Spike Lee has some thoughts on Oppenheimer
Amidst praise for Nolan's film, Lee asked "How long was that film? I would like to add some more minutes about what happened to the Japanese people."
Aux News Spike Lee
Spike Lee is a lifelong scholar of film, both in the formal context of the classroom (where he’s been both teacher and student) and as a prolific creator and consumer of movies. So it’s not wholly surprising that Lee—who’s in the midst of opening a new exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum right now, featuring 450 pieces of film and cultural memoribilia from his massive personal collection—has some thoughts on the biggest films of the day.
Specifically, Lee has now weighed in on Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, addressing the film during a recent (and extremely wide-ranging and entertaining) conversation with The Washington Post. And, let’s be clear: Lee is a fan of the movie, calling it a “great film,” and praising Nolan as a “massive filmmaker.” That being said, he did have some thoughts on what a different version of the movie might have looked like—one that put at least a bit more focus on the people directly affected by Robert Oppenheimer’s work as on the man himself:
This is not a criticism. It’s a comment. How long was that film? If it’s three hours, I would like to add some more minutes about what happened to the Japanese people. People got vaporized. Many years later, people are radioactive. It’s not like he didn’t have power. He tells studios what to do. I would have loved to have the end of the film maybe show what it did, dropping those two nuclear bombs on Japan. Understand, this is all love. And I bet he could tell me some things he would change about Do The Right Thing and Malcolm X.
Lee also touched on Killers Of The Flower Moon, the latest movie from his friend Martin Scorsese. Lee put especial focus on star Lily Gladstone: “She’s winning an Oscar,” he asserted. “And I don’t think that’s a supporting role. I think that’s a leading role. She’s got my vote.” (Then, when told Gladstone has submitted herself for lead actress at the Oscars: “Good! She should not go for the okey-doke.”)
183 Comments
*Spike Lee angrily tweets Alan Oppenheimer’s home address*
You beat me to it. Damn you.
Since when do you think Spike Lee is a MAGAt?Or is this just projection?
*Spike Lee angrily tweets home addresses of the cast of Six Feet Under*
*Spike Jonze angrily tweets that Christopher Meloni is a Weisenheimer*
Spike Lee angrily tweets . . . uh . . . um . . . Florence Pugh’s tits.
I like where this is going.
I don’t know that every movie is required to address every angle of every single event. That said, it does show Oppenheimer imagining the victims and being horrified – possibly more horrified than he was in real life, though he was critical of dropping the second bomb.
It’s interesting that you’re exagerating the number of angles with every twice when it’s exactly two points of view.
In this instance the total number of view points being brought up are Oppenheimer’s and the Japanese. Ergo – every point of view. But my larger point is that asking movies to embody every POV on a story is untenable. As someone else commented – we don’t demand that Grave of the Fireflies devote time to the US point of view. Why would it?
Because American movies think they’re for EVERYBODY, not just Americans?Japanese anime is mainly for Japanese people….
Because Japan didn’t massacre thousands of US civilians?
Not that they weren’t interested… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_PX
I could see a closing credits montage of archival footage and such (e.g., actual images of radiation poisoning, etc.) – seems like the type of thing that Spike Lee might have done had he directed it.
To me that would be out of place in a movie that is effectively a biopic of one person who already articulated the concerns. He’s totally entitled to that opinion, but would we expect a movie told from the Japanese perspective to also showcase the other side as well?
Not saying he should have done it or that it was required, but I could see adding something like this if you felt like you wanted to make that point. I don’t think it would have taken away from the film or anything. Also, the what-about-ism of “should a film from the Japanese perspective have to show the American perspective” is a stupid-ass argument.
I think “whataboutism” itself is usually a stupid-ass argument.
It is a stupid-ass argument. The credit roll you suggested doesn’t have to be from a Japanese POV anyway. A simple ‘global’ POV, as captured by news reel journalists. would have served.
“Also, the what-about-ism of “should a film from the Japanese perspective have to show the American perspective” is a stupid-ass argument.”No, it’s not. It’s a completely legitimate rebuttal of a complaint that misses the point of Oppenheimer.The movie is not about the war at all. There are no combat scenes, nothing like that.Iit’s called “Oppenheimer”, not “The Bomb and How it Affected the Japanese”.
This whole fucking topic is an exercise in whataboutism, so why not?
Also, the what-about-ism of “should a film from the Japanese perspective have to show the American perspective” is a stupid-ass argument.Its not what-about-ism, its literally the most direct comparison possible.
It was just a random Japanese movie – It’s one specifically about the event and the fallout. It’s a 1:1 comparison on the same topic.
Ha! Spike Lee would have intercut his scenes with historical photos of Hiroshima and explanatory captions.
I mean it could have been included as part of Oppenheimer’s conflict. Part of what tortured him was what it was used for and the people who died. Or mix the unnecessary sex scene in with a scene of a Japanese couple who get a highly shortened love story because they got incinerated to demonstrate from the start it’s a tragedy
You would be right, if it weren’t for the fact that the nuclear bomb and its’ effects are criminally underrepresented. I can’t think of a single thing that directly addresses the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and goes into detail about how widely-ranging its’ effects were. It might even help anti-nuclear bomb sentiment, which I think is, again, criminally underrepresented.It also doesn’t help that the film is also not a particularly accurate biography of Oppenheimer, so it fails in its’ task of providing his perspective.One should also consider how the bomb is sensationalised in the promotional material, and to an extent, within the film itself.
