Why Oppenheimer Should (Not) Have Shown Real Nuclear Violence

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About this video essay:
With Oppenheimer, Nolan ventures into an inner heart of darkness; into the soul of a man plagued by the consequences of his achievement. But does he take us far enough?

Content:
0:00 Introduction: Oppenheimer's Subjective Perspective
2:06 The Dynamics between Cinema and History
3:33 The Japanese Perspective?
5:07 A Promethean Horror
5:55 The Movie that did go there
7:08 How to depict Historical Trauma?
8:15 The Reality of Nuclear Violence
9:17 What if Nolan went there?
12:06 Arguments For
13:18 Arguments Against
15:13 Different Modes of Engagement
17:28 Final Thoughts: Engaging the Paradox
19:46 The Full Oppenheimer Discussion

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[MurillofranciscoCason]

The scene that struck me the most was the meeting where they make a list of possible target cities. The impression was that they were talking about models of school projects of cities and not real cities with thousands of people and animals inhabiting them.

[Keldroc]

One of the other reasons for the inclusion of the Holocaust presentation in Judgment at Nuremberg was that it was 1961 and that kind of raw unfiltered footage wasn't common at the time. "Confront" is definitely the word for it, as the theater was mass media at the time, and undoubtedly that would have been the first time many people had ever seen the video evidence and documentation of the camps in that kind of graphic detail. It was important to show it socially as well as artistically speaking. Oppenheimer is in another era, in which over half a century of Japanese cinema exists that grapples with the horrific results of the atomic bomb's creation, and naked factual material is readily available with a mere google search. So in addition to the artistic choices Nolan made in not showing it, there's much less societal relevance to showing it as compared to Judgment at Nuremberg simply due to the media landscape we exist in today.

[atailorsblog]

What I so appreciate about Nolan is that he is respectful about the viewer's feelings. He never shocks with a gory image, his horror is always built up gradually. You can tell when Harvey Dents face is first shows there's a lot of back and forth and we see Gordon's reaction first as an opportunity to brace ourselves. Similarly, he also built up the tension and our tolerance in Dunkirk from not quite showing the boat hitting the mole and later escalating to the oil spill.

I really love that about him because it makes me feel safe and it makes me immediately want to watch the movies again.

[fredxu]

I think it was a good artistic choice to not show any footage of the war itself. It's a more real and immersive depiction of how a person might have reacted in that time. We're used to seeing live warfare and horrible things on the media and internet because recording and uploading is so common now, but back then this most certainly was not the case. With how gung-ho Truman was in the film, you could imagine all he knew at the time was big bomb go boom, that's about it. To see how Oppenheimer would react to news of the war solely off of his imagination of what happened to those that suffered the bomb blast was a very powerful moment in the movie: he had no visual proof of exactly how a nuke would kill, he only knew in theory based on the dangers of radiation poisoning and the measurements obtained from the Trinity test.

[zaidlacksalastname]

Nolan wants us to imagine the bombs in the future. If you watch the movie and think "damn Hiroshima and Nagasaki really got destroyed, good thing I won't be" then the movie fails.

[MurillofranciscoCason]

I think we need to see and hear reality. Footage from slaughterhouses has this transformative impact and potential. Narrating a killing leaving the viewer to imagine it will never have the same impact as seeing the real thing. In my opinion, Nolan missed the opportunity to unite theory (bomb construction) with reality. (aftermath of the bomb)

[scottweaverphotovideo]

Nolan has thought himself into a corner with his refusal to use computer generated effects.

[byghostlight]

I dont think the film needed to directly show it, Just like we didnt see any NAZI's or Japanese soldiers and we literally saw nothing of the war itself. It really drives home how isolated and removed these people were from the reality of war on the ground. This film was a film about these people and what they did, not the real life consequences for anyone beyond the characters. Even in the Strauss stuff we see nothing grander of the world outside. The film is not about the horrors of nuclear war, but the choices these people made.

[snower]

I don't think inclusion of aftermath is appropriate for this film because Oppenheimer's turmoil is less about the impact of the two bombs and more about the future use of such devices. He fears the total destruction of the planet.

[gasseryasser]

I think Nolan's creative choice of not showing the impact of the bomb was to convey the dissociation of the main character to the audience to elevate our understanding of the main character's conflict, also to reflect on our own actions so we don't end up living with the consequences of our own choices.

[VirusLD]

Film was incredible. The silence during the trinity test was eerie and phenomenal at the same time. You could feel exactly what the scientists went through when watching that spectacle. Exceptional filmmaking from the entire crew

[mattpedro]

I think it’s deliberate, given that the real and enduring shockwave created by the bomb was the line about lighting the world afire. One atomic blast was insane, but it’s the enduring risk and danger posed by the forever threat of nuclear proliferation that is meant to draw your attention, not simply the spectacle of a single blast

[Onezy]

I think it was even more powerful to show JUST his reaction to it. It leaves more to the imagination of the horrors wrought upon the inhabitants of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which is shown through the brilliant facial acting of Cillian Murphy.

[sbeckmesser]

The Ancient Greeks were rightly satisfied to have all the most violent of dramatic events in their tragedies occur off-stage. The audience only heard about them from a messenger! Yet such scenes as the murder of Agamemmnon in his bath by his axe wielding wife, or Jocasta hanging herself and Oedipus gouging out his own eyes with her broaches, remain disturbing and memorable theater after more than 2000 years! Art has these powers and Nolan in Oppenheimer has shown that he has mastered them. As Aristotle desired, Nolan's filmic tragedy does indeed evoke both terror and pity.

