The director Florence Pugh called a master: “I’ve never had that feeling on set before”
Florence Pugh doesn’t mince words when she dislikes a role or working experience. She’s expressed discomfort about being crammed to the point of claustrophobia into roles of distraught, aggrieved women. This is nowhere more true than in her role in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, the story of ‘The Father of the Atomic Bomb’ and its psychological and political consequences for J Robert Oppenheimer, the titular character. And sometimes remembers to tell the stories of the women he mistreated.
Among them is Jean Tatlock, played by Pugh. She was his mistress, a communist organiser who was met with the fate of most mistress characters in Hollywood flicks, historical biopics or otherwise. She’s neglected, and then she dies. He gets sad, and his wife gets mad.
Of course, the significance of the Manhattan Project outweighs the consequences of Oppenheimer’s love life. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians died, and countless more developed horrific cancer – both in Japan and anyone in the radius of Los Alamos, the test site. Something apparently balanced by Oppenheimer’s guilt.
A dramedy about a scientist caught between his home life and wife and a rambunctious political radical probably would have done numbers as a Hugh Grant movie in the 1990s, but it’s not the focal point here.
The female characters exist more to add texture to Oppenheimer’s interior struggles than to have their own stories. Unless you’ve read American Prometheus, the book that Nolan took inspiration from, you may forget which one is which: the wife and the mistress. They have the same haircut and flat contribution to the story.
It’s difficult to think of an instance where Nolan directed one of his female stars to success, which is not to say that he’s a chauvinist – it’s more annoying when male directors try to force feminist themes into their movies – but he just doesn’t seem interested. Some thought Anne Hathaway bucked that trend in Interstellar, but that feels less convincing an argument by the day.
Nolan is known for his virtuosity in many areas of filmmaking but writing female characters isn’t really one of them. He likes to shatter his male protagonist’s psyche like glass and then see if he can jigsaw the pieces back together, with his female leads usually being accessories to that. Nolan’s always under scrutiny, though, as one of the last directors in Hollywood who’s considered an artist and auteur. Just the other day, Nolan was being interrogated by pedants online who were angry that Matt Damon’s helmet in a promo for his upcoming adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey is historically incorrect as it’s from the late Roman Republic and early Empire, not Bronze Age Greece.
Florence Pugh doesn’t seem to have an issue with the writing of her character, however. Whether this is the fork-tongued hissing of PR-oriented media training or her own opinion, she said in an interview with Collider that “working with Christopher Nolan was quite possibly one of the most thrilling experiences in a different way, partly because he works with professionals. He is a professional.”
It’s often hard to tell if an actor is promoting a movie or being honest, but Pugh has a reputation for the latter. She seemed genuinely enamoured with Nolan’s “dedication to the craft of filmmaking”. It’s high praise from an actor who rarely delivers it without due course.