You can’t think of a single thing?
Grave of the Fireflies
Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes
Children of Hiroshima
Radioactive
Barefoot Gen (and all its iterations)
The Bells of Nagasaki
That’s just the thing: I’ve never heard of any of those. You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who hadn’t heard of this film, though.Which is why I say it’s criminally underrepresented. It’s not shown even in a film in which it should absolutely be addressed in some form, but instead, the atomic bomb is treated as some glorious, yet kinda horrible thing, when all it is is horror. And that treating it as something from which vainglory and pride can be derived undermines the idea of it being something that should be wiped from existence.
You having not heard of media that does something doesn’t change that it exists. Oppenheimer happened to do very well so there is inevitable backlash, but if you actually care about the issue – Go watch one of those or read the related books. I had to read Sadako in school, so many get exposure to it that way.
None of this invalidates what I said. The nuclear bomb is something that should get far more attention, especially given Russia’s sabre rattling and rhetoric with its’ bombs, and North Korea’s increasing assertiveness and aggressiveness, and in a world where climate change is considered a core issue, I don’t see why the single thing humanity could use to end itself isn’t given similar attention, outside a lack of public awareness.
…the single thing humanity could use to end itself…Uh, I’ve got some bad news for you buddy…
I mean, unless we all collectively commit mass suicide, nothing short of a nuclear war, or something entirely outside our control, will kill humanity off.
If you have to get it done tomorrow, sure. Long term I think you’re really underestimating climate change.
And I think you overestimate climate change. Undoubtedly, many places will become more uninhabitable, especially coastal areas, but temperatures aren’t going to be increasing by 10+°C. It’s taken us a hundred years to approach 1.5°C, and we really only have enough fossil fuels for another 100 or so years, so renewable energy is inevitable. And even if they did, humanity could still find a way to survive. Not as prosperous as now, perhaps, but we’d live. We’ve found ways to live in nearly uninhabitable places before, when we didn’t have the technology or knowledge we do now.You can’t really do that with a nuclear apocalypse, though. A nuclear winter will present far worse climate change than anything fossil fuels will be able to achieve, even in a thousand years. I really do suggest you look up what research has been done on the theoretical results of nuclear warfare, and compare it to the worst projections of climate change. They’re on two entirely different scales.
In the entirety of human existence, global temperatures have never fluctuated by more then a few degrees; we really have no idea what to expect because this has literally never happened in recorder history. All we have are the records of mass extinction events which all paint a very grim portrait of what to expect.
This is just blatantly incorrect. During the Last Glacial Period, around 19000-23000 years ago, global average temperatures were around 7°C. Current average temperature is around 15°C, which, subtracting the 1.1°C increase from climate change, leaves us with a 6.9°C difference between the average, and a glacial period. And, obviously, 6.9>1.1.And I shouldn’t need to tell you that humanity existed 20000 years ago, and that they lived with vastly inferior technology than we do.Unless you mean to refer to the short period of change, in which case, it’s still fairly irrelevant. We measure the temperature, and not how long it’s taken us to get to where we are, for a reason. It’s the global temperature that matters, not how fast or slow it gets there.And even then, it’s still a slower change than the projections for global temperatures following the meteor that impacted the Earth and killed the dinosaurs. Which, in case you are unaware, changed at a rate between 15°C, and 26°C, only four years after impact.And our ancestors survived that.
Climate change could very easily wipe out humanity, or at least the majority of it, if we continue on the current trajectory (which seems pretty much certain at this point).
Incorrect. A 1.5°C increase in global temperatures has been predicted to increase sea-levels, and flood coastal areas as well as islands, due to the retreat of glaciers, but also increases in extreme weather events, along with droughts.Absolutely none of this, humanity cannot handle. But people will die to it, undoubtedly. Famines will probably be the most deadly aspect, out of everything.Even a 10°C increase, which pretty much every climate scientist agrees is extremely unlikely to actually occur, is still not enough to wipe out humanity. Living will simply be a LOT harder.Compared with the predictions of what would happen were for every nuclear bomb to be used? It’s nothing.
You keep using the word “single” in contexts where it is not applicable. Oppenheimer repeatedly states concerns about the weapon. We see Truman brush him off. We see him imagine fallout. In a movie about Oppenheimer that makes sense.There are countless movies and tv shows about the threat of nuclear war/nuclear fall out: Threads, Testament, Chernobyl, The Day After, Thirteen Days, K19, The Hunt for Red October, Fail Safe, Fat Man & Little Boy, The Road (albeit that is open for debate), When the Wind Blows, to name just a few.Your argument is that Oppenheimer, because it was popular, should have done more because you haven’t heard of these other properties that are about the very thing you claim matters.And let’s not forget actual lines from the movie that speak EXACTLY to your issue:
J. Robert Oppenheimer: Albert? When I came to you with those calculations, we thought we might start a chain reaction that would destroy the entire world…Albert Einstein: I remember it well. What of it?J. Robert Oppenheimer: I believe we did.
Okay, fair point in regards to the Hunt for Red October and Chernobyl (things I have heard of), so I admit my mistake. I suppose I’m just salty that Oppenheimer doesn’t do everything in its’ power to present an anti-bomb message.
