Beyond Lens & Beyond Borders: Oppenheimer and the Asian Narratives

Posted on : February 19, 2024
Author : Annay De

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OPPENHEIMER: A Review

Oppenheimer (2023) is a breathtaking visual experience to say the least. Christopher Nolan has truly outdone himself with his latest biopic, based on the Pulitzer Prize winning book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. The story follows the life of the most controversial yet celebrated physicist, who was hired by Lt. Gen. Leslie Groves Jr. during World War II to work on America’s infamous and then top-secret Manhattan Project. Robert and his team of scientists then worked relentlessly at Los Alamos leading up to the day the world changed forever with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A long legal battle then pursued in the life of Oppenheimer as he fell prey to McCarthyism while trying to advocate for humanitarian policy-making.

Oppenheimer lives up to the Nolan standards with fascinating nonlinear storytelling and authentic visuals. Despite a really long runtime of 3 hours, Oppenheimer manages to keep the viewer engaged with a compelling script, spectacular screenplay and editing, great performances and needless to say Ludwig Göransson’s most exceptional musical composition which poses formidable competition for the legacy of the Hans-Nolan duo. Although Oppenheimer has been criticised by several viewers for being intellectually demanding, as it’s replete throughout with dialogues abound with historical and scientific references, not a single scene or dialogue is devoid of narrative relevance. The movie’s 5 Golden Globes and now the 13 Oscar nominations, putting it at par with Forrest Gump, Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Lord of the Rings and so on, is indeed well deserved.

The Asian Amnesia

Even after all the accomplishments, Oppenheimer too suffers from the Asian amnesia wherein Hollywood movies forget or disregard the history or sentiments of the Asian people, despite the fact that the entire movie was built upon the story of destroying an Asian country. Moreover, most of the movie’s popularity as well as Robert’s life have been inspired by the Bhagavad Gita which has been reduced to a mere McGuffin in the movie.

For context, even before WWII began in 1939, American scientists, many fleeing European fascism, grew concerned about Nazi Germany’s nuclear research and by 1940 the US initiated its own atomic weapons program, dubbed the “Manhattan Project” and spearheaded by J. Robert Oppenheimer. Just days after the first successful test occurred on July 16, 1945, in Alamogordo, NM, the uranium bomb, “Little Boy,” was dropped over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, causing massive destruction. Then again on August 9, “Fat Man,” a more powerful plutonium bomb, was dropped over Nagasaki. Japan then announced its surrender on August 15, with the formal agreement signed on September 2 aboard the USS Missouri. The exact death tolls from the bombings remain unknown due to extensive devastation. However, estimates suggest approximately 70,000 to 135,000 deaths in Hiroshima and 60,000 to 80,000 deaths in Nagasaki, both from the initial blasts and long-term radiation effects. So essentially, what started out as an effort to combat European fascism ended up being one of the worst moments in the history of Japan, of Asia, and even of humankind.

Hiroshima (left) and Nagasaki (right)

In addition, this huge blow came at a time when the entire continent was already reeling from colonial plundering, internal conflicts, upheavals and so on. India (and now Bangladesh and Pakistan), still not independent, were practically drained by the British and hopes for Netaji’s INA (who were fighting the British alongside Japanese forces) were dashed following the bombing. Like Laos and Cambodia, Vietnam was fighting French rule only to be attacked by the US a decade later. China was amidst a civil war between its Nationalist government and Communist forces. Following the Japanese surrender, Korea was liberated from Japanese rule and governmental negotiations broke down setting ground for the Korean War (1950-1953), while Japan was occupied by Allied Forces.

While it’s unreasonable to expect a 3 hour movie to cover the history of all these repercussions, the least it could do is show the unfathomable loss and destruction the bombs caused, or could it? People have constantly been divided over whether or not it should have been better covered or represented by the film which for a brief moment saw Cilian Murphy’s Oppenheimer visualising a room full of applauders, predominantly white, as victims of the bomb. Nina Wallace, media and outreach manager at Densho, a nonprofit group dedicated to preserving the stories of those of Japanese descent, rightfully noted that we shouldn’t depend on Hollywood to tell stories with such depth as the institutions in positions of power and influence value stories of men like Oppenheimer and Truman more than those of the Asian and indigenous communities that suffered because of decisions that those men made. She further noted that Nolan, being a white director, would most likely not be able to “sensitively highlight the experiences of hibakusha (survivors of the blast)” and that the movie should be taken only for its entertainment value and not as a factual or historical resource. However, Brandon Shimoda, a Japanese American writer and curator of the Hiroshima Library protested saying “even within the realm of entertainment it’s still demoralising and making, once again, unreal the experience of Asian people” and that the absence of non-white, non-US perspectives, Japanese civilians and citizens in the film makes it a dangerous statement.

Nolan has repeatedly defended his film’s dehumanisation in the name of dramatisation and tunnel-vision by saying that it’s not a documentary but that we’re looking through the eyes of Oppenheimer himself, despite there being a literal scene depicting Oppenheimer sitting, aghast, in a room where pictures from the blast are being projected onto a screen.

The tunnel-vision argument could have been saved for defending other instances of Asian Amnesia. Madeline Carpou, who studied History at University of California, said she learnt during her thesis that Japan’s Emperor Hirohito was readying to surrender even before the first bomb and the US government was aware of it. This is in contrast to how the movie depicted an impression of Japanese arrogance and unwillingness to surrender.

