'Oppenheimer': a politically incorrect comment on two very current issues

@ElentirENG ES 7·21·2023 · 22:27 0

This week a movie about the famous theoretical physicist and father of the atomic bomb Julius Robert Oppenheimer has hit theaters.

'Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning' shows the most dangerous enemy in this entire saga
'Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny': is it worth watching the fifth film in this saga?

This feature film bears the signature of Christopher Nolan, director of excellent films such as "The Prestige" (2006), "Interstellar" (2014) and "Dunkirk" (2017), to name just a few. So, I went to the cinema without hesitation, because I also found the subject of the film very interesting, since it deals with the man who led the team of scientists who created the first atomic bombs in the Los Alamos laboratory, the famous Manhattan Project.

The film runs in various times and alternating sequences in color and black and white. Two stories are linked on the screen: on the one hand, the best known, which is the development of the atomic bomb, and on the other, the security audit (a kind of political trial) that Oppenheimer suffered during the years of McCarthyism. It is a very dense film, in which very fascinating moments are combined -the work related to the bomb, without a doubt- with other more tedious ones.

Nolan is a great filmmaker and he knows how to combine both moments very well, but being a fan of his films, and this being an excellent feature film, I think he had the same problem as in "Tenet" (2020), where there came a time when it was hard for you to follow the story.

For the rest, the film addresses two very interesting, very current issues that give rise to many reflections. Mine are not going to be politically correct, in the eyes of many, but here goes. The first of these issues are the moral qualms about creating an atomic weapon, given the large number of deaths it caused, but without hiding the fact why it was created (to prevent the Nazis from being the first to have it) and why it was finally used (force the Japanese to surrender avoiding the enormous number of deaths that the invasion of Japan had caused).

It is not an easy moral dilemma to resolve, however easy it may seem and despite the fact that the horror of the scenes in Hiroshima and Nagasaki cause disgust in anyone with a modicum of humanity, the same disgust as the war crimes perpetrated by the Japanese against the civilian population, with massacres such as that of Nanking (some 300,000 Chineses killed) and Manila (more than 100,000 Philippines Killed), crimes of genocide that many ignore or overlook.

On the other hand, it is worth asking if a technologically advanced society is doomed to reach the moment in which it can self-destruct, and not only through atomic bombs. There we also have the issues of artificial intelligence and demographic suicide.

The other big debate in the film is McCarthyism. As I've already noted, Oppenheimer was impeached for his leftist militancy. Today, this anti-communist persecution of the early years of the Cold War is widely criticized, but it must be put in context: the world lived on the brink of a Third World War and the US felt that it had influential allies at home of its quintessential enemy, which was the USSR. Paradoxically, more films have been made about McCarthyism than about the Gulag or its Chinese version, the Laogai, which were (the Laogai still is) a brutal form of persecution of dissent. That indicates a curious bias in cinema.

On the other hand, it is good to criticize that in a democracy people are persecuted for their ideas, but it is still a paradox that this is usually done from a cultural sphere, such as cinema, where the left has a majority presence. How many who repudiate the American McCarthyism of the 50s approve at the same time that anyone who disagrees with the left should be labeled "fascist"? How many of them do not participate in this new McCarthyism that declares civil death and imposes anti-democratic cordons against certain people and parties for the mere fact of being conservative? When is there a film about this new McCarthyism?

I make a final note: it's a good movie, but if you're going to see it, don't go with children. In addition to the fact that it will be very long and complicated for them, it has scenes that are not suitable for the little ones. I leave you here with the trailer of this film: