Choosing How to Spend Your Marbles
Remember the Barbenheimer phenomenon last summer, when many of us flocked to theatres to see two blockbuster movies being released the same weekend, Barbie and Oppenheimer? I was all in on both movies, thoroughly enjoying them and appreciating the contrast between their styles, subject matter and craft.
I loved the splashes of colour in Barbie, especially pink—my favourite colour since I was old enough to express an opinion. And I loved the subtlety and intellectuality of Oppenheimer. While Oppenheimer was much less of a visual spectacle than Barbie, I was struck by one image in Oppenheimer, and it wasn’t the blast and mushroom in the New Mexico desert—it was Cillian Murphy placing marbles into two jars showing progress towards two types of nuclear bombs, and I saw a metaphor for lawyer well-being (I am not going to comment on whether the rising of the mushroom cloud might also be a metaphor for law practice!