Debra Sweet | Friday, July 21 2023 

“Oppenheimer,” the film about the pivotal physicist in the Manhattan Project which developed the atom bomb, opens nationally today. I’m going to see it this evening. If you see it, are you interested in commenting on it? Please send me your thoughts. Or, would you want to have a group discussion about what you and others take from it? If so, let’s do it. Get back to me at debrasweet@worldcantwait.net.

The trailer and then some initial reactions follow below:

Revcom.us: On Oppenheimer and the U.S. Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb – Some Relevant Points of Historical Background and Understanding “…The scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project largely rallied behind a cause of defeating Hitler and what they saw as a ‘Nazi-fascist threat to human civilization.’ But as pointed out by one of the scholars interviewed for the MSNBC documentary accompanying the film, they wound up developing the technology/weapon that could destroy civilization—putting it in the hands of the U.S. government. Against what might be described as their ‘better intentions,’ they were tools of the imperatives and strategic objectives of U.S. imperialism and the furtherance of American empire—in particular, the U.S. imperialist goal of forging a hegemonic ‘American century,’ in which the U.S. would be an unrivaled world power—politically, militarily, and economically…”

The Guardian:  Anti-nuclear groups welcome Oppenheimer film but say it fails to depict true horror “…The film explores Oppenheimer’s moral quandary over his role in creating the most destructive weapon ever made, but nuclear disarmament campaigners fear its power to persuade people of the existential threat posed by nuclear arms may be diminished by its focus on scientific achievement…”

Indigenous Action: Architect of Annihilation – Oppenheimer’s Deadly Legacy of Nuclear Terror “The genocidal colonial terror of nuclear energy and weapons is not entertainment. To glorify such deadly science and technology as a depoliticized dramatic character study, is to spit in the face of hundreds of thousands of corpses and survivors scattered throughout the history of the so-called Atomic age… Oppenheimer never was a hero, he was an architect of annihilation…”

Let’s discuss!