Readers weigh in on 'Reinventing Elvis: The ’68 Comeback Special,' 'Oppenheimer,' 50 years of hip-hop and silent films on public television
'...What Nolan shows us
I just finished reading Justin Chang’s excellent interpretation of what Christopher Nolan tried to show or not show in his brilliant movie “Oppenheimer” [“‘Oppenheimer’ doesn’t show us Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That’s an act of rigor, not erasure,” Aug. 14]. The interpretation he offers is excellent, but I am writing to you in response to his final paragraph. So many times, film directors underestimate the intelligence of audiences. Nolan makes intelligent films and trusts his audiences to think for themselves. I thank Nolan for doing that, and I thank Mr. Chang for pointing out that he does.
Horace Morana San Luis Obispo
The criticism of “Oppenheimer’s” lack of showing the gruesome effects of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is understandable [“Critics object to film’s victim erasure,” Aug. 7]. However, unless one has not read John Hersey’s “Hiroshima” or Robert Jay Lifton’s “Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima,” or watched the countless documentaries and movies about the bombings, you know what happened. To fault director Nolan for not showing the effects misses the point about the viewpoint of Oppenheimer.
Historian Paul Ham is probably right that the film “cannot help but be morally half-formed,” and his excellent book, “Hiroshima Nagasaki,” is convincing in that the bombings were unnecessary to win the war, but no feature film is likely to capture the full impact of the bomb’s history and effects. I hope that most “Oppenheimer” viewers will at least remember Nolan’s final point that nuclear war is still possible and that there must be an abolition of nuclear weapons to avoid more Hiroshimas and Nagasakis.
Bob Ladendorf Los Angeles...'
