Clickbait outrage. The movie showed what the bomb does to people without feeling like it was exploiting the suffering of innocent victims for the sake of a summer blockbuster.
The article even explains how: "In another scene, Oppenheimer gives a speech and, while looking into the crowd, visualizes some of the predominantly white audience as the victims of his bomb."
It's an effective scene. Sometimes what you don't show (negative space) is as powerful as what you do show.
Yeah, there is a fucking burnt child on the movie.
The story is not about bombing Japan.
Yes, that was a war crime. Yes, that was terrible.
But if you know the story of Oppenheimer, or seen the movie, he did not decide anything. The military took over at that moment in time.
So if it was a movie about the military, this had to be shown. But it is about him. So a suggestion (as is clearly in the movie for about the last hour or so) is more than enough of you ask me.
You're totally right and the discussion (as so many these days) is completely bollocks.
Since when should the public have the right to demand what an artist ought to put in his work or must not omit. I don't get it...
He decided to make the bomb. He knew what bombs are used for.
Agreed, but that is not what the movie is about.
He did say (no one knows what he believed) that just having the bomb would mean world peace…
Then he was a fool who's actions contributed to the murder of hundreds of thousands.
Literally part of the film is him realising this, did you leave after the bomb went off in testing or what?
His reasoning was if the US didn’t make it, the Nazis would, and that would be even worse. He never wanted to make the bomb, it was just the lesser of two evils.
Making the bomb was a good decision, dropping two over civilians after the war finished was genocide.
And exactly that is the struggle he had. He even informed the president (who told him to fuck off in a polite way)
Yes, but part of the story of the film is that he's so caught up in the joy of science and discovery he isn't thinking that far ahead and it suddenly becomes real after he's in the meeting deciding on targets (note how that's one of the few scenes without a score). Then the distance he's kept at from the use of the weapons inspires his outlook in later scenes.
Americans in general hate to acknowledge the war crimes they commit. I think it was more about a business decision than anything else.
Being so far removed from the use of his discovery and put of the loop now the army was done with him is a crucial character moment in the film, and we as the audience are following his story. Having scenes of the bombing, the aftermath of the victims would have undermined that.
The US is in complete denial of the genocide they did dropping two nuclear bombs in two different cities with mostly just civilians. Everybody else in the world see the pictures of the Japanese aftermath when we study the second world war.
Not at all actually. We learn about it. We discuss it. What's surprising to me is, you are harping on the atom bombs when the fire bombings caused way more death and destruction. It's not even a comparison.
That's not remotely true. American students learn extensively about the dropping of the bombs and their aftermath.
I saw those pictures in school. We know that Truman signed off on dropping the bomb on two civilian cities and it was a horror that had never been seen in the world before or since.
Dude, we talk about our atrocities all the time. The current push to whitewash Native American genocide and slavery is actually getting a huge pushback, because we talk openly about this stuff in the US and it's only a minority that tries to silence it. We talk openly about the atrocities during the Vietnam War, and about the invasion of Iraq, and about prosecution for war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq.
You can say a LOT about the US, and even the amount of denial we have about our standing in the world, but you can't call us in denial about stuff like that. We're in conflict within ourselves about it, but it's a well known and well discussed thing in the US.
And wait... are you from lemmygrad? The tankie server?
We do not talk about our atrocities all the time. Politicians can almost never reference them. In the rare cases they allude to them, they never apologize and they never take material steps to repair the damage.
We allow private corporations to produce student text books for profit, and when the monopoly status of these corps causes the largest states to control the curriculum, everyone suffers. When you combine that with the Daughters of Confederacy movement to rewrite history in the text books, and Texas being one of the biggest markets for text books, you end up with over a century of white washing indoctrination in schools for 12 years, minimum, of almost 100% of children in the country.
