2023-08-06 17:25:07
‘Oppenheimer’ has not been released in Japan and the reasons abound: Christopher Nolan’s film removes the great national historical trauma, perseveres in the olympic contempt of the perspective of the victim and has been seasoned with a stupid advertising campaign. The information about its censorship in the country that suffered from the invention of the American scientist, however, is premature. A surgical delay is more likely.
The largest distributor of foreign cinema in Japanese theaters, Toho-Towa, has not explained the reasons for the delay or disclosed the release date. The third largest film market in the world operates with its own rules. Hollywood lacks a voice to decide the premieres and the country is usually the last to schedule its major productions, months later in many cases, after having proven its profitability in the rest of the world.
Oppenheimer’s life and consciousness come to the big screen
Other recent American films about World War II such as ‘Pearl Harbour’ (Michael Bay) or ‘The Flags of our Fathers’ (Clint Eastwood) were screened and classic Japanese cinema has not avoided that devastation: ‘The Children of Hiroshima’ ( Kaneto Shindo), ‘Hiroshima’ (Hideo Sekigawa)… But the context conspires against ‘Oppenheimer’. It is likely that the distributor judges that the war quota on the billboard is already covered with the latest gem from Studio Ghibli, about Tokyo after the bombings, and that the hagiography of Oppenheimer screeches on the eve of the anniversaries of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki tragedies, on August 6 and 9. Analysts predict its premiere after them.
Debates ease the wait. Many blame the movie ignore the hundreds of thousands of Japanese dead. Nolan has justified it in his decision to focus on the life of the inventor, understandable from artistic freedom, but who ends up glorifying the work of the white man, disregarding its consequences and with mild remorse. Frankie Boyle, a Scottish comedian, explained it: “Not only will the Americans go to your country and kill your people…they will come back 20 years later and make a movie about how those killings made their soldiers feel sad.”
Discussions about the post-hoc argument that those bombs saved lives have also returned. The invasion would have cost a million dead, between Americans and Japanese, according to the accounts of the former president, Harry Truman. Its repetition ended up transforming the biggest and most cowardly massacre in the history of humanity into a merciful act.
The link with nuclear power
No other country shows a greater or more schizophrenic link to nuclear power. Japan He has maintained a long relationship with the cause of his greatest dramas. It drew 30% of its energy from nuclear power plants and planned to raise it to 50% when the Fukushima crisis pushed the country to the couch and the government to promise a horizon without them. Energy emergencies have buried that purpose a decade later. The contradictions extend to defense policy. Its admirable pacifist Constitution of 1947 that proclaimed the three principles (not to possess, not to manufacture and not to use nuclear weapons) has suffered in the last decade the attacks of the conservative government, busy in filing it to combat the North Korean and Chinese threats. These are divisive issues that prevent the country from emerging from its nuclear maze.
There are no discussions about the ‘Barbenheimer’ phenomenon, a lexical audacity that alludes to the two hit films of the moment and embodied in memes that juxtapose the sugary fantasy of the doll with nuclear mushrooms and other nonsense. No Japanese sees the grace. The Warner Bros studio has contributed to the campaign with frivolous comments such as “We always think in pink” or “It’s going to be a summer to remember”. First the Japanese subsidiary, calling it “extremely regrettable”, and then the parent, showing its “deep apologies”, responded to the tsunami of outrage. An atomic bomb, Japanese netizens had reminded, is not ‘cool’.
#Movie #atomic #bomb #Oppenheimer #Japan #film #squeaks #anniversaries #Hiroshima #Nagasaki