The atomic bomb, in particular, was taboo. Among its many effects were constraints on artists, filmmakers bound by censorship, and an inability to confront contemporary issues in the post-war world. Without further ado, here's the list, from a controversial double feature to a master director's madcap maximalist swan song.ĬHILDREN OF HIROSHIMA (1952) Kaneto Shindoįrom the time of the Imperial surrender to April 1952, Japan was under American occupation. They are interesting points of comparison if nothing else. The WGN America series Manhattan, the Day One TV Movie, BBC's Oppenheimer, and Roland Joffé's Fat Man and Little Boy portray a similar milieu to Nolan's movie. That said, there's a plethora of works worth your attention among those excluded, including pivotal non-fiction efforts like the 1946-released The Effects of the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Erik Barnouw's Hiroshima Nagasaki August, 1945. Perhaps, it's not that Nolan pulled his punches, but that they weren't his to throw…īuilding this watchlist of ten, Japanese narrative cinema was the focus, with international productions, American visions, and documentary filmmaking left aside. But would those images have fit the picture's intentions? Isn't the inability to consider consequences beyond abstraction one of the narrative's central tenets?Īs one marks these days of remembrance, it may be more productive to look beyond Oppenheimer and consider Japan's perspective. A common complaint is that Oppenheimer doesn't show the effects of the bombings, looking away like its titular character when confronted by such images. Considering this, one shouldn't be shocked that some viewers came out of Christopher Nolan's latest, grumbling it hadn't done enough to question the narrative. According to historians over the decades and high-ranking military of the time, the US needn't have perpetrated such horrors.Īnd yet, for some, the idea of the bombings as a necessary evil persists. Japan had been effectively defeated before the nuclear assault, but the nation's surrender to Allied Forces came on August 15th. Between those immediately killed in the American attack and the thousands who would perish in the subsequent months, 129,000-226,000 lives were lost, most civilian. On August 9th, a second device, Fat Man, was dropped on Nagasaki. On August 6th, 1945, the atomic bomb, nicknamed Little Boy, hit the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

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