I grew up in a liberal-ass state we still called the first settlers "pilgrims" and said their motivation was religious freedom. We celebrate Thanksgiving and Columbus and everyone who tries to speak out against it is literally risking their safety and the safety of their family because we have such a massive and deep-seated problem that random acts of terror are carried out without any coordination.
Lynchings never stopped, but no one except radicals talk about it. The police are literally an occupying military force, but no one except radicals talk about it.
No, we're not in conflict with ourselves about it. There is a very small radical group within the country that attempts to raise the level of discourse and nearly every single institution, every seat of power, every media company, every billionaire, every major land owner, every politician, nearly every educator, nearly every judge - everything is aligned against raising this discourse.
If you think we're earnestly and honestly struggling with this stuff as a nation, you are delusional.
I've been out of the country and we are lightyears ahead of other countries when it comes to reckoning with our past. No, we're not perfect, but we're a hell of a lot more open. You know how I know?
Because I was raised in Trumpland, PA and I joined the military and served in Mississippi, Texas, Oklahoma and Europe and I was able to learn about the Native American genocide, slavery, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki at school, and managed to absorb the rest through pop culture. We had a variety of differing assumptions when we talked, but we still talked. Yes, I heard that Lee was a gentleman but a trip to Gettysburg easily discarded that notion. My history teacher was quick to point out the founding fathers were opportunists.
There is stuff, like the bullshit we've been pulling in South America, that hasn't gotten discussed. That's true. But it's not just the radical minority that's aware the country is basically built on rivers of blood. The awareness is all over our pop culture.
You're not hearing what's good enough in your liberal state, but I have been knee deep in conservatism since birth and I've still managed to pick up on the horrors of our national history.
Now, just for comparison, go ask a Brit or a Frenchman about the Native American genocide and their country's role in it.
Ugh, look. I don't want to fight because clearly you are in a different environment and social circle and you're right that stuff like the practice of overthrowing governments in South America to benefit businesses and a large number of horrors are not discussed.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not among them. And when it comes to racism, we are actually talking about it unlike Europe. The most powerful people in the country want to kill this discourse, but they CAN'T except in pockets of the most brainwashed home-schooled isolated people in the country.
But I resent being called delusional. Because we are earnestly and honestly struggling with this stuff as a nation. It's just that we're struggling against all the powers you name, and the dark history of the United States is not hidden like it is in other countries. It's present and on most people's minds.
That isn't a genocide.
Wow... comment section is full of genocide deniers.
They probably believe that killing off all native Americans and still destroying them is also not genocide.
Unbelievable.
The killings of Native Americans in the US can absolutely be called a genocide. The use of nuclear weapons in Japan was a horrible act of war that killed so many people, but it is by definition not a genocide. Calling it one dilutes the meaning of the word genocide. Using the right words and definitions when talking about tragedies of war is not denial of said atrocities.
Genocide is the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.
What the Nazis did to the Jews was genocide. What the Chinese are currently doing to the Uyghurs is genocide. The Circassian genocide in Russia was happening around the same time as the US genocide of the Native Americans.
The troll doesn't understand the meaning of genocide, and doesn't understand strategic bombing. The US didn't want to extinguish the Japanese, and neither the Japanese of that era or the current era believe(d) it was genocide. They had great respect for US General Douglas MacArthur, so much so that Japanese Emperor Hirohito stood side by side with him and publicly declared his respect for his one-time opponent.
Trolls seem to think US schools don't teach this stuff. My children learned it and taught it to my immigrant ass.
Well, the Japanese don't love to acknowledge their war crimes either, which btw also ranked pretty high on the Evil Fucked Up Shit scale.
If we're to see Hiroshima aftermath, then we should also mention stuff like The Rape of Nanjing for context, which alone had an approximate number casualties similar to the two bombs.
I have not seen the film yet, but it seems like this is a biopic about Oppenheimer, not a WWII movie.
Also, do directors need to infantilize their audience by directly showing "this was bad. Here is why this was bad"? Like, obviously the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were devastating. If you have basic history knowledge you should already know that, and know that those bombings were a direct consequence from what was depicted in the movie with out it being spelled out for you.