I’m not convinced you watched the movie. There are countless references to how his bomb is going to literally destroy the world and/or give humanity the ability to destroy itself. He says it. Niels Bohr says it. Isidor Rabi says it. Leslie Groves says it. Henry Stimson lists the casualties, references the number of civilians and says how bad it is that everyone is okay with it. Lewis Strauss goes to lengths to point out why Truman doesn’t regret it, highlights that power is more important than peace and Strauss is the damn villain! You think people who are pro-nuclear weapons need to see carnage to have a change of heart? Those assholes will look at the carnage and say “yeah, but it wasn’t us.”
“I’m not especially up to speed on the topic I’m upset about and it’s everyone else’s problem!”
You entirely misunderstood my point, so congrats on that.
Yeah, but that’s your fault for not making it obvious or often enough.
Not every movie needs to, but this one did.As an engineering nerd, I can tell you that just about every engineering nerd (especially the teens) watching that movie felt it as a story of the triumph of man and genius. It made me feel a lot like Apollo 13 did back when it came out.The other side of the triumph begs to be presented — to this movie’s audience and while they’re enthralled by this story. Anything less feels too easy, tells a false story that’s too heroic. Even if you would have ultimately made the call to drop the bomb (and I probably would have), it’s important to wrestle with what a terrible thing it is.
Holy shit, what movie did you watch? You walked out of this feeling that it was a story of Oppenheimer’s triumph? The movie that ended with a montage of the apocalypse that he would feel responsible for?
It made me feel a lot like Apollo 13 did back when it came out.You had a fist-pumping “America F-yeah!” reaction to Oppenheimer? As also an engineering-nerd type, and one who loves Apollo 13, I can’t equate an achievement of pure science (to be reductive), with a tool designed expressly for killing humans on a mass-scale.
That aside, I found the science severely truncated in the film (by design, of course). There are much better examples of historical fiction that dive into the weeds at Los Alamos (the “Manhattan Project” series, even).
In the Alamogordo test scene? Yeah, there were definitely elements of that reaction (although I’d characterize my reactions to both as “engineering, fuck yeah!”, not America). And really, the only thing muting that reaction within me was that I knew what they had created was a war device of flabbergastingly immense power, and I had made a conscious effort to keep that fact at the front of my mind. If not for that effort, I probably would’ve been something approaching giddy. I made it a point to share with my 14-year-old nephew a contemporary story in the New Yorker on the aftermath of the bombing in Hiroshima, to help him with perspective before he saw the movie. I strongly feel it would’ve been, for him, a story of pure heroic effort (with a side of mistreated genius) without that other side.Completely separately, and apologies if this sounds pedantic, but I disagree with your characterization of it as an achievement of pure science. Making a functional atomic bomb (or a functional anything, really) is to me much more an achievement of engineering than of science, even if the project required some pure science be done on the fly. (And I suppose Oppenheimer’s achievement was much more as a project manager than either a scientist or engineer, but now I’m really straying from the point.)
It is interesting that we really didn’t see much of the American perception of the Japanese in the story. Obviously, most of the people working on the project were doing so due to the Nazis while maybe a few of the military and political leaders may have been considering the post-war power balance. However, I think the fact that the Germans had been defeated – mostly by the Red Army – prior to the success of the development of the Bomb certainly had more of an impact on the sentiments of the people directly involved in its development.It may have been conducive to the drama had there been more of a sense of the sort of racist and demeaning and to our modern eyes simply disgusting dehumanizing propaganda that was ever present in American culture during the war. The deep tragedy of the story is that the first expression of a major advancement in science was as a genocidal and potentially apocalyptic weapon rather than for nuclear power or medical research and treatment which was the initial motivation for the invention of the cyclotron for example. So, in that sense, Lee certainly has a point in that at least if the xenophobia and hatred of the Japanese that was actively used and promoted by the authorities in America at the time of the war is not depicted, it leaves out a very dramatic part of the story as to why Truman found actually using the bombs against the Japanese so acceptable.
If we cut to the Japanese perspective, we’d probably then need to cut to the Chinese Nanking perspective, and then from there to the Korean perspective of China and Japan in 1894, and then… wait, is all human history a list of atrocities conducted over previous atrocities?
That’s a good point. In the West we don’t really hear that much about the atrocities the Imperial Japanese forces committed in Asia, so it is easier to see Japanese civilians as victims as opposed to German ones (who we generally see as getting what they deserved for not overthrowing Hitler themselves).
the guy was a fucking nazi working for the “good guys” you think he gave a shit about japanese humans?
It’s a well done sequence that shows his personal reaction to dropping the bombs in a very visceral way, but it’s also true that it doesn’t come close to capturing the hell on earth caused by his invention. No one is saying that it’s a requirement, it’s simply artistic critique.
There should have been at least a flash of the horror – just a flash would have been enough to remind the viewer what the stakes were here.
There is.Oppenheimer imagines victims of fallout.
Yeah, well fucking done for showing the literal LIGHT from images of what happened playing across his face. Issue addressed!
The one thing I would change was the erroneous statement in the film given to Oppenheimer that other than “a boarding school and some Indians who come here for cememonies” that the Los Alamos area was unused. There were farmers (mostly of Mexican ethnicity) who lost their farms when the government appropriated the land. Oppenheimer, who had visited the area as a youth which is why he picked it, had to know that.
Ironically, Oppenheimer’s view of the atomic bomb is that least important one.
I would really love to hear what Nolan would change about Malcolm X.
the speeches would be drowned out by Zimmer, for one….
Bravo.
