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What Does The Oppenheimer Movie Mean To You, If You’re Japanese?
One man’s heroics or a daily reminder of your painful history since 1945?
Just released to movie theaters is Christopher Nolan’s summer blockbuster —Oppenheimer.
The reviews, thus far, have been quite positive, with critics describing it as one likely to do very well at the Oscars, next year.
From the western standpoint, the subject of Oppenheimer is one which is viewed favourably as it was he who helped invent the atomic bomb, which did tip the odds in favour of America in its fight against the Nazis.
But this is the danger of the single story and Hollywood.
Anyone who has seen the movies on Churchill, the late Queen Elizabeth II and U-571 would recognize the degree to which these complex individuals at the heart of the stories were sanitized for the younger generation who know so little about their history.
Churchill, as we all know, was a racist, genocidal imperialist, who was very happy to gas millions of folks in the middle-east and one who had professed his love for fascists like Mussolini.
But the sordid and ugly side to the man who was voted the greatest ever Briton in 2002 was never going to make it to the screens, was it?