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Information reaching Kossyderrickent has it that Spike Lee says #Oppenheimer should’ve added ‘some more minutes about what happened to the Japanese people’.
“Understand, this is all love,” Lee added. “And I bet [Nolan] could tell me some things he would change about ‘Do the Right Thing’ and ‘Malcolm X.’”
Despite his comments on “Oppenheimer,” Lee made his praise of Nolan clear, telling the Post that he showed “Dunkirk” to his students in his New York University film class.
“Oppenheimer” became a summer phenomenon, grossing more than $930 million and counting globally. The three-hour drama has become Nolan’s third-highest grossing movie ever, behind 2008’s “The Dark Knight” and 2012’s “The Dark Knight Rises.” The film does not yet have a Japanese release set.
Spike Lee is a lifelong scholar of film, both in the formal context of the classroom (where he’s been both teacher and student) and as a prolific creator and consumer of movies. So it’s not wholly surprising that Lee—who’s in the midst of opening a new exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum right now, featuring 450 pieces of film and cultural memoribilia from his massive personal collection—has some thoughts on the biggest films of the day.
Based on Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s 2005 biography of Oppenheimer, Nolan’s film focuses on the scientist’s tumultuous life and internal struggle following the attack. However, “Oppenheimer” does not portray the bombings or their aftermath in Japan, instead largely staying confined to its protagonist’s perspective. The omission was a major topic of critical discussion around the film, with Los Angeles Times critic Justin Chang defending the decision, saying that Nolan treats the attacks “as a profound absence, an indictment by silence.”
Specifically, Lee has now weighed in on Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, addressing the film during a recent (and extremely wide-ranging and entertaining) conversation with The Washington Post. And, let’s be clear: Lee is a fan of the movie, calling it a “great film,” and praising Nolan as a “massive filmmaker.” That being said, he did have some thoughts on what a different version of the movie might have looked like—one that put at least a bit more focus on the people directly affected by Robert Oppenheimer’s work as on the man himself:
This is not a criticism. It’s a comment. How long was that film? If it’s three hours, I would like to add some more minutes about what happened to the Japanese people. People got vaporized. Many years later, people are radioactive. It’s not like he didn’t have power. He tells studios what to do. I would have loved to have the end of the film maybe show what it did, dropping those two nuclear bombs on Japan. Understand, this is all love. And I bet he could tell me some things he would change about Do The Right Thing and Malcolm X.
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