I had in mind the scene where the camera pans into Denzel Washington’s face during that moment of spiritual revelation backed up by a solemn“BWAHHHHMMMMMMMMM”
Funny enough I know Nolan has a habit of not being able to hear the actors, I 100% did not notice ANY of that in Oppenheimer.
What? What did he say? All I heard was synthesizer.
Make the delivery of the speeches unintelligible with shitty sound mixing?
“We [unintelligible unintelligible unintelligible] rock, [unintelligible unintelligible unintelligible] on [unintelligible unintelligible]”
Da Mayor: “[unintelligible unintelligible unintelligible]”
Mookie: What’s that, Mayor?
Da Mayor: “[unintelligible unintelligible unintelligible]”
Mookie: Yeah… um ok. See you later!
They both agree to make all female roles either The Wife or poorly written.
Correction. The dead wife
“Wait- Malcolm died and his wife didn’t? Well, shit. This’ll never work as a movie.”
Of course gotta add some friging.
Hey, hey, hey, now: Chris is a man and has enough trouble writing male characters. Writing a female character’s harder for him than explaining why poop doesn’t fly back up people’s anuses when they take a dump in Tenet. Please note: I have not seen Tenet. However, by all accounts, this makes me as qualified to comment on what happens in Tenet as people who have actually seen Tenet. Also, he chose “Tenet” for the title because it’s a fucking palindrome, didn’t he?
Don’t forget to throw in Marion Cotillard somewhere around there.
Hey, is there a black guy talking? All I can hear is the screaming booming score music.
Is there a Black guy talking? Not in a Christopher Nolan movie.
a black Guy TALKING?
It should really be from a white guy’s perspective.
Go make that movie or fund that movie, that’d be interesting too
If Spike wants to send some money Down Under…
It would, the way Come and See is interesting. It should be seen but no one truly wants to.
I agree with Lee, and also think Grave of the Fireflies should have had a few minutes devoted to what Oppenheimer was up to.
Underrated comment.
People are radioactive. Is he referring to the test site or like Japan as a whole? If the latter, he does realize that due to the bombs being air dropped, the city itself isn’t radioactive. The immediate weeks and months did result in horrible damage short and long term but its not permanently like this, its not Chernobyl.
Given the “Many years later”, I believe it is in reference to the fact that many survived the bombing, that also didn’t die in the following months to radiation burns/poisoning, but still suffered life-long health effects, which, I believe only has been discussed anecdotally (I’m not aware of any scientific research having been done), have passed on to their children, and children’s children. Which is to say, the radiation, in some form, still effects Japan today.Or it could simply be in reference to those who survived the bomb, and suffered long-term health effects, and thus the “many years”, but the “later” makes me think he’s specifically talking about today.Or Spike could be utterly unaware of how radiation and the such works, and has heard that radiation can last a long while, and thus, thinks it’s still a thing today.
Let’s be honest, the amount of people suffering from Fukushima is higher than the number of people still currently suffering from WWII, at least in terms of radiation.
Oh without question seeing how that was much similar to Chernoybl what with leaking radiation for a long period of time up to and including a body of water. I don’t know if anyone has or even could get the data for a detailed aftermath damage to the population I must assume its large and its ghastly.
Now I will preface I’m not a nuclear historian, but I don’t believe passing radiation onto your children is possible. Its not contagious, that was an issue the Chernoybl HBO show kinda fucked up on, taking the opinion of a woman who thought radiation killed her child before it was born. It was probably the stress of it all, not hugging someone.If it’s the second one, then yeah that’s horrible. Its outside the purview of the film but its definitely worth telling that story, people who got cancer and perhaps survived that just for it to come out of remission. That last one is sadly not an uncommon view. I know the woman who helped write the 1619 Project, Nikole Hannah Jones, said Hiroshima is still radioactive. Which… I don’t even know what to say.
For the first one, you misunderstood me. I specifically said “life-long health effects” and not radiation, precisely because it’s not radiation, but the damage the radiation initially caused, that effects you for your entire life. Think weakened immune system, cancer, heart issues, and in this specific regard, it becomes inherited by the children. But again, I’m not aware of any research or studies into the descendents of people who survived Hiroshima/Nagasaki, so I cannot say for sure whether it is a thing that truly occurs. I’m not a radiation specialist, in any way, but my understanding of radiation being that it effects your DNA pretty significantly (with the cancer being caused when it fucks too much with your DNA), and given how DNA is passed off to our children, it makes sense that, in some regard, the damage is passed on.As for the second, honestly speaking, there’s a lot of stories that can be told about those who survived a nuclear bombing, but nowadays, most people aren’t so conscientious of just how devastating the nuclear bomb is, which is a real shame. I wish there was an anti-bomb movement as strong as climate change’s, given the potentiality for the bomb to do far more damage than climate change ever could.It’s why I never went to see Oppenheimer in theatres. I thought, ahead of time, that Nolan would address these ideas, but when it came out and I learned it didn’t, I was… disappointed.
“I’m not a radiation specialist, in any way, but my understanding of radiation being that it effects your DNA pretty significantly (with the cancer being caused when it fucks too much with your DNA), and given how DNA is passed off to our children, it makes sense that, in some regard, the damage is passed on.”
