Calm down, everyone, Oliver Stone liked Oppenheimer
The director who turned the project down admits that he found Nolan's film "mind-boggling"
Aux News Oliver Stone
Oliver Stone has Oppenheimer fever.
The famously conspiratorial and historically-minded film director, known for the Oppenheimer-esque JFK, tweeted his appreciation of Nolan’s film, which Stone himself turned down the chance to direct. “Saturday, I sat through 3 hours of Oppenheimer, gripped by Chris Nolan’s narrative. His screenplay is layered & fascinating,” Stone tweets. “Familiar with the book by Kai Bird & Martin J. Sherwin, I once turned the project down because I couldn’t find my way to its essence. Nolan has found it.”
Stone calls Nolan’s direction “mind-boggling and eye-popping,” noting the speed with which the director “takes reams of incident and cycles it into an exciting torrent of action inside all the talk.” Unsurprisingly, he was impressed by Cillian Murphy, “whose exaggerated eyes here feel normal.” Of course, that leads one to wonder, are Murphy’s eyes typically abnormal? Never mind our questions because Stone has some notes.
Stone adds a note that he and historian Peter Kuznick made in 2012’s Untold History Of The United States. The director argues that “Japan barely knew what hit them on August 6 at Hiroshima,” citing Major General Curtis LeMay’s firebombings of 100 Japanese cities, killing more than 80,000 in Tokyo and leaving a million homeless.
“Japan did not surrender, as American propaganda would have it, because of the atomic bomb,” Stone’s post reads, “but because a few days later, on August 9, 1.5 million Russian soldiers invaded and destroyed their Imperial Army in Manchuria.”
“Aside from the points mentioned in my previous post, the movie packs in the essence of the tragedy of #Oppenheimer, a man historically in the middle of an impossible situation, though one, as Nolan shows, partly of his own making.”
We await Stone’s review of Barbie and whether or not he did the double feature.
36 Comments
Oh, thank Christ.
“Imperia; Amry”? Wow.
well well well, dirtside doesn’t get modern art
Modern art doesn’t get me!
I couldn’t find my way to its essence.I love this. And please tell me this is just how Stone talks in his day to day life
It’s the same excuse he uses when he fails to make a partner climax.
It’s fun to read takes like Stone’s, where he adds additional context to historical events portrayed in the movie while acknowledging that it’s just a movie and isn’t obligated to perfectly recreate what happened.For pedantry’s sake though, I could have sworn the firebombings of Japanese cities and the Japanese leaders’ refusal to surrender was mentioned in the movie. I thought they said the atomic bomb was would strike fear in a way the firebombings didn’t. And as for the implication that the Japanese surrendered directly because of the bomb, meh. The movie is subjectively told through Oppenheimer’s (and Strauss’) point-of-view. Whatever the truth was, clearly Oppenheimer justified the decision to use the bomb by convincing himself it ended the war.Seeing it again in IMAX 70mm – can’t fucking wait.
Saw it this week (first time seeing anything on IMAX!) Totally worth it, have a great time.
What Stone said is horribly subjective, some historians think the Soviets help end the war, others think it played at best a minor role. Also the fire bombing is mentioned in the meeting with the secretary of war scene. The Toyko bombing which was the deadliest raid of the war at 100k dead, was March 1945 and had little effect on Japan surrendering.
This is my problem with biopics, generally. For example “[Nolan] takes reams of incident and cycles it into an exciting torrent of action inside all the talk.”
That’s all well and good for a cinematic experience but does it reflect what actually happened? That’s not a subtle question, I know. Worse – lives are presented as though they are cinematic spectacles in Actual Life, as though every minute on the planet is spent in high drama. No wonder people feel their lives aren’t interesting or relevant enough. It’s worrisome the way people are plugging into media simulacra and believing that this is how life is or is supposed to be.
