pictures photochemically.***

Nolan goes furthest in many ways, both artistically and technically: though all three are single-camera**** directors, eschewing the technique (epitomized by Ridley Scott, who’s done so since 2007) of overshooting a scene with many digital cameras and “figuring it out later,” only Nolan’s films have no deleted scenes. He shoots exactly what he writes. The intricate scripts are worked out to the last detail, and somehow he knows it will work.***** As a writer-director myself I’m flabbergasted by this. How does he do it?

Also, Nolan consistently shoots on large-format****** film, not just 35mm. For a visual breakdown, check out the nifty chart here. Note the difference between the 70mm formats and regular digital projection. But IMAX 70mm isn’t just the highest resolution of any movie format ever invented (its digital equivalent would be an impossible 18k); it also has an unparalleled tonal (color, hue) range. This matters more than resolution in the impact of an image. Large-format film also differs from 35mm in being a uniquely grain-free visual space; the filmstrip is simply too big for you to see the grain we all know from 35. There’s nothing quite like it.

Why does any of this matter?

It isn’t only in technicalities that film has the edge. On the one hand, director Lea Mysius says, film “has this aesthetic and tactile component, that the colors are deeper and more contrasty and stronger, and so on and so forth.” But, she adds, “What matters most to me is the poetic component of it. 35mm is so intrinsically loaded with poetry, and there’s mystery in 35. I think it’s because it is a material thing… Philosopher Gaston Bachelard [talks] about how we can have imagination flower out of materiality. And I see film that way. What I mean is that light puts an impression on film, and thanks to this chemical reaction that we can see, all of a sudden, we find that magical and beautiful sensation... 35mm work penetrates because it has an impression on us, the way that light has an impression on film. This is something that, in digital, you don’t have. It’s a lot more straightforward and flat.”

I call it the magic of the tactile. We are organic, not synthetic creatures, and we respond to that which is also organic. The handmade quality of film, the discipline it requires to create, the one-off nature of its physicality, its imperfections, the romance of the flickering filmstrip in the dark… you cannot surpass the real.******* And, because film was the only image capture medium for over a century, we are deeply accustomed its interpretation of light. It is the visual basis for our global cultural memory. Maybe this is why most great-looking digital films, especially historical pictures, attempt to emulate film stock.

Only thirty prints of Oppenheimer were made at its full, IMAX 70mm 1.43:1 ratio. That version of the film weighs 600 pounds and is eleven miles long. Just 113 prints of the “smaller” but still stupendous 70mm 5-perf 2.39:1 ratio were made worldwide (again, refer to the chart above to get an idea of how different this is from digital projection), as well as about 80 35mm prints, one of which played in Seattle’s Uptown Theatre. I saw a digital scan of the full IMAX 1.43:1 positive and was suitably blown away by all it had to offer, but it was the magic of seeing one of those 113 70mm prints unspool at Seattle’s Pacific Place, once at the beginning of the film’s theatrical run and again near the end, that I want to dwell on here. 

See it on film if you can. If you can't, you're still seeing something that originated on that beautiful medium, that was color-corrected photochemically, and that, incredibly for our times, doesn't feature CGI. Speaking of which:

3. A Few Notes on Style

i. Immersion in reality

You can read elsewhere about how the explosion was created using practical effects, how those visualizations of particles were achieved, and more, but I’m interested in what avoiding computer graphics achieves on a philosophical level.

Remember the sensation of watching "old" (I’m thinking pre-1990) films, when you could inherently "Trust the Image?" We can’t do that anymore. Now that anything is possible via CGI, nothing is surprising. Consider the third act of any superhero picture. You’re looking at masses of pixels bombarding each other, and you know it. The viewer’s investment (or at least mine) declines. The image has stopped being what it’s always been– a documentation of something that was in front of a camera lens, whether a person, landscape, miniature model, or painting.

Special effects, in industry parlance, are effects achieved on set. Visual effects are created afterwards with a computer. We watch what we know are special effects in Kubrick’s 1968 2001: A Space Odyssey with a greater sense of awe than any modern space movie, because we know we’re looking at something real. We can sense it. This is why horror films almost never use CGI– because no matter how good it is, you can detect its fakeness, and it ceases to be scary. We are organic creatures, and we respond to the same. The synthetic can only go so far.

