The Titanic director, who is planning an adaptation of nonfiction book Ghosts of Hiroshima, says Nolan’s film ‘dodged the subject’ of the atomic bomb’s devastating impact on that city
It put a bit of narrative weight behind the monstrosity of the bomb and it’s use and depicted it in a very visceral horrifying way. But… the narrative weight was almost entirely on how it effected Robert’s feelings about the project and future projects and the consequences he experienced professionally and socially from that change in sentiment. Which is to say… man heads project to build bomb, bomb kills hundreds of thousands of civilians and starts global nuclear armament, man feels regret and gets career ruined as a result. So, yeah, I think he’s pretty right. They dodged depicting the actual devastation of the Japanese people, not even showing the bombs going off in the cities, nor showing a single Japanese person. It’s all off camera and the only real lasting effect demonstrated is Robert’s guilt. That’s obviously central to a biopic about Oppenheimer, but they made a specific choice to avoid showing the actual destruction, probably to maintain as much sympathy as possible for him, I think.
Or, it’s about Oppenheimer. We all know what the bombs did to Japan. It’s well known history. Not every detail of a world needs to be explored and explained again when we already know it. I don’t think most World War II war movies detail the end of the war. Most movies don’t detail singular deaths with accuracy.
I’m pretty sure the images from Japan were shown to Oppenheimer. I’m also pretty sure it shaped his decisions in what he created. I think OP is correct. Omitting it created sympathy and drove the narrative that Strauss got away with framing him.
Sure, but the major shift in his life was over the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and yet they do it entirely off screen. “Tell don’t show” isn’t typically considered a trait of great film making/story telling.
And, yes, they did show Robert’s imagination of the cheering audience being burned alive, which was horrifying. But it could also be argued that it is a bit insensitive to the real loss that they had to use white American people burning alive as stand ins to give you that visceral emotional punch instead of the actual Japanese people that actually died.
Also, no story should ever assume the audience is intimately familiar with history. It only becomes common knowledge by exposing people to it over and over. If you assume everyone knows it and so nobody ever shows it again, people never have a chance to gain that knowledge that makes it common. Particularly for something as steeped in propaganda as this event was. I’m a pretty well educated person and I have regularly learned shit in my adult life that my history lessons casually glossed over. The Nuclear bombing of Japan, specifically, is 1000% one of the most glossed over events in American education, in my experience.
It put a bit of narrative weight behind the monstrosity of the bomb and it’s use and depicted it in a very visceral horrifying way. But… the narrative weight was almost entirely on how it effected Robert’s feelings about the project and future projects and the consequences he experienced professionally and socially from that change in sentiment. Which is to say… man heads project to build bomb, bomb kills hundreds of thousands of civilians and starts global nuclear armament, man feels regret and gets career ruined as a result. So, yeah, I think he’s pretty right. They dodged depicting the actual devastation of the Japanese people, not even showing the bombs going off in the cities, nor showing a single Japanese person. It’s all off camera and the only real lasting effect demonstrated is Robert’s guilt. That’s obviously central to a biopic about Oppenheimer, but they made a specific choice to avoid showing the actual destruction, probably to maintain as much sympathy as possible for him, I think.
Or, it’s about Oppenheimer. We all know what the bombs did to Japan. It’s well known history. Not every detail of a world needs to be explored and explained again when we already know it. I don’t think most World War II war movies detail the end of the war. Most movies don’t detail singular deaths with accuracy.
I’m pretty sure the images from Japan were shown to Oppenheimer. I’m also pretty sure it shaped his decisions in what he created. I think OP is correct. Omitting it created sympathy and drove the narrative that Strauss got away with framing him.
Sure, but the major shift in his life was over the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and yet they do it entirely off screen. “Tell don’t show” isn’t typically considered a trait of great film making/story telling.
And, yes, they did show Robert’s imagination of the cheering audience being burned alive, which was horrifying. But it could also be argued that it is a bit insensitive to the real loss that they had to use white American people burning alive as stand ins to give you that visceral emotional punch instead of the actual Japanese people that actually died.
Also, no story should ever assume the audience is intimately familiar with history. It only becomes common knowledge by exposing people to it over and over. If you assume everyone knows it and so nobody ever shows it again, people never have a chance to gain that knowledge that makes it common. Particularly for something as steeped in propaganda as this event was. I’m a pretty well educated person and I have regularly learned shit in my adult life that my history lessons casually glossed over. The Nuclear bombing of Japan, specifically, is 1000% one of the most glossed over events in American education, in my experience.