(In sufficient doses) It damages DNA sufficient to cause breakdowns in cellular reproduction and cancer, sure. But think about how someone’s DNA is passed along to their children – if we are talking about a later-conceived child, unless the DNA in that one exact egg cell* was specifically damaged in a way that wasn’t immediately fatal to the cell itself, and wasn’t sufficient to interrupt the subsequent ability of the cell to divide and ultimately become a fetus, there’s no radiation-induced damage transfer possible!
* egg cells would have been present in the person so affected; sperm cells are generated newly, so after any appreciable amount of time wouldn’t have
Fair points, which is why I state whether I was unsure as to whether it could affect people that way or not. I’m still not 100% convinced, but I’d take a scientific study to prove myself completely wrong.
My understanding was that at a certain threshold its possible but that threshold is ghastly. Like the Japanese guy in the 1990s who was directly exposed to a reactor and who was medically kept alive just to study. I might be wrong on that, I’m a weirdo lady who studied piracy not nuclear technology. I just recall a lot of scientific articles after the Chernoybl mini series.
It ultimately doesn’t matter too much. I highly doubt Spike is that much more knowledgeable on this kind of stuff than we are, but I think it’s a good discussion to have.
I completely agree its a very good discussion to have. Also I’ve seen Miracle at St Anna and his 9/11 documentary from 2021 fairly recently, I’m fairly sure he isn’t exactly going around JSTOR reading articles.
Actually, touching someone exposed to high doses of radiation can cause radiation sickness. It depends on the type of radiation and the amount of time between their exposure and the contact.Passing “radiation” on to your kids several years after isn’t possible. But it is possible for a fetus to be affected by what would otherwise be relatively mild radiation sickness from the alpha particles still generating from the bone marrow of someone recently exposed to high doses of radiation.
I’ve been to ground zero in Hiroshima. Anyone who thinks it is still radioactive has their head up their ass. Thousands of people walk through it every day, and the Peace museum is right next door. There is no part of Hiroshima that is not safe to visit.
Clearly he’s referring to Imagine Dragons.
Everyone wants to be his enemy.
Underrated.
There is a KFC near the detonation point at Hiroshima. Spike is deluded.
There’s a good Kyle Hill video called “Why Hiroshima Isn’t a Nuclear Wasteland. While always I knew Hiroshima wasn’t a nuclear wasteland, I didn’t always understand why, and I think this is a good explanation.
If Spike Lee is really interested, he could put together a history of how Japan went from a representative democracy earlier, into a military-run empire. Extra Credits History did a good run on it.And also, “what if” has a role here. What if Japan hadn’t been brought to surrender in 1945 by the 2 nukes and the Soviet takeover of Manchuria/Manchukuo? What if the Pacific War had gone into 1946-1947? How many Japanese dead would there have been in that case?
People have been using the whole “several more bloody years of war” theory to justify dropping the nukes since the day they fell(and probably before). We will never know for sure but a lot of good papers have been written about it and most modern scholars believe that Japan would have surrender within a few weeks with or without the nukes.
Half the reason for dropping them was to make sure Stalin didn’t get any big ideas.
And then the Soviet Union built their own nuclear program and tested a weapon four years later. Today, nine countries are sitting on about 13,000 weapons. So the plan worked spectacularly. /sarcasm, obviously.
There also has been a large number of papers that suggest maybe not years more of fighting, but perhaps months and still enough time to cause many many more deaths. This topic I’d wager is still among the most contested and discussed of historical events within living memory.
It’s a complicated topic for sure and there isn’t a right answer. I just have a problem with the narrative that the people in power dropped the nukes to “save lives” when it was really more about political dick waving in preparation for the war ending and the massive power balance change coming from that. The fact that maybe less people died was just a nice bonus.
To save “American” lives. I know you know this – not accusing otherwise.But that part is rarely stated clearly. And I think it’s helpful to remember that the best argument for the bombs (esp the second) is that American soldiers lives were more valuable than the lives of non-military Japanese.
It’s an island nation. The US Navy had dominated the Pacific by that point. Set up a naval blockade and work on diplomacy. No bombings necessary.
Yeah starving the populace would have been much more humane.
I didn’t suggest starvation. You do realize they were already internally discussing the terms of surrender? The sticking point was unconditional surrender. Not surrender itself. The Allies had already set up a blockade and had killed more people with bombs before the two nuclear weapons were used. Not to mention the fact that the Soviet Union was about to invade. Moreover, the US military was not in agreement over the decision to use the weapons:General Dwight Eisenhower, in his memoirs, recalled a visit from Secretary of War Henry Stimson in late July 1945: “I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of ‘face.’” Eisenhower reiterated the point years later in a Newsweek interview in 1963, saying that “the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.”1In fact, seven out of eight top U.S. military commanders believed that it was unnecessary to use atomic bombs against Japan from a military-strategic vantage point, including Admirals Chester Nimitz, Ernest King, William Halsey, and William Leahy, and Generals Henry Arnold and Douglas MacArthur.2 According to Air Force historian Daniel Haulman, even General Curtis LeMay, the architect of the air war against Japan, believed “the new weapons were unnecessary, because his bombers were already destroying the Japanese cities.”3 (see link 1)I generally can’t stand the “aw shucks, I guess it was bound to happen,” attitude from some Americans who have seen the failures of our military over and over again. Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Iraq, Afghanistan (2). Oh well… I guess all those failures were inevitable too. We shouldn’t question the decisions to bomb people on our behalf. Better to imagine something worse to resolve the cognitive dissonance. 1) https://apjjf.org/2021/20/Kuzmarov-Peace.html2) That’s a shortened list, there are more here: https://www.maurer.ca/USBombing.html
I know all about it. Have studied it all my life. Blockades=starvation.My point wasn’t dropping the bomb was the only way or the best way. Just that there was no humane way to end the war and any clear eyed view of the decisions made need to take that into account. If you look at all the bad choices available to them and say it wasn’t the best of all the bad choices, hey I probably agree with you. But there wasn’t anything on the table that would have been a happy ending for the Japanese citizenry. The war, like all wars, was going to end ugly for someone.
