By Irene Wang
HIROSHIMA (Reuters) – Best picture winner “Oppenheimer” finally premiered in Japan on Friday, eight months after a controversial popular marketing campaign and concerns about how the nuclear theme would be received in the only country to suffer the bombing atomic.
The biggest winner of this month’s Academy Awards, Christopher Nolan’s film about American physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who led the race to develop the atomic bomb, has grossed nearly $1 billion globally.
But Japan had so far been excluded from global screenings, despite being an important market for Hollywood. Nuclear explosions devastated the western cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the south at the end of World War II, killing more than 200,000 people.
“Of course this is an extraordinary film that deserves to win Academy Awards,” said Kawai, 37, a Hiroshima resident who gave only his family name.
“But the film also depicts the atomic bomb in a way that seems to praise it, and as someone originally from Hiroshima, I found it difficult to watch.”
A big fan of Nolan’s films, Kawai, a civil servant, went to see “Oppenheimer” on opening day at a theater just a kilometer from the city’s A-Bomb Dome.
“I’m not sure this is a film that Japanese people should make a special effort to watch,” he added.
Images on social media showed signs posted at the entrances of some Tokyo cinemas, warning that the film contained images of nuclear tests that could evoke damage caused by bombs.
Another Hiroshima resident, Agemi Kanegae, had mixed feelings after finally seeing the film.
“The film was really worth seeing,” said the 65-year-old retiree. “But I felt very uncomfortable with some scenes, like Oppenheimer’s final trial in the United States.”
The film quickly became a worldwide hit after being released in the United States last July. But many Japanese were offended by fan-made online “Barbenheimer” memes linking it to “Barbie,” a frothy blockbuster released around the same time.
Universal Pictures initially left Japan out of “Oppenheimer’s” global distribution schedule. Ultimately picked up by Bitters End, a Japanese distributor of independent films, a release date was set after the Oscars awards ceremony.
Speaking to Reuters ahead of the film’s release, atomic bomb survivor Teruko Yahata said she was eager to see it, in the hope it would reinvigorate the debate over nuclear weapons.
Yahata, now 86, said he felt some empathy for the physicist behind the bomb. This sentiment was echoed by Rishu Kanemoto, a 19-year-old student, who saw the film on Friday.
“Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where the atomic bombs were dropped, are certainly the victims,” Kanemoto said.
“But I think that even if the inventor is one of the authors, he is also the victim involved in the war,” he added, referring to the unfortunate physicist.