“An hour in a park with a pretty girl seems like a minute, but a minute sitting at a burning stove seems like an hour.” Thus Albert Einstein He explained his theory of relativity to journalists. And the scientist and the atomic bomb are central to Einstein and the Bomb, the documentary by Netflix which just premiered this Friday, and is already among the most watched on the streaming platform.
The film is a fictionalized documentary: it has archival images and also recreations of Einstein and with whom he is linked in the many moments that the short documentary (an hour and a quarter) reflects, jumping incessantly between various eras.
Director Anthony Philipson has always been dedicated to TV and has been nominated for two BAFTA awards from the British Film and TV Academy. He began his television career working on entertainment shows, including the groundbreaking first season of Big Brother.
The man who will soon direct the series The day of the jackalalso appeals to the words, in audios and writings, of those who refuted Isaac Newton’s theories.
Einstein is presented as “One of the best scientists in the world, a colossal scientist who knew how to generate as much political controversy as brilliant equations, the father of the atomic age.” The theory of relativity was a breakthrough, when he defined the relationship between matter and energy.
Everything quite explained
There is no need to worry because everything is quite explained, and even some phrases are reiterated throughout the film.
“If I had known that the Germans would not be able to make the atomic bomb, I would not have helped open that Pandora’s box” is one of the most famous phrases said by the German and Jewish scientist, who had to escape from his native country when Nazism took charge of political power.
Much of the story focuses on his stay in Norfolk, England, where Commander Locker-Lampson gave him shelter when he left Germany. There he was guarded by two female bodyguards, ready to fill with bullets anyone who approached Einstein, when from Germany they were offering 20,000 marks for his head.
Einstein, who defined himself as a militant pacifist, was willing to fight for peace.
But what the documentary outlines more than raises is the feeling of guilt he may have had regarding the atomic bomb that the United States dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.
Because after he gave his speech on October 3, 1933, he became Science and civilization at the Royal Albert Hall before 10,000 people, he left for the United States. He never set foot on European soil again.
This leads to 1942, when the Manhattan Project, which the film tells of, is created among the allies. Oppenheimerin which Einstein appears, after writing a letter to President Roosevelt, because he believed that the Germans were already working on uranium.
After the fateful August 6, 1945, when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima – Hitler had already committed suicide – was peace worth the price of the bomb, which killed 70,000 Japanese?
You can see images of how the bomb destroys everything in its path, there are photos of injured people. “We won the war, the peace… no,” Einstein says in this documentary that he does not provide much new information about the physicist who demonstrated the existence of atoms and discovered what light is made of.
“The destiny of humanity depends entirely on the moral development of man.” A phrase from Einstein that paints the moment in which he lived.
Fictionalized documentary. United Kingdom, 2024. Original title: “Einstein and the Bomb”. 77’, SAM 13. Of: Anthony Philipson. Con: Aidan McArdle, Andrew Havill, Leo Ashizawa. Available in: Netflix.