You’ve studied blockades? Care to be more specific? I’m pretty sure starving people is a deliberate choice. The act of a blockade doesn’t immediately cause starvation. The enforcing party gets to choose what goes in and comes out. For example, Israel has just announced a total blockade on Gaza. That includes food and water. Gaza has been under a blockade since 2007, in which some goods were allowed through. These are deliberate decisions to commit war crimes.I don’t know how you could look at the quotes from the military leaders of the time (I quote Eisenhower but the link points to even more) directly saying it was the wrong move and still come to the conclusion you arrived at. Especially when considering Japan was already discussing the terms of surrender. You are giving me the impression that you do not see the Japanese people as human beings capable of rational thought. They are just nameless, faceless enemies that will never stop. It’s an easy way to lull oneself into condoning military violence. It’s how Americans more recently talk about Iraqis, Russians, and the Chinese.
I know my grandfather was stationed in the Philippines and was being prepped for Japan. Army unit so probably not first wave but he thought that was going to be a death sentence. I imagine that wasn’t an uncommon prospect. It definitely colors perception.
Nah, the author of the Harry Potter novels for kids’ views on gender.
You’re an idiot.
Thank you for your insightful response.
You beat me to responding to him. I might disagree with someone on a topic, but I’ll generally try to disagree either silently or with something other than sticking my fingers in my ears and my tongue out at the other person.
Yeah, unless the question is “What is the best way to make fun of Khan Noonien Singh while also protecting yourself from Ceti Eels?”(Well, the *best* way is probably from the bridge of another starship. Or not at all. “Nice abs, you auditioning for an MTV video in the early 2000s? Nyah!”)
I might disagree with someone on a topic, but I’ll generally try to disagree either silently or with something other than sticking my fingers in my ears and my tongue out at the other person. Eh, people interact according to their ability.I’ve had a weird, untreated neurodivergent guy* stalking me on these sites for the better part of three years (he also has a weird fixation on some other members of this commenting “community”). Some people just like to use the Internet to do deeply weird, disturbing things. Anything to avoid wrangling with personal existential crises for one more glorious minute.*He’ll reply to this. Pavlovian dogs and all that. 😀
If he’s in the grey on AVClub like me, then you’d be the only one to even be able to see the reply, due to the way replies are limited when clicking “show pending”, in a subthread more than 4 replies long.
I still get rando trolls saying haha not a woman kill yourself or JK Rowling is the best author alive. So yeah I relate, sorry you got a creepy stalker.
You’re a tampon.
Japan’s eventual surrender wasn’t in question, and the war would not have lasted years longer without the nukes, but it’s also generally agreed that the alternative—Operation Downfall, the planned invasion of Japan—would have killed way more people on both sides. (The US manufactured so many Purple Hearts in preparation that they’re still being awarded today.)That said, even supporters of the Hiroshima bombing often say that Nagasaki was bombed too early and might ultimately have been unnecessary. (Though it’s debated.)
Modern scholars who had decades to ponder the information unavailable outside Japan at the time. AFAIK there had not been any surrender by any group of Japanese in large enough numbers to suggest that was an option.
Other reading I’ve done suggested that the planned invasion site was being heavily reinforced with Japanese troops and armor, to the point where the U.S. and Russia would likely have instead blockaded the island and finished bombing out its rail infrastructure to the point where the island would have been at risk of widespread starvation. So even if we hadn’t lost 500,000 U.S. soldiers the effect on Japanese civilians would have been as bad as an invasion.
I’ve not seen anything mentioning it would happen within a few weeks. I’ve seen:
-A US post-bombing assessment saying it would have ended by the end of the year without the bombs, with the preceding sentences saying that normal air power could be leveraged instead – likely causing more than 200K Japanese deaths, to say nothing of the many hundreds of thousands of civilians in areas they subjugated until that end
-A note from the emperor to his son referencing “science” but nothing at all about the buildup of a soviet navy
-A report from an American allied tank commander post-bombing downplaying the contributions of the Navy/airforce in a bid to get more funding for a ground war in Europe
-A very-nearly-successful coup from war ministers after the second bomb was dropped, with the aim to prevent a surrender
-Quotes from at least 1 war minister who, after the first bombing, extolled the virtue of Japan dying, having left its mark on history
-A map of the *gigantic* territory Japan held at the time of their surrender, rendering a blockade impossible
-Accounts from native Okinawans about how the Japanese forces made them fight to the death or commit mass suicide, events which hadn’t been properly acknowledged until very recentlyTo say nothing of the pending Allies deaths. While I haven’t seen “the war will drag on for years”, I’ve seen nothing about it ending in a few weeks, especially with contemporary first hand accounts of what was happening in Japanese politics at the time, and definitely nothing to suggest “it ends within a few weeks with less than 200k dead”.