[sebatahiroki]

As a Japanese myself and I’ve watched the Oppenheimer twice to make sure how I felt was right, it’s really hard to say but the fact is Americans don’t know anything about how awful the atomic bomb caused to Japanese citizens in Hiroshima and Nagasaki (I’m not saying they are uneducated. It’s just simply twisted history classes not talking about what exactly happened and what the US did in the WW2. This happens also to Japanese history classes as well. ) So when I watched the scene in Oppenheimer where Oppenheimer did the speech and he stepped into the burnt out body, I found it too shallow to describe how horrible the bomb was if you’ve seen and visited Hiroshima’s museum. Yet, I love Nolan’s movies and how he portraits each movies and I remember once on some interview, he said “I’m not making a documentary movie but the movie in Oppenheimer ”. So from that perspective, Oppenheimer is one of the masterpiece. However, since this historic memory should be remembered outside of Japan, I’m afraid this movie can make the audience to think this historic even as just another “completely different world’s event”. The truth is most of people living outside of Japan don’t know much about how horrible and long-lasting impact caused by the atomic bomb.

[platonicdescartes]

I agree with Nolan not including it. If he would have, he would have had a lot of genuine blowback for using the trauma of the Japanese people for entertainment. And that is a perspective that I care about. But also valuing the artist's intention, in this case the Director/Writer himself, is important to me as well.

[DThron]

The film is not about Oppenheimer, it's about us, the audience. I believe It is an argument to become empathic, and realize how our actions impact others.

This is why the core event is not seeing an external perspective of what he caused, but seeing him fully understanding what he has done - even though he can't see the people he has killed. Showing the event would simply be us saying 'ah Oppenheimer has realized what us smart good people already know, ' - i.e. would be self-congratulation.

Instead, we DON'T see it, and we are forced instead to empathize with Oppenheimer's realization: 'I am a smart, good person - what have I done?' We don't see it because the lesson is ours to learn, not his. Oppenheimer is our avatar, and we are experiencing what he experienced, so that we can see that we make this mistake every single day in our real lives. We say and do things daily on social media that cruelly hurt whole other groups of people; we fail at simple empathy, and think of them as non-humans - because we can't see them, and we can't imagine their lives are as valuable as ours.

I pay taxes that are spent on policies that hurt and repress others so that my country can get things from them cheaply - oil, cobalt, you name it - but as a country, we don't think about their suffering as our fault - because we don't see them. Because I don't see them.But when Oppenheimer does not see what happens in Hiroshima and Nagasaki - he does what I don't: he makes a massive leap of empathy. He does what we fail to do every day: he begins to sense his responsibility for the suffering he causes, regardless of seeing it.

THAT is the reason it's not shown. We live in a mindset of 'pics or it didn't happen.' We fail to believe the reality of the world outside our little bubbles - see the bubble america created for his team in the film - and so we dismiss the consequences. The movie is shockingly daring to suggest that maybe, just maybe, people outside of our bubbles are real...if we can only take a moment to imagine it...and by leaving us to imagine it in the film. Like the basic law of all horror film: what we don't see is the most frightening thing - and in this case, the horror is realizing our own culpability.

[ghostlightning]

The thing about using Strauss to portray the horror.... Strauss is NOT horrified.

[strangemolars]

I don't think the Nurenberg Trial reasoning makes much sense here. Nuremberg trial showed concentration camp footage because it was something that happened directly under autority of those being judged at the trial.

Oppenheimer is plagued by the creation of the bomb because he is a "somewhat good" person and every good person put under this would feel the weight of the indirect repercussions of their actions if they end up being negative, but the reality is that the notion that Oppenheimer was "responsible" for Hiroshima and Nagasaki is as dumb as the notion that whoever created bathtubs is responsible for everyone that was deliberately drowned by someone else on them (wink wink, Tatlock).

(Just to jump ahead what I know someone will say, please spare me of the "bathtubs were created for other reasons, bombs are only created to kill people" speech. I used bathtubs to make a joke, but the point would be valid with any other thing, like whoever engineered the rifles that were used in WW2.)

Oppenheimer was never put into a "trial" for having created the bomb, nor would it make sense that he did go through a trial to respond to this in the case the bombings were considered a war crime. Any war crime that was commited using his creation have no bearing on him, although he would feel the remorse of it because even with all his moral flaws, he wasn't nowhere evil enough to just brush this off. Its hard to imagine someone that would.

Showing Hiroshima/Nagasaki footage would make sense in a Truman biopic. He gave the order. It happened under his authority. He was responsible. Same thing with the footage shown on Nuremberg's Trial - it makes sense because they were directly responsible. Imagine showing concentration camp footage in a biopic of the guy that invented barbed wire.


Also, people keep asking why a 3-hour movie named Oppenheimer doesnt go past Oppenheimer to show a bunch of stuff tangentially related to him. I've seen people complaining that the movie "didn't show Kitty's life enough (like it had shown anyone but Oppenheimer's life)", "erased a lgbt character by not discussing Tatlock in depth", "didnt grounded Einstein's disbelief of quantom physics and opposition to the bomb better?", etc etc etc. Like.... really? Three. Fucking. Hours.

[jwhite-]

Adding the bombs being dropped and/or the aftermath would have felt ... tacked on. It was never the point. I think we sometimes feel like we're not allowed to depict certain events unless we pour every ounce of "inescapable reality" into it to prove we're not turning tragedy into a sort of entertainment. Leave alone, and let them do what they will with their art without forcing them to jump through hoops to prove they understand "the magnitude of issues."