Why Christopher Nolan refused to show Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings in Oppenheimer

Christopher Nolan has explained why he decided not to show the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima from the perspective of the Japanese in Oppenheimer.

The 2023 epic told the story of Robert J. Oppenheimer and the birth of the atomic bomb via The Manhattan Project. It received almost universal acclaim and was a juggernaut success at the box office, too, earning $942 million worldwide.

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Though the praise came thick and fast, there were also some noted critics of some aspects of the movie. Legendary filmmaker Spike Lee enjoyed it but felt that it lacked the emotional kick that would have been felt if Nolan had included a narrative about Nagasaki and Hiroshima and the consequences for the Japanese people.

In the movie, we only see Oppenheimer's reaction to the news of the bombings.

Nolan says he was simply staying true to the book on which the movie is based, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer.

“Looking at it from a script point of view, and taking cues from the book to some degree—because you (Kai Bird) and Martin Sherman had already written about Hiroshima and Nagasaki extensively outside the Oppenheimer biography, and reading about his experience, and how essentially once, Trinity was done, he was, to some degree, in the same position as the rest of America,” the director said  a recent Q&A with the writer of the aforementioned book, Kai Bird.

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“He heard about the bombing of Hiroshima on the radio as (President) Truman announced it. And that was one of the most remarkable things I read in the book, and that was one of the key elements that prompted me to want to tell the story as subjectively as possible. I wanted to experience the realizations that he passes through with him and have the audience do that, and I think that’s largely how audiences have responded to it.”

Oppenheimer, with Cillian Murphy in the title role, is told through both a coloured narrative and a black and white narrative. The coloured narrative is the character's direct memories of what happened, while the black and white is his outsider's view on the perspective of others.