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84°F
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OPINION: ‘OPPENHEIMER’ AND HOLLYWOOD’S FEAR OF THE ATOMIC BOMB STORY


ONLY A DIRECTOR WITH CHRISTOPHER NOLAN’S STATURE COULD HAVE GOTTEN THIS FILM
MADE


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This image released by Universal Pictures shows Cillian Murphy in a scene from
“Oppenheimer.” (Universal Pictures via AP)
By Greg Mitchell |
July 22, 2023 at 4:45 a.m.

In 1945, Hollywood set in motion its first big-budget movie drama about the
making and use of the atomic bomb. Almost immediately a competing project
emerged (with a screenplay by Ayn Rand, no less). Yet for over seven decades,
only two other major movie dramas about this epochal event emerged from a
studio. Now that is changing with Friday’s arrival of Christopher Nolan’s
much-anticipated “Oppenheimer,” focusing on the famed lead scientist at Los
Alamos who is sometimes called “the Father of the Atomic Bomb.”

In the same period, Hollywood has produced far more movies centering on D-day
and the defeat of Adolf Hitler. This is unsurprising, as these narratives can
focus on American valor and ultimately deliver a stirring victory (and depict
U.S. forces helping to liberate the concentration camps). The atomic attacks on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki are a different story. Onscreen portrayals of the
bombings have been incomplete at best, sanitized at worst — and leave open the
question of whether our country will ever be able to fully reckon with these
events on film.

Although Japan started war with the United States by bombing Pearl Harbor,
Americans in the atomic attacks were the perpetrators, not the victims. The
leading figures in this end game were not average G.I. Joes, but rather
top-level Washington officials. The weapon was created by genius scientists, the
mission carried out by elite bombing crews who faced no opposition from the
enemy. Even the bomb’s central role in the Japanese surrender has been hotly
contested by many historians, complicating any claims it was a necessary act.

Now, in July 2023, comes “Oppenheimer.” Given the fraught stories behind the
three movies about the bomb that did make it to theaters, it seems unlikely that
any director with less stature and box office success than Christopher Nolan
could have gotten this film made.

MGM launched the first Hollywood film to address the attacks, “The Beginning or
the End,” in the autumn of 1945, weeks after the bombs were dropped. It was
directly inspired by warnings from atomic scientists — not including Oppenheimer
— about the further development of nuclear weapons.

Soon, however, both the Truman White House and Gen. Leslie R. Groves, director
of the Manhattan Project, were granted script approval. They ordered dozens of
revisions that barred it from questioning the attack on Japan or America’s plan
to continue down the nuclear path. President Truman even ordered a costly
re-shoot to portray his decision to use the bomb more favorably.



There would not be another Hiroshima-related film, “Above and Beyond,” for more
than six years. Once again MGM was the sponsor, and its message of justifying
U.S. decisions was the same. This movie explored the story of Hiroshima from the
perspective of Enola Gay pilot Paul Tibbets (played by Robert Taylor).
Oppenheimer does not appear.

In the climatic scene, Tibbets releases the Hiroshima bomb and, surveying a city
on fire, radios his report. “Results good,” he says. Then he repeats it, this
time grimly. This was not in the original script but added later, possibly to
humanize the men who dropped the bomb. The real Tibbets criticized this scene,
even though the film did not challenge the official narrative of the bombing in
any way. Even one flicker of mixed emotions was apparently too critical.



It took nearly four decades for Hollywood to produce another film on the
subject. In 1989, Roland Joffe’s “Fat Man and Little Boy” appeared, but with
superstar good guy Paul Newman as Gen. Groves and relative unknown Dwight
Schultz as a somewhat morally conflicted Oppenheimer. Vincent Canby of the New
York Times observed that with Groves expressing his views so much more
persuasively than anyone else, the film was “stunningly ineffective” in
expressing qualms about the bomb that Joffe stated elsewhere. This film, at
least, is the only one to depict the real-life death of a scientist at Los
Alamos from radiation exposure.

Near the close of MGM’s “Above and Beyond,” a reporter shouts at Paul Tibbets.
Readers, he declares, “want to know how you feel” about using a city-destroying
weapon. The pilot replies: “How do they feel about it?”

Hollywood has never given Americans an honest chance to confront that vital
question in a world with thousands of nuclear warheads still on hair-trigger
alert. Now Christopher Nolan has his chance, and his movie, which I saw at an
advance screening, does provoke profound emotions about this threat today. But
considering the Hollywood history, it’s no shock that even he chose to spend
more time on the testing of the first bomb than on what happened when it was
used against two cities.

Greg Mitchell is a documentary filmmaker and the author of a dozen books,
including the award-winning “The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood — and
America — Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.” ©2023 Los Angeles Times.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.


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