Oppenheimer finally on Friday premiered in the nation where two cities were obliterated 79 years ago by the nuclear weapons invented by the US scientist who was the subject of the Oscar-winning film. Japanese filmgoers’ reactions were understandably mixed and highly emotional.
Toshiyuki Mimaki, who survived the bombing of Hiroshima when he was three, said he has been fascinated by the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer, often called “the father of the atomic bomb” for leading the Manhattan Project.
“What were the Japanese thinking, carrying out the attack on Pearl Harbor, starting a war they could never hope to win,” he said, sounding sad.
Photo: AFP
He is chairperson of a group of bomb victims called the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organization and saw Oppenheimer at a preview event.
“During the whole movie, I was waiting and waiting for the Hiroshima bombing scene to come on, but it never did,” Mimaki said.
Oppenheimer does not directly depict what happened on the ground when the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, instantly turning about 100,000 people into ashes and killing thousands more in the days that followed, mostly civilians.
The film instead focuses on Oppenheimer as a person and his internal conflicts.
The film’s release in Japan, more than eight months after it opened in the US, had been watched with trepidation because of the sensitivity of the subject matter.
Former Hiroshima mayor Takashi Hiraoka, who spoke at a preview event for the film in the southwestern city, was more critical of what was omitted.
“From Hiroshima’s standpoint, the horror of nuclear weapons was not sufficiently depicted,” he was quoted as saying by Japanese media.
“The film was made in a way to validate the conclusion that the atomic bomb was used to save the lives of Americans,” he said.
Some moviegoers offered praise. One man emerging from a Tokyo theater on Friday said the movie was great, adding that that the topic was of great interest to Japanese, although emotionally volatile as well.
Another said he got choked up over the film’s scenes depicting Oppenheimer’s inner turmoil. Neither wanted to give their names.
In a sign of the historical controversy, a backlash flared last year over the “Barbenheimer” marketing phenomenon that merged pink-and-fun Barbie with seriously intense Oppenheimer.
Warner Bros Japan, which distributed Barbie in the country, apologized after some memes depicted the Mattel doll with atomic blast imagery.
Kazuhiro Maeshima, professor who specializes in US politics at Sophia University, called the film an expression of “an American conscience.”
Those who expect an anti-war movie mgiht be disappointed, but the telling of Oppenheimer’s story in a Hollywood blockbuster would have been unthinkable several decades ago, when justification of nuclear weapons dominated American sentiments, Maeshima said.
“The work shows an America that has changed dramatically,” he said.
Others suggested the world might be ready for a Japanese response to that story.
Takashi Yamazaki, director of Godzilla Minus One, which won the Oscar for visual effects and is a powerful statement on nuclear catastrophe in its own way, said he might be the man for that job.
“I feel there needs to be an answer from Japan to Oppenheimer. Someday, I would like to make that movie,” he said in an online dialogue with Oppenheimer director Christopher Nolan.
Nolan agreed.
Nolan is to receive a knighthood from Britain for services to film, while his wife and film producer Emma Thomas is to receive a damehood, the British government said on Thursday in a list of honors recommended by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
Nolan wrote the screenplay for Oppenheimer and produced the film with Thomas.
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