Maybe the purpose wasn’t to save lives (at least, not beyond American lives), but by virtually all sources I’ve read, that was the cumulative effect. I’m also not entirely sure why “saving troop lives” is not an admirable goal for military planning, bearing in mind the legal regimes in which the war was fought.
Would these historians also have seen the bombing of Pearl Harbor happening? The Japanese were horrific in WWII, 35 million dead in Asia. Each day Japan didn’t surrender was another 10k civilians dead.
Well, isn’t that nice for those modern scholars, having not just lived through 6 years of genocidal war and having literally no skin in the game. Twat.
“What if Japan hadn’t been brought to surrender in 1945 by the 2 nukes” Most serious contemporary examinations of the topic have concluded that Japan would have surrendered before the end of the year without the nuclear attacks, and that surrender was imminent after the Hiroshima bombing. Nagasaki was nothing more than data collection and Soviet intimidation.
What if… Americans stopped being casually dismissive of the two greatest war crimes in human history committed by their government?
Yeah, it’s not like every fucking school student in the whole fucking country has been taught about this before they grow pubic hair, you murderous fucking MaRxIST ghoul.Since when do you give a shit about crimes committed by governments? You literally laughed at multiple genocides committed in the name of your rancid, imbecilic, anti-human, anti-human nature, multiple-cascading-failures-ongoing-crime-against humanity of an “ideology”, you retarded cuntastic communist twat.BuT MuH ReAL SoCIaLiSM HaS NeVER BeEN ImPLeMenTed, right, comrade?
No way the war would have continued for 1-2 more years as the Soviet Union was poised to also smash Japan.The atomic bombs were not needed.
His point wasn’t that Japan was innocent. What a ridiculous take.I was originally anti-Lee on this one. But maybe he’s right. Because clearly people like you need to have a bit more nunace forced on them.
I think Spike Lee is really interested in flapping his gums while dressed like Disney’s idea of a “highly successful sex trafficker”.
Looking forward to Oppenheimer: The Director’s Cut by film director Spike Lee.
I’m not sure Nolan would be inclined to suggest to Lee how he could have made his films differently. He doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who engages in that kind of “what if” discussion of other people’s work.And to be clear, that’s not a criticism of Lee doing that to ‘Oppenheimer’. He’s entitled to his opinion, though it’s not one I agree with in this case. I just think that’s not Nolan’s style, though I could be wrong.
There have been a few great movies JUST about what happened to Japan, the best of which is probably the 1953 film Hiroshima. That being said, I’d rather see just an updated standalone film about what happened to Japan after the bombs, how they recovered, and how they still suffer in some ways. It seems to me that relegating it to just a few minutes at the end, or in a credits montage, isn’t going to be nearly enough time to do it justice.
Hiroshima, mon Amour features some pretty harrowing after-effects. I watched that the day Oppenheimer premiered. Maybe I’ll catch it on streaming.
Have we ever considered we don’t show this narrative because it is impossible to show it with any level of grace, humility, and respect? What way is there to show it that doesn’t indulge in a spectacle of FX and endless suffering? Do you really need to see Asian actors with bubbling skin and melting faces to understand the horror of the bombings? Do you really need any more mushroom clouds than the film already includes? Artsy framing of burned in shadows doesn’t do much either.
Moreover, consider the optics of a white director directing a scene that amplifies the horror of the event. It would be like a white director filming 12 Years A Slave with its infamous whipping/hanging scene. Does no one remember the litany of criticism leveled at Tarantino for Django? A great film, but that a white director gleefully uses the hard ‘R’ epithet throughout the film, including his own cameo, has always been a point of contention in the discourse surrounding it.
The reason we don’t criticize Grave of the Fireflies for its harrowing depiction is because the filmmakers involved have been directly affected by its cultural and historical contexts.They have first hand experience and knowledge of the national trauma suffered from the event itself, even if they weren’t there the day the bombs fell.
I am not saying that directors of different races can’t tackle things outside of their own racial experience, but there’s a difference between writing a drama film with a diverse cast and attempting to craft a narrative of a national tragedy that you have absolutely zero connection with.
There’s no way to show the suffering of the Japanese people from a western director that doesn’t indulge in trauma porn for the sake of trauma porn, whether intentional or not. It risks Otherizing victims even more than most films already do.
Hot take by Spike Lee is hot.Go watch White Light/Black Rain if you want to delve into what happened to victims of the atomic bombings.As if adding a “few more minutes” would be appropriate. Ffs.
I haven’t seen Oppenheimer, but I imagine anyone with even a passing understanding of WWII history would know that things weren’t a barrel of laughs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Aug. 1945. Would Spike really feel a need to belabor the obvious?
Exactly. Such a silly criticism. How the fuck is this movie improved by devoting time to “btw, Japan had a really bad time being nuked.”
Would Spike really feel a need to belabor the obvious?
I’m gonna g’head ‘n say “Yes”.
The film is designed to be two people’s contrasting, first-person views, Oppenheimer’s and Strauss’. We don’t see anything outside either point of view. If the film had a broader scope and then chose not to show the bombing and its effects, he would have a legitimate point.
Kind of ironic considering his Da 5 Bloods has very little time for the suffering of the Vietnamese people during the Vietnam War…
You’re not great at analogies.
Spike Lee has very little understanding of history, but we give him props nonetheless
We had an entire movie about this, Spike, and it’s called Akira.
You spelled Godzilla wrong
Honestly, after BlackKklansman, he’s the last person I would listen to for epilogue advice.