Are they, though? I trust people to go into bio-pics with the understanding that they’re seeing a piece of entertainment, and that it may cleave closer to being dramatically satisfying than historically accurate. Primarily, people go to the movies to see a good story, regardless of the genre.
I’m sorry, I don’t think people are that discerning. Unless they have experience with biographies they aren’t likely to know that one famous person has been the subject of multiple biographies. There will always be a different ‘take’. Writing a good biography is not for the timid. We can detail actual ‘facts’ about a subject’s life. But one has to be careful of one’s sources. And then there’s context. And then there’s the telling of the “story.” Then there’s the autobiography, and that can be as ‘fictional’ as the author wants to make themselves. I’ve spent my adult life working with texts, and I’ve never seen a film that could possibly get to the ‘truth’ of any person’s life. Documentaries will also be subject to bias and ‘angles’. If one fully understands that this is entertainment, that’s good, but I’m afraid that too many people will watch this film and then feel they know all they need to know about the life of a man (and why he did the things he did). I think these films have value; if for no other reason than to compell the viewer to dig deeper and look for more authortative material. Maybe sales for American Prometheus will go up? It’s possible that you live in a place where you’re surrounded by people who understand that this movie is more about entertainment. I don’t, I’m afraid. My city has gotten progressively dumber in the past 15 years.
I’m sure plenty of people take what’s in biopics and “based on a true story” movies at face value. Some people just lack the critical thinking skills and curiosity to realize how narrative fiction films are inherently unreliable sources of what “actually” happened, and it can be very dangerous when they make decisions based on what they erroneously took away from a movie. But that kind of person is just as likely to watch Fight Club or something as fantastic as Star Wars and take away the wrong lessons. I hate the knee-jerk “We have to dummy-proof media because the worst people will conclude the wrong things” takes I’ve seen pop up the past few years.
Admittedly, I prefer Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s “movies are fun but just so you know, this is how science actually works” takes.
I’d say Russia played a somewhat decisive role on that. By the time Hiroshima was bombed, the Japanese military had long since accepted that they were going to lose, but they didn’t want to a unconditional surrender similar to Germany. They held out hope that Russia would help them, since they had a non-aggression pact, so once the Russians declared help, they finally surrendered.
Yeah, they not only explicitly mention the Tokyo firebombings but also point out that the atomic bomb wouldn’t kill as many people. Oppenheimer asserts that psychological damage from the bomb would be much greater.And then later he qualifies the claim that the Japanese surrendered because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with “alleged.”So Stone was making narrative leaps of his own (I guess as usual).
Well, gosh, does anyone know if Edgar Wright liked Ant-man?
“Japan did not surrender, as American propaganda would have it, because of the atomic bomb,” Stone’s post reads, “but because a few days later, on August 9, 1.5 million Russian soldiers invaded and destroyed their Imperia; Amry in Manchuria.”Typos aside, don’t amplify this blatantly stupid bullshit. Russia still (in 2023) doesn’t have a transcontinental road or rail system, so I’m curious how they would move 1.5 million soldiers to Manchuria in 1945. And what exactly would they do when they got there? It’s difficult to invade an island without ships or planes. I can’t believe Oliver Stone never got MeToo’d. He’s a scumbag asshole in general, but his movies are overtly misogynistic. There is a 100% chance that he was doing some Weinstein/Polanksi casting couch action.
He’s right though, the Red Army would have rampaged through the Japanese home islands in a way the U.S. forces wouldn’t be free to do, and given the Japanese extreme abhorrence to surrender, there is a good chance most of the population would have been eventually wiped out, including their emperor.And even if they did surrender, the USSR having a toehold on the home islands would have likely meant a North and South Japan split when Stalin demanded he get to keep some of the spoils.I think the bombs did hasten the conclusion that Hirohito had come to, though.
