By now, we’ve all pretty much seen Oppenheimer, either by itself or as part of Barbenheimer mania, and the Christopher Nolan movie is being touted as his best yet by critics and audiences everywhere. Much has been said about it in the way of its seemingly progressive stance on the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the cruelty of the U.S. Military, and J. Robert Oppenheimer’s own complicated morality.
But is it really that progressive? Not really. As we’ve written before, many Japanese people were already pretty uncomfortable with the film. It leaves out crucial information about WW2 conditions between Japan and the United States that makes an otherwise unambiguous historical event muddled with contradictions.
Make no mistake: The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was willful genocide against a non-white population. We have ample historical evidence to back this up. According to Foreign Policy (and as mentioned in the film), Japan was on the cusp of surrender anyway. Resource-starved and up against multiple enemies (the Soviets were pushing aggressively), the Japanese government was only against unconditional surrender, as it meant Japan becoming colonized by Western powers (which happened anyway after the war).
Some higher-ups were also against the bomb. William D. Leahy, who was an American naval officer at the time, wrote in his memoir I Was There, “It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.” According to Origins at Ohio State University, Dwight D. Eisenhower was firmly against the bomb, writing to Secretary of War Henry Stimson in July 1945, “First, the Japanese were ready to surrender, and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing. Second, I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon.”
Despite all of this, there are still way too many people clinging hard to the myth that the Japanese deserved the nukes. What’s so frustrating about the film Oppenheimer is that it hardly cares about this part of history. At most, the argument against using the bombs in the film is presented as a brief line or two, particularly when Oppenheimer says, “We bombed a defeated enemy.”
In contrast, there are numerous arguments in favor of the bomb that aren’t given proper rebuttal. Oppenheimer shuts down the idea of a measly demonstration blast, opting instead for the total annihilation of a city. What follows is a series of logical assumptions and risk-aversion, like the possibility of the bomb being a dud or the Japanese shooting the plane down. These counter-arguments are given the weight of reason and science and exist in ample number throughout the film. The few arguments against this are all framed haphazardly as an appeal to emotion, and in a film glamorizing science and discovery, empathy is the underdog.
As Mother Jones points out, many of the objections to the bomb that existed back in the 1940s are non-existent on screen. When one of President Harry Truman’s advisers raises doubt and concern about using such a weapon, he is immediately shut down and told that the Japanese won’t ever surrender. Nolan relies on the tragedy of a single scientist as the film’s only meager criticism of the bombing, someone who was “just doing his job.” But this isn’t enough. We need more than Cillian Murphy’s thousand-yard stare for such an incredibly sensitive historical event.
The film is more interested in making a victim of Oppenheimer, a martyr fraught with guilt over his actions. In reality, he was much closer to that of a spoiled rich kid who didn’t do much to reckon with his sins. As Vox writes, Oppenheimer spent much of his days enjoying a cushy director job at the Institute for Advanced Study, along with more than enough money and land to do with in one lifetime. Oppenheimer’s brother, Frank Oppenheimer, devoted his life to activism to a degree that J. Robert never did.
The focus of sympathy is entirely through the eyes of a wealthy white man. Viewers are not privy to the internal lives of the Japanese, nor do you play witness to the mass murder of them. In what is arguably the most haunting moment of the film, Oppenheimer gives a victory speech before a crowd of Americans, after the bombs have been dropped. He says, “If only we’d had it ready in time to use on the Germans,” the sound cuts out to silence, a single scream breaks through the room, and everything turns to white light. The people before him start turning to ash.
It’s a horrifying image; he has woken a monster and there’s no turning back. One problem: It wasn’t white Americans who were subjected to nuclear annihilation. The great failure of this scene is shifting attention from the fascist war crime just committed on foreign land to the idea of “this could happen to white people someday.” It’s a common sleight-of-hand done by white directors who prioritize the emotions of whiteness over the brutalization of the other. This limited view was somewhat baked into Oppenheimer from the start, with Christopher Nolan even writing the screenplay in the first person from Oppenheimer’s point of view. While that specificity of focus may explain (and to some viewers, justify) some of the limitations, it’s still worth critiquing Nolan’s choice that this story should be told, by him, from this perspective.
Many people have taken the film’s ruthless portrayal of McCarthy-era U.S. government as proof of critique, but this is complicated. The average film viewer can accept two “truths” at once: McCarthyist witch hunts are wrong, and Japan wasn’t going to surrender. There is no natural cause-and-effect linking human rights violations to the nukes in the film. Those who buy into this myth are probably against McCarthyism, segregation, and disenfranchisement. That’s why it’s the responsibility of the director to take extra care when making stories about history.
The film does not take this responsibility, nor does it shake the central narrative that dominates the frame. Oppenheimer’s personal struggle during his security clearance hearings does nothing to fight back against the message of “the bomb was terrible but necessary.” Ask yourself this: Why are we more concerned with the feelings of those who helped America do unspeakably horrible war crimes than the actual victims?
And this, perhaps, might be a failure of form. Biopics centered around the instigators, with their stories told by white men, are hardly the best vehicle to tell a story of imperial bloodlust and genocide. There’s no room for anything but the internal demons of “great” white men.
(featured image: Universal Pictures)