 

However the most blatant example of typical Hollywood Asian exclusion is that of Chien-Shiung Wu’s. The Chinese-American scientist nicknamed “The First Lady of Physics” had a pivotal role in the Manhattan Project. She worked at Columbia University, helping develop a Uranium separation proces

 

s that was replicated on a grand scale at Oak Ridge. Notably, it is believed that she was the only Chinese person to have worked on the project and her granddaughter said that Oppenheimer called Wu “Jiejie” (a term of endearment meaning “elder sister” in Chinese) while Wu referred to him as “Oppie”. Oppenheimer overlooked the immense contribution

of the “Chinese Marie Curie” just as they did for other scientists of colour like Ernest Wilkins, Edwin R. Russell, Lawrence and William Knox, and so on.

Asian Connections

On a side note, apart from grim ones, Oppenheimer has several interesting Asian connections;

1. The Pablo Picasso’s cubic painting that a young Oppenheimer was staring at while Ludwig Göransson’s masterpiece “Can you Hear the Music” plays in the background is actually Woman Sitting with Crossed Arms(1937),which was exhibited in Korea in 2021 during the anniversary exhibit for Picasso’s 140th Birthday at the Seoul Arts Center in southern Seoul.

[MUSÉE PICASSO-PARIS]

2. Cilian Murphy’s Oppenheimer is also seen reading a book by T.S. Eliot, “The Waste Land” (1922). Interestingly the author studied Indian Philosophy and Sanskrit at Harvard.

3. Like Eliot, Robert also took interest in Sanskrit. He studied Sanskrit at Berkeley with Professor Arthur W. Ryder. He took interest in several Sanskrit texts like Meghduta, Satakatrayam, and even Panchatantra from which he took inspiration and named his car Garuda after a character from it.

4. Oppenheimer was heavily interested and influenced by the revered Hindu scripture “Bhagavad Gita”, as the movie also portrays. A seminal work “The Gita of J. Robert Oppenheimer” by James A. Hijiya delves into this profound impact of the Bhagavad Gita, on Oppenheimer who famously quoted a verse from the Bhagavad Gita, specifically Chapter 11, Verse 32, “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds” upon witnessing the successful detonation of the first atomic bomb during the Trinity test in 1945. This verse describes the god Vishnu revealing his cosmic form, inspiring a mix of awe and dread in Oppenheimer, who was deeply affected by the immense power of the bomb.

5. One of the talking points of the movie, a cherry on top, was Tom Conti’s Einstein. Albert Einstein, in 1922, did a tour of Asia during which he spoke in Japan, Singapore, and Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) and visited China, Hong Kong, Palestine, and even Japan, after which he called Japanese people “pure souls” and appreciated Kyoto’s beauty like Henry Stimson in Oppenheimer. This tour however is now a controversial topic as his diary revealed xenophobia towards Asians. Moreover, Einstein’s involvement with India was much deeper. He exchanged postcards with Gandhi and Nehru, talking about satyagraha, colonialism, and industrialisation. His longest engagement was with the first non-European Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, when the latter visited the former’s house at Caputh near Berlin and discussed the nature of reality. Einstein’s contribution towards India extended to the scientific community as well. Bengali physicist Satyendra Nath Bose’s 1924 letter informing about him facing rejection from a British scientific publication led to his creation of Quantum statistics. Einstein had then arranged for Bose’s paper’s publication in the prestigious German journal Zeitschrift fur Physik.

6. S.N. Bose, a prominent name in quantum physics, came in contact with another scientist portrayed in the movie; Neils Bohr (played by Kenneth Branagh). There is, in fact, an interesting story regarding an amusing interaction between the two. Like Bose, there were several physicists around Asia exploring quantum physics contemporary to Oppenheimer, such as Shin’ichirō Tomonaga (Japan), Chien-Shiung Wu (China) Homi J. Bhabha (India) and so on.

 

Cultural Appropriation

Since the very beginning, Oppenheimer has been a subject of a lot of conversation, be it for being the lastest Nolan movie or be it for revolving around such a controversial topic. The most difficult conversation about it in Asia has been regarding cultural appropriation.

In India, the movie faced serious backlash regarding including an intimate scene during which Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh) asks Robert Oppenheimer (Cilian Murphy) to read the Gita aloud to her. Several people questioned the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) for approving the scene including high ranking government officials. Save Culture Save India Foundation requested Nolan to remove the scenes as well. However the movie was released with a U/A certification after a few edits which did not exclude the particular scene.

For Japan however, the impact was much worse and the backlash was justifiably stronger. Not only was the topic and the exclusion of proper representation of Japanese suffering unacceptable to several, Warner Bros studios’ promotions were deemed insensitive as well. The release of Oppenheimer clashing with that of Barbie saw a global internet phenomenon where the two titles were juxtaposed as “Barbenheimer”. This not only failed to resonate with the Japanese audience, but they angrily started sharing #NoBarbenheimer in response. The two simultaneous releases of American movies was unacceptable for the only country in history to have experienced nuclear attacks as it is. Furthermore, the Barbie parent studio Warner Bros went ahead and shared fanmade “Barbenheimer” memes, such as ones where Barbie’s hair was shown as a mushroom cloud, for which they later had to apologise. After months of consideration and talks, Oppenheimer’s release in Japan still doesn’t have a slated date, but it is closer and more possible than it was initially.

Epilogue

Despite the movie being an exceptional work worthy of appreciation, whether or not its Asian Amnesia, controversies, and cultural appropriation make it any less of a masterpiece is a decision that ultimately lies with the common people, the audience. The movie opens with the quote “Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to man. For this he was chained to a rock and tortured for eternity”, now it is up to cinema history to decide what Nolan will be endowed with for giving his controversial Magnum Opus to cinephiles.

References:

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Annay De

Intern, Asia in Global Affairs

The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the text belong solely to the author, in his personal capacity. It does not reflect the policies and perspectives of Asia in Global Affairs.