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Wonders Are Many: The Making Of Doctor Atomic: Review

WONDERS ARE MANY: THE MAKING OF DOCTOR ATOMIC
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Jon Else's unusual and sometimes beautiful film documents a rare cultural moment when art, history and science collided: The making of composer John Adams and director/librettist Peter Sellar's opera Doctor AtomicNixon in China, The Death of Klinghoffer), but Doctor Atomic, their fifth, was a challenge even by their own unconventional standards. The opera would not only detail the two days leading up to the testing of the first atomic bomb at Trinity Site in the New Mexico desert on July 16, 1945, but hopefully offer a glimpse into the fascinating mind and personality of the bomb's enigmatic creator. In a bold stroke, Sellars assembled his libretto from bits and pieces of text pulled from a variety of primary sources: a raft of once top-secret documents, letters and scientific papers, official memos and even verse from John Donne, Baudelaire and the Bhagavad-Gita, which Oppenheimer is said to have quoted the moment the blast took place ("I am become Shiva, destroyer of worlds"). Adams then "winnowed" Sellars' selections and composed the music around what was left. Else follows the production for nearly a year before its 2005 premiere at the San Francisco Opera with Canadian baritone Gerald Finley as Oppenheimer, but his documentary is really two films in one. Else, who won the first best-documentary prize ever awarded at the Sundance Film Festival in 1980 with THE DAY AFTER TRINITY: J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER AND THE ATOMIC BOMB, alternates the behind-the-scenes footage with a short history of atomic energy, the Manhattan Project and the U.S. government's decision to use the bomb on the civilian population of Japan. Included are interviews with Oppenheimer himself, first-hand memories of the man courtesy physicist Freeman Dyson and mesmerizing footage of bomb tests, much of which has only recently been declassified, and all of it awesome in the true sense of the word. It's an interesting approach that attempts to draw parallels between two productions, one creative, the other destructive on a theretofore unimaginable scale. But the structure is ultimately constraining. Adams and Brooks's opera ends with the blast at Trinity, but the most interesting part of Oppenheimer's story -- his deeply conflicted relationship with his creation -- was only just beginning. In the end this handsome film feels inconclusive and works best in conjunction with Else's THE DAY AFTER TRINITY. leave a comment --Ken Fox
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