Oppenheimer returns us to that environment of being able to trust the image. Everything you’re seeing is real, and quite frankly: you can tell. Friends have shared that the experience of watching this one feels different– the artifice of knowing you’re watching actors somehow falls away, and the sensation of observing real characters begins to take over. I have to believe this is because we’re able to trust the image in this film, and also for another reason: Nolan doesn’t subscribe to the usual rules of character development. We don’t learn about backstories and motivations. From his main down to the smallest supporting characters, we instead watch people behave in the present. “I’ve always actually favored the medieval, Middle English approach to characterization to the more modern, psychological, novelistic approach to characterization in film,” Nolan says, “because in film, character defined through action has always been the strongest, because it’s visual, and it’s narrative-based.”

Viewer immersion is further achieved by the decision to have no composite characters (astonishing for a historical piece), and to use real names for all individuals depicted. We don’t get text onscreen labeling who’s who. Jargon isn’t explained; yes, things fly over our heads. But isn't that what you'd hope for in a realistic film about theoretical physics? What's more exciting than a picture that demands your full attention, that doesn’t pander and re-explain plot points every twenty minutes, to make sure the kiddos can keep up? We rise to the challenge, becoming better viewers. We pick up what we can and move forward. You’ll get it on the next pass.

ii. Sound and feeling

There's a corollary to be found in Nolan's approach to sound, which contemporary cinema doesn't often experiment with. Friends tell me the sound mix is either their favorite or least favorite aspect of the picture. Nolan will sometimes use dialogue as sound– you don’t know what they’re saying exactly. But, like the aforementioned jargon, I'm not sure we need to. You figure it out from their tone, their expression. It’s about the texture of the moment, and Ludwig Göransson’s overpowering and deeply beautiful score does more to immerse us emotionally than any line of dialogue could. As Clémence Poésy’s scientist says in Tenet, when she utters a line that (un)intentionally serves as a dictum for how to read all Nolan’s films: “Don’t try to understand. Feel it.”

I'm aware this is an acquired taste, but I must admit a fondness for art that tries things, and I aspire to evaluate films not on how closely they hew to expected norms, but rather on how they accord with their maker’s intentions. What is the director trying to do? What does this choice accomplish? Ambitious failures excite me more than mediocre successes. The scene of the victory speech given to the Los Alamos staff seated in the auditorium will be taught in film schools. Witness the separation of meaning between sound and image, how the visuals finally give way to the overpowering divide of birthing conscience, a heart breaking before our eyes.

I don’t know if everyone has an emotional response to dynamic camerawork or lighting, or film form generally, but I do. As a photographer I would attempt to increase my skills by shooting obviously ugly things (piles of garbage, mostly) in beautiful ways, learning how to search for the light, to work with it as a scene partner in capturing a moment. Oppenheimer feels similar– an achingly beautiful and sumptuously photographed series of scenes of… scientists and politicians talking for three hours, often in wildly unglamorous institutional spaces.

iii. On the editing

This has to be Nolan’s fastest-paced picture, despite being primarily dialogue. The dense tightness of the editing recalls Stone’s JFK and Scorsese at his best. Notice how we think we see Oppenheimer throwing a glass in the corner three times while listening to Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, but we actually see him complete that action only once. Observe the shots of Oppenheimer’s attorney Lloyd Garrison silently expressing his enthusiasm as Emily Blunt’s Kitty more than holds her own against Roger Robb; they’re such brief shots, but seeing Garrison's face gives the moment further heft, a greater sense of triumph. The couple crying under the rafters in the auditorium scene is onscreen for barely longer than a second, but once you see them, you feel something that lasts longer. I was unprepared for the subjectivity of the editing, especially in act one; the elliptical cutaways evoke a sort of tapestry of psychological interiors, conveying through flash cuts the mind's ability to transcend time and space, to draw disparate connections linked by mood. The use of silence, especially when least expected; the visions and fantasies, potent in their understatement.

Or the intercutting of the Colonel Pash sequence, how that information is relayed to the audience across multiple spans of time within minutes. The intricate layering and revisiting (“...but more useful than a sandwich!”) of a moment, sometimes many scenes later. The labyrinthine script may allude to an event before we see it happen (the Chevalier incident), or present slices of a moment that is only revealed later (the possible assassination of a key character, or, of course, the ending). It doesn’t simply use the security clearance confirmation hearing as a framing device, but leaves it for long sections as the past overwhelms the present (as in the development and testing of the bomb itself), or allows future events to intrude (the final montage involving awards receptions) and slip-slide together with the past. As the black-and-white scenes are filmed on true black-and-white stock,******** not color that’s converted afterwards, the decision to film on which stock was decided beforehand, which represents a degree of foresight I find mind-boggling (especially in scenes that feature both stocks/perspectives, as the AEC meeting where the flowers on the table get moved– itself a clever device to visually confirm we've seen this meeting before).

I had to watch it unspool a final time. For me it was something about living once more in those midcentury rooms, the bare walls and beaming natural light, the light that caresses fabric and faces into the quicksand halls of memory. Communing with technique and reflection. If you require your films to tell you how to think about their characters, or if you need characters you can identify with, rather than merely observe, this may be a frustrating experience. But cinema is built for more than prescriptive storytelling.

Give it a try!

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Notes and Further Reading

The Hollywood Reporter. “This Can’t Be Safe. It’s Got to Have Bite”: Christopher Nolan and Cast Unleash ‘Oppenheimer.' Feature interviewing director and cast about the working process.

Vulture. "An Action Movie About Scientists Talking." In-depth piece by Bilge Ibiri, interviewing Nolan et al on numerous aspects of the film.

The AP. "Christopher Nolan breaks down the best ways to watch a movie, ahead of his ‘Oppenheimer’ release." On where to sit, why B&W, difference between 65 and 70, and why not every scene is shot on IMAX.

Polygon. "So what happens to Oppenheimer’s 11-mile-long IMAX prints after it leaves theaters?"

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*Others include Joanna Hogg, Marie Kreutzer, Catarina Vasconcelos, Hlynur Pálmason, Wes Anderson, Sean Baker, Noah Baumbach, Damien Chazelle, Robert Eggers, Luca Guagdanino,  Pablo Larrain, Mélanie Laurent, Spike Lee, Steve McQueen, Lea Mysius, László Nemes, the Safdies, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Joachim Trier, Apichatpong Weerasethakul,  Edgar Wright and of all people, Judd Apatow; as well as directors who often use 35mm, if not all the time, like Lili Horváth, Kelly Reichhardt, and Greta Gerwig. Franchise pictures that shoot on film also help keep Kodak in business, such as F9, No Time to Die, Wonder Woman, and Star Wars.

**How is analogue film edited nowadays? Here’s Fred Raskin on his working process with Quentin Tarantino: “The negative was developed and printed so that we could screen dailies on 35mm. It was also scanned at 4K. Those 4K scans were down-converted to Avid DNX 115 HD files. That’s what I’d edit with in the Avid. Once production ended Quentin would spend his whole workday in the cutting room with me. When we completed a scene, my Avid assistant would take the cut from me and would generate lists that would go to the film team, who would then conform the film print to match the Avid edit. In that way, we were able to screen the scenes projected on film. Just seeing it that way added to the authenticity of the material.”

Here’s Andy Jurgensen on the workflow for PTA’s Licorice Pizza: “We’re still cutting digitally obviously, but during the shoot, we’re watching film dailies, so we do have to prep that. Then, once we get to a certain point, we do conform workprint. And when we lock, we make lists and cut negative for the photochemical version of the movie… Usually, we get the film first even before we’re getting it digitally because that’s just the way that everything gets processed with the scanning. The pipeline is so unique. So, the first time we’re seeing it is on print. We can just judge so many things when watching it big on film. Not only the performance, but the lighting, and the lenses and focus.” William Fletcher is a film assistant who works on all three directors’ films.

***Nolan on color-timing (and much more in this essential DGA interview): “I've never done a digital intermediate. Photochemically, you can time film with a good timer in three or four passes, which takes about 12 to 14 hours as opposed to seven or eight weeks in a DI suite. That’s the way everyone was doing it 10 years ago, and I've just carried on making films in the way that works best and waiting until there’s a good reason to change. But I haven't seen that reason yet.”

