The Titanic director, who is planning an adaptation of nonfiction book Ghosts of Hiroshima, says Nolan’s film ‘dodged the subject’ of the atomic bomb’s devastating impact on that city
It put a bit of narrative weight behind the monstrosity of the bomb and it’s use and depicted it in a very visceral horrifying way. But… the narrative weight was almost entirely on how it effected Robert’s feelings about the project and future projects and the consequences he experienced professionally and socially from that change in sentiment. Which is to say… man heads project to build bomb, bomb kills hundreds of thousands of civilians and starts global nuclear armament, man feels regret and gets career ruined as a result. So, yeah, I think he’s pretty right. They dodged depicting the actual devastation of the Japanese people, not even showing the bombs going off in the cities, nor showing a single Japanese person. It’s all off camera and the only real lasting effect demonstrated is Robert’s guilt. That’s obviously central to a biopic about Oppenheimer, but they made a specific choice to avoid showing the actual destruction caused to maintain a much sympathy as possible for him, I think.
It put a bit of narrative weight behind the monstrosity of the bomb and it’s use and depicted it in a very visceral horrifying way. But… the narrative weight was almost entirely on how it effected Robert’s feelings about the project and future projects and the consequences he experienced professionally and socially from that change in sentiment. Which is to say… man heads project to build bomb, bomb kills hundreds of thousands of civilians and starts global nuclear armament, man feels regret and gets career ruined as a result. So, yeah, I think he’s pretty right. They dodged depicting the actual devastation of the Japanese people, not even showing the bombs going off in the cities, nor showing a single Japanese person. It’s all off camera and the only real lasting effect demonstrated is Robert’s guilt. That’s obviously central to a biopic about Oppenheimer, but they made a specific choice to avoid showing the actual destruction caused to maintain a much sympathy as possible for him, I think.