It is three hours long, but for a history buff like myself who knows his material, Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer is absorbing from the start. Most impressive is the star-studded cast who bring the characters to life. Cillian Murphy is perfect in the titular role; Matt Damon is a believable General Groves; Robert Downey, Jr inhabits the part of Lewis Strauss; Tom Conti is transformed into a genial Albert Einstein. The only disappointment is Gary Old man, who had been so excellent as Winston Churchill but here plays Harry Truman like a caricature. Besides the cast, the editing is also amazing. The whole movie plays like a jigsaw puzzle, with different parts being assembled as each piece is put in place at different parts of the puzzle, until the whole picture is finally complete.
Unfortunately, Oppenheimer the movie also left out important details for those too young to be aware of them. The problem with films like Oppenheimer is that they do history a disservice. The young people of today who watch Oppenheimer will go away with a warped view of the Second World War.
The Second World War started with the Japanese invasion of China in 1937, which was preceded by the invasion of Manchuria in 1931. In Europe, the Nazi invasion of Poland only took place in 1939, after the Chamberlain appeasement.
Among the many atrocities that were committed by the Japanese Army in China was the mass rape and massacre of innocent Chinese civilians in Nanking (numbering around 200,000), documented as the Rape of Nanking, in 1937-38.
After destroying the US Naval Base in Pearl Harbor in 1941, the Japanese proceeded to conquer territories in Southeast Asia. Many people in Penang and Singapore, homes of my parents, were tortured and killed. For nearly 10 years, Japanese soldiers were responsible for the Asian Holocaust which involved them raping, torturing and murdering their fellow Asian civilians.
After the War ended in Europe with the defeat of the Nazis, the USA and its Allies gave the Japanese government an ultimatum: unconditional surrender or meet the atom bomb. The Japanese refused to surrender, so the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. If you thought that was enough to frighten the Japanese, well -- it didn't. Again, the Japanese government was told to surrender unconditionally or face a second atomic bomb. Obvious choice, right? Hell, no. More like, bring it on. Do they care about their people? So the second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. Ultimately, fearing a third, the Japanese surrendered unconditionally and World War Two came to an end.
In the movie, Oppenheimer felt guilty being responsible for the bomb. But it was the Japanese wartime government that allowed their own people to be killed by refusing to surrender when given the option. The movie also gave a warped portrayal of President Harry Truman, with Gary Oldman's acting coming across as caricaturish, which is jarring when compared to the rest of the cast. Truman understood the might of the atom bomb and its implications. During the Korean conflict, war hero General Douglas MacArthur wanted to drop an atomic bomb on communist China for its support of North Korea. Truman put his foot down and sacked MacArthur for insubordination. It was an unpopular move he took to fire a war hero, but if MacArthur had his way, the dropping of atomic bombs would not have stopped at two till this day. We need to thank Truman for his level-headedness and for acknowledging the implications of nuclear warfare.
And what if the Nazis or Soviets had been the first to develop an atomic bomb? I shudder to even think of such a scenario.
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