On working without a second unit (from the same interview): “Let me put it this way: If I don’t need to be directing the shots that go in the movie, why do I need to be there at all? The screen is the same size for every shot. The little shot of, say, a watch on someone’s wrist, will occupy the same screen size as the shot of a thousand people running down the street. Everything is equally weighted and needs to be considered with equal care, I really do believe that. I don’t understand the criteria for parceling things off. Many action films embrace a second unit taking on all of the action. For me, that’s odd because then why did you want to do an action film? Having said that, there are fantastic filmmakers who use second and third units successfully. So it all comes back to the question of defining what a director does. Each of us works in different ways. It’s really helped me keep more of my personality in these big films. There’s a danger with big-action fare that the presence of the filmmaker is watered down, it can become very neutral, so I’ve tried to keep my point of view in every aspect of these films.”

****On shooting with a single camera: “I use multi-camera for stunts; for all the dramatic action, I use single-camera. Shooting single-camera means I've already seen every frame as it’s gone through the gate because my attention isn't divided to multi-cameras. So I see it all and I watch dailies every night. If you’re always shooting multi-camera, you shoot an enormous amount of footage, and then you have to go in and start from scratch, which is tricky time-wise.”

Again, click for the full DGA interview, which covers Nolan’s preference for avoiding overshooting, the value of watching dailies to memorize footage, letting actors act, working quickly, visual constants in his films, guild membership vis-a-vis director's cuts, opinions on 3-D, CGI– and why he wears a suit to work!

*****Editor Jennifer Lame and her team on cutting the picture. Lots of details, including a further reason Nolan avoids overshooting: the IMAX magazines (film reels) are only three minutes long! Tom Foligno discusses Nolan’s single-camera approach about halfway through.

******More explanations on the different format types in the list here. In still photography, 70mm would be on the smaller end of 'medium format' (which goes up to 4" x 5”), as 'large format' in the stills world is an 8" x 10” negative. But in motion picture, 70mm is large-format. Moving images traditionally have lower resolutions than still images. 

*******DP Hoyte van Hoytema, in a detailed interview with Kodak: "Although I shoot a lot of commercials using digital cameras, I still believe film is more engaging to watch and is much closer to the human visual experience," remarks van Hoytema. “[E]ven though the larger surface area of the emulsion means the grain is finer – especially in IMAX – they still had enough texture for me. There's still nothing that beats the resolution, depth, color and roundness of the analog image, nor in the feeling overall that film conveys.”

********Kodak had never manufactured black and white IMAX 70mm before, but they did so here at Nolan's request. You're seeing true black and white film at a size, tonal range and resolution never before seen. Says Hoytema: “[I]t was uncertain as to whether they would or could achieve it in time for this production. But they stepped up to the plate and supplied a freshly manufactured prototype DOUBLE-X 5222 65mm filmstock, delivered in cans with handwritten labels on the outside. However, as that filmstock was unfamiliar to everyone, had never been run though IMAX or System 65 cameras, and required the reconfiguration of a 65mm film processor at the lab, making the DOUBLE-X 5222 a feasible proposition involved a great deal of collaboration with Kodak, IMAX, Panavision and Fotokem. It became quite a complex engineering process– encompassing things like the thickness of the backing for the film emulsion, and making new gates and pressure plates in the cameras so as to avoid scratches.”

Says Nolan: “Of course, there were several methods I could have used to create a B&W image, but you never get the same feeling as when using real B&W analog film. And shooting B&W also took me right back to my student days at the Polish National Film, Television & Theatre School in Łódź, where understanding the greyscale, using your spot and incident light meters, and making your own personal judgement were critical in making the final image."

For my photographer friends! On aperture and focal length choices, also from the above article:

Hoytema: “Through the years we have discovered that the sweet spots with IMAX are 50mm and 80mm. Anything beyond those focal lengths and you start to diminish the immersive quality of the image. If you go too long the image appears compressed and more graphic, as if you're looking at a sort of flat screen. Anything too wide becomes more like a fishbowl, where the edges start to fall off too fast. So, the 50mm has become our wide lens, the 80mm our tighter lens. On close-ups they give you the right proximity and wideness, and everything around starts to function like the peripheral vision of your eyes. But when shooting our close-ups, we didn't want the camera to be six feet away from our subject. We wanted to be much tighter, so that you really feel the perspective and the intimacy. Also, I knew we would be filming in low-light situations and would need to shoot at T1.4 rather than a T4."