The Red army didn’t have a navy or any way to land on the home islands. Stone is not right at all, and every actual historian, on either side of the bomb debate, knows this. Why Russia declaring war on Japan was influential to the Japanese high command was because they saw Russia, and were in contact with Russia, as the a neutral party that could broker a conditional Japanese surrender. They hoped Stalin could broker a deal with the US where Japan would give up Manchuria to Russia and the South Pacific to the US in exchange for keeping Japan’s political structure and autonomy. Stalin declaring war took that off the table and changed the Japanese high command’s decision making process. It wasn’t that they were afraid that Russian forces would invade the home islands (they couldn’t and obviously didn’t), it was that the remaining avenue for a conditional surrender was removed.
“Why Russia declaring war on Japan was influential to the Japanese high command was because they saw Russia, and were in contact with Russia, as the a neutral party that could broker a conditional Japanese surrender”The only way Stalin was ever going to broker any surrender would be if the Japanese ceded him territory. And given that Japan was just about out of land to surrender at that point that wasn’t on their home islands, it was never going to happen.I guess allowing Stalin to turn them communist would have been acceptable too, but lets be real, that has even less of a chance of happening.
I’m not sure what you are talking about. The agreement would be to cede what Stalin had already pushed into, northern China and the Korean peninsula, formerly Japanese territories. It had nothing to do with giving up home islands, just what Japan had gained in eastern Asia up to that point. Russia COULD NOT invade Japan. This point needs to get across. Russia had no navy and no way to land troops on the Japanese mainland at that time. If Russia actually had that capability Stalin would have pressed it and not let the US be the occupier of Japan. The whole reason Stalin agreed to declare war was the Ally compromise that Russia will keep its advances on the land it had grabbed.
The question is, why would Stalin broker a peace that did not benefit him at all, since you seem to think the Japanese were inclined to think he might?“Russia COULD NOT invade Japan. This point needs to get across. Russia had no navy and no way to land troops on the Japanese mainland at that time.”Yes, they did. They didn’t have much of a Navy, yes, but they had troop transports. I believe a lot of them were actually from the Allies. If memory serves, they even had drawn up a plan to invade the northernmost island, and if they were seriously considering that, its just another hop from there to Honshu.How do you even begin to draw up plans if you have no way to get the troops to the island?It might have taken a while and been dangerous to cross at such a slow rate, but the Japanese would also have had to worry about invasion from the other side from the Americans.
The question is, why would Stalin broker a peace that did not benefit him at all, since you seem to think the Japanese were inclined to think he might?For one, Russia and Japan signed a neutrality pact in 1941 and, as I already said, Japan was ready to offer territory in Manchuria to Russia. Basically anything to not lose control of the home islands and get a conditional surrender that would maintain the current government and the emperor. As it turned out Stalin violated that pact, to Japan’s shock, and steamrolled into Manchuria anyway.
“For one, Russia and Japan signed a neutrality pact in 1941 and, as I already said, Japan was ready to offer territory in Manchuria to Russia.”Yeah, see, the thing about pacts during WW2 is that they weren’t even worth the piece of paper they were written on. Stalin only ever signed anything for non-aggression because he wasn’t ready to outright attack.If the Japanese thought the USSR was going to honor it, they obviously weren’t paying attention.
There was a presumption Stalin would honor the pact, and act as an arbiter, both because Russia had already lost so much in the war and Japan assumed there was a common interest between Russia and Japan in keeping the US from having a permanent military presence in northeast Asia. Japan was obviously unaware of the Yalta conference where Stalin agreed to join the war against Japan after Germany surrendered. At the same time there was still a lot of duplicitousness between the US and Russia behind the scenes. The US assumed that Russia declaring war, and invading Manchuria, would hasten Japan’s surrender but there was real worry amongst some, particularly Byrnes, about Stalin’s post-war behavior. He saw dropping the bombs to be as much of a deterrent to Stalin’s possible post war ambitions as being a functional way to hasten Japanese surrender, and he had Truman’s ear.
