BEFORE: PBS ran this film a couple of days ago, because this week marks the 70th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - the actual date is August 6 (so I'm two days early, meaning I'm good at scheduling, but not THAT good). And that's what I mean when I say that sometimes a new film just begs to be moved up to the top of the list, to mark a historical event, and to allow Paul Newman to carry over from "Nobody's Fool".
THE PLOT: This film reenacts the Manhattan Project, the secret wartime project in New Mexico where the first atomic bombs were designed and built.
AFTER: I'm very conflicted after watching this film, though I'm sure that what I'm feeling is nothing compared to the moral conflicts people endured about the use of the atomic bomb in 1945. I wasn't there, I don't really know the cultural atmosphere of the time, what it was that led people to make a series of decisions that led to the use of a weapon that killed over 200,000 people, many of whom were civilians. Unless I miss my guess (and I'm honestly afraid to do a web search on this) the only use of nuclear weapons in warfare is the single deadliest event in history (not counting deaths from diseases like malaria, which take place over time). 70,000 people dead in 5 seconds, I can't even wrap my brain around it.
But it happened. The U.S. military did that - and someone had to make that decision, and someone had to approve it, and before that, someone had to think of the bomb, and some other people had to build it. This is a film about those people, and how they managed to live with themselves, and how they found a way to sleep at night. Now, of course we were at war, and U.S. soldiers were being killed in the Pacific, so the main goal was to save lives - but to save lives by building a weapon that would kill even more lives, that's a moral dilemma that I can't imagine either.
But, isn't that the essence of war? OUR lives are more important than THEIR lives. U.S. civilians needed to be protected, even if we had to kill Japanese civilians to do so. That's the party line, of course, and history is written by the winners - and I was raised in America, and it was always "My country, right or wrong." (Actually at times it's seemed more like "My country, we're never wrong.") But isn't dropping the bomb just one of many questionable decisions made during wartime? What about trading bombs for hostages, like Iran-Contra? What about torturing prisoners for information in the Middle East, or using phantom WMD's as a reason for invading Iraq? What about the CIA funding Sandanistas or military coups in Central America?
I'm sorry if this sounds un-American, I'm as patriotic as the next guy - but really, if you go back to the Revolutionary War, you'll find that stacking the deck and winning at all costs is as American as apple pie. Didn't the Minutemen hide behind walls and rocks when they faced British soldiers, who just marched into battle to get shot? It wasn't very sporting to hide in the trees, but it worked - and it set up this "get it done, no matter the cost" mentality that still survives today. It's a straight line from there to holding prisoners at Guantanamo, and the line goes straight through the atomic bomb.
I grew up in the culture of the Cold War, and we learned in school about the balance of power - we had nuclear weapons, sure, but we weren't going to use them. And the Soviet Union had them, too, but that's OK, because as long as two entities had them, they'd keep each other in check. OK, great, but then where do China, France, Israel fit into the mix? It only would take one rogue nation to spark a war, and then the policy of Mutual Assured Destruction would kick in, and that's the end of everything. So we children of the 80's learned that life is fragile, because it could all vanish in an instant. And now the same arguments are coming up yet again, with this whole Iran thing. (Umm, please, nobody tell them that there are atomic bomb schematics on Wikipedia...)
The film depicts many of the scientists at Los Alamos as being conflicted - some even signed a petition about the moral implications of the work they were doing. This seems to have put them in a troublesome spot, would they be considered successful for completing their tasks, or is "successful" even the right word? Would it have been better for them, or better for the world, if they had failed? Even if they had tanked the project, pretended like the atomic bomb was impossible to build, would it mean that someone else would have invented it 10 or 20 years down the road?
I'm fascinated by the mechanics of it all, and the film doesn't go into all the details about implosions and enriched uranium, but it's fascinating to see some of the thought process, where they started thinking about giant cannons and how thick the barrel would need to be, and how to get enough velocity to cause the necessary chain reaction, and how all of that logically led to a dropped bomb instead. But I was thinking last night, since there was a thunderstorm as I was going to bed, about how consistent mankind has been about harnessing the forces of the universe in order to destroy his enemies. "What's that, a rock? What's this fire thing? Can I use them to kill the bad people? Great, I'm in." And someone looked up at lightning and wondered, "How can I harness that power, and use it to kill the bad people?" (Of course, we got electric lights and appliances out of that deal, but that was a bonus.)
But the question still comes up - why was it necessary to drop the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? According to this film, the prevailing opinion seemed to be that the war in the Pacific was winnable, and in fact Japan had offered to surrender, just not unconditionally. Why wouldn't it have been enough to demonstrate that the U.S. had a bomb, and threaten to use it, but not really use it? That's what got us through the 1980's and 1990's, after all - nuclear war as its own deterrent. I think the film suggested that if the U.S. demonstrated the bomb, there wouldn't be enough material left for the actual bomb. Hey, I'd be OK with that.
So, in the end, I'm left wondering if this is even appropriate subject matter for a movie. Sure, it's part of history and it helped end the war, but I'm wondering if the focus was aimed in the right direction. The work done at the Manhattan Project was important, but I'm not so sure that it should be celebrated.
Also starring Dwight Schultz, John Cusack (last seen in "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil"), Bonnie Bedelia (last seen in "Anywhere But Here"), Laura Dern (last seen in "Novocaine"), John C. McGinley (last seen in "Alex Cross"), Natasha Richardson (last seen in "Nell"), Ron Frazier, Ron Vawter, Michael Brockman, John Considine, Del Close, Allen Corduner, with cameos from Clark Gregg (last seen in "Mr. Popper's Penguins"), Mary Pat Gleason, Fred Dalton Thompson.
RATING: 5 out of 10 beryllium hemispheres
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