I didn’t see much info about it prior to watching, went with some friends. A large part of the movie is about his possible communist affiliations, and his defaming. It wasn’t insanely anti-communist, but it definitely operated under the assumption communism equals bad. Anyone else have some thoughts on it?
For such a mainstream epic I thought it was rather critical of US politics around that era. They mentioned that the Truman administration lied about the Japanese never surrending and that the nukes on Nagasaki and Hiroshima were unnecessary to end the war. The red scare isn’t painted in a particular good light either, especially where Katherine Oppenheimer is cross-examined and tells them that he simply supported refugees instead of evil communist tyrants and that the insinuation of supporting communists was more of a tool of the ruling elite to control people who didn’t parrot the party line.
It was definitely more critical than I was expecting. Surprising how many on the project dissented to its usage. I guess most had expected to use it against Germany while they were actively fighting. The red scare definitely looked like the needless witch hunt it was. Wartime seems to excuse many deplorable behaviours