“There was a presumption Stalin would honor the pact, and act as an arbiter, both because Russia had already lost so much in the war”I REALLY doubt they thought that.Stalin would have driven all the way to the English Channel if the Allies weren’t there.Plus, since he was now allied with the U.S. and the Japanese knew months in advance, like everyone else, that he promised to attack the Japanese forces, there was little to no chance he wasn’t going to. Too much to be gained.
One must take anything Stone says about history with a massive grain of salt. He still pushes a very conspiratorial view of history, often with basic facts wrong, and has also become a massive Putin apologist in the last decade, calling him a great leader. Even after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, which Stone said would never happen, the most he could muster was that Putin was wrong to invade, BUT here’s all the reason’s Putin likely felt he was forced to… and it’s all the West’s fault for not really understanding Putin. Putin the brutal dictator who has anyone who disagrees with him killed. He just went Russel Brand’s (another conspiracy kook) podcast claiming the 2014 Ukraine election was a coup, even though Russia had just annexed Crimea and had basically invaded and occupied the Donbas effectively shutting down voting in a large swath of Ukraine. Stone also totally ignores the 2019 election, after Russia fully invaded the Donbas, where almost 90% of the country voted for anti-Russian candidates (with Zelenskyy winning the runoff) including most of the Donbas where voting was allowed and wasn’t shutdown due to Russian occupation. He claims those Russian militarily occupied areas just wanted “autonomy,” while completely ignoring that they were militarily occupied by Russia and weren’t autonomous at all. As we now know, anyone who disagreed with occupation was killed. He also bizarrely says there was almost a peace treaty in place in 2021 until “America squelched it,” which isn’t remotely true. I assume he’s referring to Minsk protocols which were never successful. It was then that Putin just unilaterally declared that the Donbas is part of Russia. He remarks about his regret for voting for Biden because “it seems that he’s dragging us stupidly into a confrontation with a power that is not going to give. This is their borders. This is their world. This is NATO going into Ukraine. This is a whole other story.” Sorry, that got long, but fuck Stone.
There are a lot of pro-Putin leftists on social media who blame NATO and the US for the whole wore and absolve Russia of any blame. It’s really ridiculous.
I think I have seen more rightist supporting Putin than the left. Telling someone who rule over 100 millions of people a great leader, does not mean the guy is a great or a good man. Hitler was evil but the guy has talent. Trump can make people invade the capital and stop a proceeding is talented as well.
It’s truly mindboggling. As though former USSR countries were coerced into joining NATO when the fact is they did so to protect themselves from Russia invading them and forcing them back into Russian control. Stone pulls the same ole BS that the West should’ve made more overtures to bring Russia into the world economy after the USSR collapsed. That did happen. It was actually working for a while until literally Putin himself derailed it. It’s also bizarre how many on the right now embrace Putin and Russia and autocracy in general. The MAGA horde loves Putin and Kim Jong Un and other autocrats. To the point that if you criticize Putin on social media you’ll get a million MAGA replies calling you a “commie.” Like, huh?
He’s a tedious burnout contrarian who was flattered into being a stooge.
I was definitely distracted by Murphy’s eyes, especially because Nolan doesn’t seem to have heard of any shot scale that’s not a closeup. But it was neat that he closed them in the final shot.
Glad Oliver Stone never made this. He’d go on some unhinged rant about how Truman just wanted to melt babies and Stalin was the real hero of ww2 and then unhinge his jaw the moment JFK is mentioned. God I hate that man.
I was very concerned.
He’s right about the Russians attacking Manchuria, that had been agreed to at the Yalta conference. The US had plans to invade the southern most island of Kyushu in the fall of ‘45 to prep for an invasion of Honshu in the spring of ‘46. The Russians may have attacked Japan from the north but they had never done an amphibious landing in the war. They did land on the smaller northern most Japanese islands and had quite a bit of trouble dong so. I doubt an invasion of Hokkaido would have been ready before the US plans went into effect. This might have lead to a divided Japan making the Cold War situation that much worse.