These days, the Japanese commemorate the victims of the atomic bomb, the film Oppenheimer makes one of the best recipes ever.
We will never know the exact death toll caused by the atomic bombing of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945. Maybe 200,000, maybe less, maybe more. From July 21 to last Sunday night, the film Oppenheimer, which tells the story of the invention of the bomb, grossed $552.9 million.
We were in the middle of summer vacation and I was just 14 years old when a large Boeing B-29, piloted by an American whose name has not been released, dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, a city with twice the population of Quebec . The world had not yet recovered from the shock when three days later the 195,000-inhabitant city of Nagasaki was destroyed by the second atomic bomb.
Coincidence?
It is the story of this invention, directed by a brilliant young physicist named Robert Oppenheimer, that Christopher Nolan’s film tells. Simple coincidence or a concerted gesture by Hollywood magnates: Another film, Barbie, has also been at the box office since July 21. Over a billion recipes for Barbie! Two films released simultaneously, therefore, seem to reaffirm American supremacy over popular culture and over weapons of mass deterrence. All is going well and we’re seeing life in pink again with our neighbors.
I haven’t seen Barbie yet, but I’ve seen Oppenheimer. In IMAX, in its “maximum” version, if we can put it that way. I walked out of the cinema completely stunned. Not because of the film’s thunderous soundtrack, which aims to create constant tension in the viewer, not because of the ubiquitous, often insignificant music that distracts us from the dialogue, but because of the total absence of a point of view on a story as relevant to humanity as that Invention of the atomic bomb.
Should we be wondering?
I ask myself a thousand questions. Is it moral to tell such a story without any point of view while Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is ongoing and President Putin is threatening to use nuclear weapons, even if only “tactically”? Is it ethical to make a film that goes deep into all the details of the making of the atomic bomb and shows the explosion without a single sound (this is the director’s chosen direction)? Is it okay that the film obscures the devastation the bomb caused, the suffering it caused and the general fear it caused? The fear of the bomb comes back to life, as evidenced by the fallout shelters that have come back into fashion…
While the Oppenheimer film is non-judgmental and lacks a point of view, it’s hard not to see a glorification of bombing and warfare in the excitement and delirious joy of the small settlement of Los Alamos when it learns the bomb has been successful dropped in Hiroshima. “Like it or not,” wrote François Truffaut, a war film, pacifist or not, glorifies war and makes it attractive.” Christopher Nolan’s film is clear proof of that.
