USC Film School’s Vice Dean Akira Mizuta Lippit On Reaction To ‘Oppenheimer’ In Japan & How Release Uncertainty Became Inseparable From Film’s Content; Then Box Office Surged

Editor’s note:When Christopher Nolan’s eventual Best Picture Oscar winnerOppenheimerbegan its global rollout last summer, a question mark hung over whether it would ever see the inside of a cinema in Japan, given the sensitive subject matter. Ultimately, the film released there eight months later, swiftly becoming the top-grossing Hollywood title of the year and continuing to hold that position (now at $11.6M). Nine weeks in, it is still playing on more than half of the market’s Imax screens, and in local currency (¥1.774B) is Nolan’s fourth-highest-grossing picture ever there.

USC School of Cinematic Arts Vice Dean of Faculty Akira Mizuta Lippit has shared with Deadline his thoughts on the pre- and post-release reactions to the film in the market. Lippit — who is Japanese on his mother’s side and Jewish on his father’s — says the stakes of Oppenheimerand its reception couldn’t have been higher since the film forges a point of contact between those two cultures and ethnicities.

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Here’s Lippit’s take:

During a recent trip to Tokyo, a cab driver overheard this author discussing the Japanese reception toOppenheimer. Upon arrival to our destination, he turned to say, “I sawOppenheimerthree times in Imax. I love Christopher Nolan.”

This particular taxi driver is not alone in Japan in being “maniakku”(maniac), a term often used to refer to Japanese cinephiles. In fact, many have flocked to Imax screenings of the film, and some have traveled abroad to see screenings of Nolan’s own preferred format of 70mm. According to film scholar Wakae Nakane, a new term, “Moppenheimer,” has entered circulation, referring to those who see the film multiple times.

Among the various aftershocks of “Barbenheimer” was the uncertainty of when, if ever,Oppenheimermight be released in Japan. Unlike any other foreign market, Japan was, after all, already inscribed in the film as its destination, its epilogue. Barbieopened in Japanese theaters on August 11, but no release date was announced forOppenheimeruntil January 2024.

August would not have been the time to releaseOppenheimerin Japan. The 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima, then Nagasaki, on August 6 and 9, respectively, followed by the end of the war after Japan’s surrender on August 15 that year, would have seemed insensitive at the very least, and might have been seen by some as provocative. But the delay in scheduling and announcing a release date forOppenheimerin Japan, and the possibility that the film might never be released in Japan, became its own story.

Previous films about Japan, good and bad, some offensive or ignorant, have nonetheless enjoyed box office success in Japan. Michael Bay’sPearl Harbor(2001), marketed as a love story, was embraced by Japanese audiences, as was Edward Zwick’s speculative fiction,The Last Samurai(2004), among many others. Rob Marshall’sMemoirs of a Geisha(2005), a little less so, but for different reasons. Japan, it seems, is used to being misrepresented and understands that the Japan reflected in Hollywood films is often an imagined and even imaginary Japan.

In contrast to those examples, which take extensive liberties with subject matter and history,Oppenheimerlaid claim to historical accuracy. This was a serious film, and as such, fell into a different category from many of the Orientalist fantasies that have marked Hollywood’s incursion into Asia generally, Japan specifically.

Still, the very question of a theatrical release took on symbolic value in its absence, exacerbating the question of whetherOppenheimerdid enough to address the consequences of developing and deploying atomic weapons. The meme-driven Barbenheimercampaign, depicting Margot Robbie and Cillian Murphy set against a mushroom cloud didn’t help matters.

The delay and uncertainty regarding the release ofOppenheimereventually became inseparable from the content of the film itself.Oppenheimerthe film became a narrative about its deferred release; the film had become radioactive. When the release date of the film was finally announced, it was as if the film itself had become its own sequel.

For the Japan release ofOppenheimer, Universal partnered with Bitters End with whom it works on more specialty titles. The film opened with a disclaimer warning viewers about scenes of atomic testing.

Responses were mixed. Activist groups had mobilized in advance to denounce the elision of Japan and the effects of the atomic bombings. Former Hiroshima mayor Takashi Hiraoka criticized the film’s omission of the depiction of the bombings.

Still, others lauded the film as a step forward: the United States, and Hollywood in particular, was finally willing to portray the moral struggles and conflicted conscience of the man known as the “father of the atom bomb.” Some viewers forgave the film for its omission of Japan, noting that it was about the man and not a history of atomic weapons and their use on civilian populations in Japan.

Nolan himself was active inOppenheimer’s release, participating in various forums to discuss the film, its objectives, scope and the rationale for any exclusions. He endorsed the idea, proposed byGodzilla Minus Onedirector Takashi Yamazaki, that Japan should respond toOppenheimerwith a film of its own about the creation and use of the atom bomb from its perspective.

Strangely, and contrary to the political outcry reported extensively in the U.S.,Oppenheimerhas done very well in Japan and its box office has propelledthe filmto become Nolan’s most successful ever abroad.

Still, the central question regarding the film remains whether it excludes Japan, which is to say whether Japan is missing from the place where it should be inOppenheimer. And how to determine this? After all, the epilogue or postscript to the Manhattan Project is that the atom bomb was swiftly deployed on August 6 and 9, 1945. How could Japan not be part of the story?

Film scholar Ryan Williams has presented a brilliant analysis of one scene of the film in which Robert Oppenheimer is unable to look at a documentary film about the effects of atomic radiation on human bodies in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The camera rests on Oppenheimer as he averts his gaze from the screen. The audience hears the film’s narratordescribethese gruesome effects offscreen. Never does the audience see the documentary, nor is Oppenheimer able to bear those scenes of human devastation. Instead, one sees Oppenheimer’s reaction, his revulsion, perhaps, his feelings of guilt and shame. One sees Oppenheimer’s own inability or refusal to see what the consequence of his creation were.

Where is Japan at this moment, Williams asks. Offscreen, elsewhere, framed both within and without the film’s diegesis. Is this an excision of Japan from the film? Is the person Robert Oppenheimer synonymous here with the eponymous film? This is where the film reaches its moral or political climax. What if the film excludes Japan because Oppenheimer himself does? And, what about the inclusion of a scene in which Oppenheimer is unable to face the effects of his creation, the very inclusion of the annihilation of Japan?

What is missing in this scene is the image. This film,Oppenheimer, which imagines so much, which puts so much into images, is unable at this moment, to imagine Japan. To imagine the infernal hell-scape. Despite Nolan’s directorial majesty, Hoyte Van Hoytema’s exceptional cinematography, and the world’s most advanced VFX, the destruction of Japan by atomic weaponsremains in the film and elsewhereunimaginable.

Perhaps there are no possible images of this destruction. And, perhaps the absence of images, as opposed to the endless fantasies of an imaginary Japan, is the only possible response to the atomic age that J. Robert Oppenheimer and Christopher Nolan’sOppenheimerreveal.Such revelation exposes nothing, becausethere is nothing to see. This blinding flash — revealing not only nothing, but nothingness itself — is in the end the atomic apocalypse.

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USC Film School’s Vice Dean Akira Mizuta Lippit On Reaction To ‘Oppenheimer’ In Japan & How Release Uncertainty Became Inseparable From Film’s Content; Then Box Office Surged – Guest Column (2024)

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