Nolan justifies the absence of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Oppenheimer

The filmmaker returns to this point which provoked a debate initiated by other cinema personalities.

A month ago, the director Spike Lee (Do the Right Thing, Malcolm X, BlacKkKlansman) raised the fact that the biopic Oppenheimer of Christopher Nolan absolutely did not address the Japanese point of view of the atomic disaster. The film chronicles the rise and fall of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy), an American physicist nicknamed “the father of the atomic bomb”. He is the leader of the Manhattan Project and the designer of the atomic weapon that was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II.

Spike Lee specifies that he really liked the film Nolan but that he would have dedicated a few minutes of the film to show the fate of the Japanese. In a long interview given to Variety, Christopher Nolan justifies his narrative choice: “The film presents Oppenheimer’s subjective vision. My intention has always been to stick to it rigorously. Oppenheimer learned about the bombings at the same time as the rest of the world on the radio”, he explains.

“I wanted to show a character who was beginning to have a clearer view of the unintended consequences of his actions. It was as much about what I didn’t show as what I did show”, he specifies. The director relied on the biography American Prometheus to try to better understand Oppenheimer’s troubled and complex personality. The physicist never publicly condemned the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a behavior which is still debated today.

Nolan expresses his thoughts on this ambiguous behavior: “My research and my engagement with this story tells me that if we look for a simple answer we deny many facts. Obviously, it would have been better for the whole world if this event never happened. But everything around opinion on the bombing depends on the individual answering the question. When you talk to someone whose parent fought in the Pacific, you get one answer. When you look at the devastating impact in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, you have another one.”

The filmmaker specifies that above all he wants to provoke discussion with his film, rather than giving answers: “The film is an honest attempt to express my feelings about this subject”, he concludes.

Oppenheimer: Spike Lee would have liked “a few minutes on the fate of the Japanese”