CR: Wonders Are Many

Director John Else, who won the first ever Sundance documentary award in 1980 for his film The Day After Trinity: J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Atomic Bomb returns to Sundance, and to familiar subject matter, with Wonders Are Many, a documentary about the making of Doctor Atomic, an opera produced in San Francisco about Robert Oppenheimer in the weeks leading up to the detonation of his atomic bomb.

Art imitates annahilation in the work of composer John Adams, the most accomplished living American composer, and stage director Peter Sellers, who has directed hundreds of productions across the world, as they write, cast, rehearse and design the first ever opera that contains pieces of once-classified information and a actual-size replication of the atomic bomb. Interwoven is footage of Oppenheimer himself, interviews with Robert Wilson, one of the grad-students present at Oppenheimer’s top-secret Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico, and lots and lots of footage of nuclear explosions and testing. Much in the way the opera itself is a countdown to the detonation of the bomb, the film is a countdown the opening of the opera.

John Else has shot hundred of documentaries, and knows how to engage an audience with his film’s subject. He also knows how to push an audience to think differently and deeper about the subject. In Wonders Are Many he does this subtly, presenting information and analysis bit by bit, painting a broader understanding of the context in which both the bomb and opera are made, though the opera-within-the-film acts more as a way in which to access the story and historical context of the bomb. Here we learn (among much more) that every country that has ever attempted to build an atomic bomb has succeeded on the first try, and that the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombings did not produce as many casualties as the firebombing of Tokyo (an astounding 140,000 killed in 1 night). The film’s most powerful moment comes not in the images of the actual bombs exploding, but with the reaction shots of people watching the explosions, expertly interwoven with the stage actors in their final rehearsal, recreating the expressions of those witnessing unimaginable destruction and power. It’s fascinating subject matter, for everyone from the opera-and filmmakers and their respective audiences, and scary as hell.