The movie is more about the political witchhunt after the fact than it is directly about the bomb itself
Film is told from Oppenheimer's perspective, I see no problem with it. Especially as it is shown that he had trouble with moral questions over creating a bomb and using it. And there is a really powerful scene with him being troubled with the Japan bombing and imagines bomb being detonated while he gives speech.
The movie doesn't show away from the affects of a nuclear explosion, but it does show the distance that the gadget creators had to the gadget's victims. There is no mistaking the destructive power of a nuclear weapon. It just happens to be that the destruction isn't a direct response that the inventor deals with.
They were victims. The nukes were war crimes. Show the victims.
Ultimately though a lot of Nolan's films are coded for a Conservative viewpoint going back to the Batman trilogy. There's still quite a bit of it here, even if this movie is intended to depict the honesty of nuclear weapons.
Ultimately though a lot of Nolan's films are coded for a Conservative viewpoint
Wat
Literally half the point of the character development in the film is his realisation of the distance he has from the use and effects of his discovery. Showing them would undermine the whole thing.
Also the given his second to last film was literally about the allies fighting Nazis in WW2 I don't know what you mean about conservative coding.
Sure show the Japanese victims, but then you need to show why they were victims in the first place. So you need to show Japanese Imperialism that committed atrocities in Nanking and the attack on Pearl Harbour.
Maybe we could go further and show that Japanese Imperialism was driven by the existential threat of Western Imperialism, which does not in any way lessen the horrors committed by Imperial Japan.
Sometimes the whole story can’t be told in a single film. Not all of it is important to the message or topic the author, director and producers wish to send or examine.
The Japanese had decades of atrocities under their belt by the closing of world war II. There was the Bataan Death March, Siam, occupation of Manchuria, invasion of Singapore, Guam, Philippines, attack on Pearl harbor, and many many other Acts of War that the empire of Japan engaged in. Unlike others mentioned, unit 731 and the rape of Nanjing. They were utterly ruthless.
Hell, there was that one Japanese imperial soldier who was still murdering foreigners like 30 years after the war freaking ended!
So to say that Japan didn't deserve having atomic bombs dropped on it I believe is disingenuous. The people of Japan supported the war and were very militant, unlike the Japanese of today. They believe that they could conquer all of Asia and they try their hardest to do so. They were also prepared to fight to the death to defend their home island. During the preparation and bombing of Japan, the Russians were also preparing in amphibious invasion of Japan. This would have split the Japanese islands into Russian and American administered Islands, like what happened to Germany in the post-war.
The two nuclear bombs dropped on Japan killed roughly 150,000 people. That is less people than died at the siege of Stalingrad in Russia. That is less people than died in a few weeks at the Battle of the Somme during world War I.
The fact is that War sucks, and it's not just the soldiers who suffer and die - it's the civilians as well. We should never forget that, and that there's one thing that the Japanese will tell you today is that we should avoid war at all cost. Whether you agree with that or not, is for you to decide.
Heh, first it was criticism of the credits, now is what should and shouldn't be in the movie. If you know better, why don't you make your own movie that will put Nolan to shame?
will Japanese directors show the camps of sex slaves they have in China or Korea? of course not
so there is your answer
Whataboutism is not helpful.
The entire premise of the article is literally whataboutism
Well of course it's not, the us government wants to remind everyone that the bombings were a 'nessicary evil' that bs is still taught in schools. Not being a conspiracy guy but I cant imagine a high budget highly publicized movie would rock the boat like that. If you want to hear about sloughing go listen to the last podcast on the lefts 6 part magnum opus on the Manhattan project.
Well of course it's not, the us government wants to
The movie does a decent job portraying why nuclear bomb development was so much more complex than simply a necessary evil, a good, or an unnecessary evil. It's just not a simple topic with easy answers.
The left is not in agreement about the usage or development of the bombs.
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