As Awards Season for 'Oppenheimer' Opens: What's Missing in the Movie

A review of my critiques since its July debut.

Greg Mitchell is the author of a dozen books, including “Hiroshima in America,” “Atomic Cover-up” and the recent award-winning “The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood—and America—Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.” He has directed three documentary films since 2021 for PBS (you can still watch “Atomic Cover-up”). You can subscribe to this newsletter for free.

The Golden Globes might be laughable on several levels but the show tonight does mark the start of the unofficial televised “awards season.” Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” is one of the favorites and will remain so, with Oscar finalists soon to be announced and onward. And, of course, it has been streaming for several weeks, bringing it to new audiences.

So I feel it may be useful here to simply link to a number of my assessments, critiques and historical fact-checking going back to the first days of the launching of this newsletter last July. And if you haven’t subscribed already you can still do it here, for free.

On the early screening in NYC, with Nolan on panel.

Below on more that is missing: The major failing is in not challenging the entrenched “Hiroshima narrative” that holds that the use of the bombs, and only the use of the bombs, ended the war.