Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer should have shown ‘what happened to the Japanese people’, says director Spike Lee

Islamabad OCTOBER 09 (Online): Do The Right Thing director Spike Lee shared his thoughts on Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. He added that this is not a criticism but a comment.

Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer has emerged as one of the biggest blockbusters of the year. The film focuses on J Robert Oppenheimer’s role in developing the atomic bomb that ultimately wrecked massive destruction on the Japanese city of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Now, director Spike Lee has shared his opinion on the film with The Washington Post and shared that he would have liked to see the movie include how the nuclear blasts affected the Japanese people.

Spike Lee has given his honest opinions on Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer.

What Spike Lee said
In an interview with The Washington Post, the Do The Right Thing maker said, “[Nolan] is a massive filmmaker… and this is not a criticism. It’s a comment. If [‘Oppenheimer’] is three hours, I would like to add some more minutes about what happened to the Japanese people. People got vaporized.”

Spike Lee further added, “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.”
Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is based on the book, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J Robert Oppenheimer, the Pulitzer Prize-winning 2006 biography of the theoretical physicist written by Kai Bird and Martin J Sherwin. Cillian Murphy plays the role of Oppenheimer in the film.

About Oppenheimer
The biopic, set during World War II, follows physicist J Robert Oppenheimer, known as the Father of the Atomic Bomb. It is set during a period in history when he feared that testing the atomic bomb would ignite the atmosphere and destroy the world, yet he pushed the button anyway. J Robert Oppenheimer helped invent nuclear weapons during World War II. Actor Matt Damon essays the character of General Leslie Groves, the head of the Manhattan Project. Emily Blunt is seen as Oppenheimer’s wife, Katherine Oppenheimer.

The Hindustan Times review of the film added, “At its core, Oppenheimer is about the messy, deeply unnerving intersection between science and politics. How selfish, self-serving leaders are awarded unbridled power. How wars and governments corrupt, contaminate, and bastardize science. Would you truly want peace if your life’s pathbreaking work has been to build a bomb? Is it all in service of your country, or is a world on the brink of war merely the ideal circumstance to enable your work? To answer these questions, Nolan examines one pathetic US government tragedy after the other.”