In the ” Oppenheimer ,” film , the moral dilemma faced by J. Robert Oppenheimer in his involvement in creating the most destructive weapon ever made is explored. However, nuclear disarmament campaigners are concerned that the film’s emphasis on scientific achievement may diminish its ability to raise awareness about the existential threat posed by nuclear arms.
In one of the closing scenes of the Oppenheimer film shows strips of translucent, flesh-toned material tearing off a woman’s face, symbolizing the victims of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, whose skin suffered severe burns in the blast.
Yet the reality in Japan was far more gruesome than the artful depiction in the film, which skirts around the human suffering caused by the bomb.
Instead, the blockbuster movie from director Christopher Nolan is a pacy look at the scientific quest led by the eponymous J Robert Oppenheimer in the US to build a nuclear weapon faster than the Nazis at the end of the second world war.
Carol Turner
Carol Turner, a co-chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament’s London branch, criticized the film’s overall impact as unbalanced. According to her, people leave the theatre with the impression of how exciting the process was, rather than contemplating the fact that it was a terrible weapon of mass destruction and the consequences it holds today.
“The effect of the [Hiroshima and Nagasaki] blasts was to remove the skin in a much more gory and horrible way – in the film it was tastefully, artfully presented. There’s nothing wrong with that, but if you look at photographs of actual survivors and read accounts of what happened to them it was a very horrifying, gory death.”
She added that although it was historically accurate to portray Oppenheimer’s ethical doubts about his invention, and his subsequent persecution by the US government, in effect this turned him into the film’s hero.