Perhaps Spike would change the opening as well with the rape of Nanjing or that the atrocities by the Japanese dwarf what the Nazis were up to in sadistic cruelty.
All of this of course is just a promotional Easter Egg for the father/son collaboration mashup of Malcom X and Tenent. You know, a thing no one wants.
Nothing is stopping Lee from making his own version.So, Spike, got on it.
The actual problem with Oppenheimer was that it was way too fucking long and nobody cared about the Robert Downey Jr bullshit. Well, by nobody I mean me and by cared I mean didn’t care.
You didn’t not care, then?Okay. Thanks for clarifying.
Your friend’s quite the mercenary. I wonder if he cares about anything…or anyone.
Me didn’t care. My syntax holds.
Nah, I actually liked it… after I figured out what Nolan was doing with the timeskips
You didn’t care for the central thesis of the movie, how politicians used scientists in the 40’s to build the bomb and then did everything to discredit and lie about them afterward, creating a distrust of government in the scientific community that persists to this day? Fair enough.
If that was the movie he wanted to make, then it shouldna been just oppenheim, and he shoulda done the first 2 hours completely differently. Three fucking hours.
I hope a shorter, worse movie comes along someday to entertain you.
Me too!
Every one of Nolan’s movies is long and overwrought, even this biopic. He’s a great and visually striking filmmaker, but no one knows how to tell him to edit has supposed “masterpieces” to 2 hours and 15 minutes. Hell even Dark Knight was overly long and overly complex for no reason.
I think most movies are too long, even ones I enjoy. Barbie was too long. Everything by Judd Apatow. I bailed on Marvel movies after like X-Men 2. Love QT but Hollywood was way overstuffed. Don’t they know we all have goldfish attention spans now?
I wouldn’t blame TikTok or whatever for our collective attention spans, I’d just blame directors who think superhero movies need to be 2 hours and 45 mins long.
This is such a dumb criticism. The fucking movie is called OPPENHEIMER. Not “The bombing of Japan.” There’s not a moral obligation of the director who is making a biopic to focus on everyone else, especially not when, I’m pretty sure we all know the horror of what happened in Japan.
He’s not exactly the first person to suggest that what the bomb did to the Japanese people should have been shown in the movie. It was regularly commented on in the reviews, and it took me two seconds after they dropped the thing while watching the film to wonder why Nolan left it out. I’m not really sure how Spike Lee saying it counts as a story.
“Spike Lee has some thoughts . . .”
yeah/nah, I’m out.
I mean, they showed a white washed, heroic Oppenheimer. Forget dropping the bomb on Japan, maybe mention the fact that the Latinos who’s land was stolen for Los Alamos were forced to work on the bomb without protective gear, that was provided to the white laborers. Not mentioning things like this is how we get people just assuming nothing bad ever happen.
Why in HELL doesn’t Spike Lee care more about Frasier Crane???
He’s right, and also not the first person to say it. I wasn’t offended by the exclusion, it was a creative choice, and there’s plenty out there for those of us who want to know about the Japanese experience. I was deeply irritated by the Barbenheimer marketing mash-up – it felt incredibly disrespectful.
Pretty pathetic to see the comments defending the movie for this, many operating under the assumption that there were no Japanese people in the US and therefore it would’ve been completely far flung and irrelevant to include their perspectives. This film takes place during Japanese internment and completely ignores it. Learn some history and get your heads out of Nolan’s crusty ass.
Maybe you need to look up what the scope of a biopic is supposed to cover.
Yes, let’s put movies in boxes. That’s why Oppenheimer is over 3 hours long and filled with court proceedings.
Schindler’s List also took place during Japanese internment and completely ignored it. Ridiculous puff piece, I say.
Schindler’s List was set in Germany. Oppenheimer is set in the geography where it was happening, when it was happening, starring the very administrative body which allowed it to happen. Apples and oranges doesn’t even begin to cover it; at least those are both fruit.
You are so tantalizingly close to understanding the point being made by Vargas2022, and yet – “woosh.”
A good biopic narrows its scope. The new Napoleon movie is basically his entire adult life in two hours and 30 minutes and that’s about as roundabout an example of not narrowing your scope. If you include too many other things it will either dilute the overall themes or stretch the runtime and cause pacing issues. What stays and what goes is a very hard thing to do. The film as it stands is already three hours which for some is already too long.
Also it’s that combined with the fact the movie doesn’t mention all the people who got their land forcibly taken or put in danger and the promotion of the film focused on “building a city in the desert” or “out of nothing” without mentioning any of that. Like maybe you didn’t have to mention both things, but even the Marie Curie film had scenes from Hiroshima and she was a lot less related
Really, this debate boils down to whether people think a biopic of Oppenheimer is actually worthwhile. I would argue that he’s a footnote to the bombings. At the same time, there have been countless movies about nuclear war in the past 75 years, all of which are more interesting than a Christopher Nolan movie.
never take anything that Spike Lee says too seriously. He is one of those guys so consumed by his shitposter character that he ends up talking from a half trolling point of view. I also think he is one of the best living directors.
Maybe Lee missed the part where Oppenheimer never went to Hiroshima or Nagasaki, so showing the audience images from there wouldn’t have made any sense.
Reeks of “white people bad.” Next.
I think Nolan skipped doing that since it’s been done elsewhere and we all know what happened as a result of the bombings. The test scene was intense and scary aa it was.