ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
A Betoota Heights grandfather has taken his 6-year-old grandson to the pictures this afternoon, where he gave the young fella a few history lessons.
Donald Cutler, a 73-year-old retired pharmacist from Glen Court Street, took his youngest grandson, Edward, to see a 12:03 pm advanced screening of this year’s epic Nolan film, Oppenheimer, which opened to select audiences in Betoota last night.
The film follows the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer, an American theoretical physicist often credited as being the father of the atomic bomb, in his quest to invent the bomb and the subsequent mission to test it out on Japanese civilians.
Edward’s parents were under the impression Donald was taking him to see Cats in the Museum, an animated film about some cats that live in a museum. But Donald explained to our reporter after the screening that he thought it was an opportunity to educate the boy.
“The boy said he wanted to see some God-awful movie about some God-damn cats that live in a museum. A cartoon! I told him, ‘You don’t want to see that rubbish, do you want to see a big boy movie?” said Donald.
“I had read about this Oppenheimer movie in the paper and saw they were doing an advanced screening of it. The young man who sold me the tickets said Edward was too young, but I wanted the boy to know what this Oppenheimer did for Australia.”
“I think he rather enjoyed it. I hope he goes home to his parents with a bit of knowledge about the war. The boy’s great-grandfather fought the Nazis in North Africa and Crete. He fought the Japanese on Borneo. He needs to know that the sacrifices of the men and women of that time have shaped the very existence he, and the rest of us, enjoy.”
“Now he knows that without this Oppenheimer, we’d all be speaking Japanese in this country. We might drive their cars and enjoy their food, but we draw the line at the speaking.”
The Advocate is aware that Edward’s parents are not impressed that Donald took their son to a movie about nuclear bombs and the human condition when he explicitly asked to see the cat movie.
More to come.
