Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, which is sending the BO cash registers ringing, is also finding itself in a series of controversies. Here’s a quick check...

Mona

Christopher Nolan’s 12th outing, Oppenheimer, takes one to the deadliest inventions of the 20th century, which changed the course of the world forever — the atom bomb — and the man who was instrumental in making it.

A brilliant cinematic outing that has sent the box-office cash registers ringing has been hailed as another triumph for Nolan, who has given blockbusters like Interstellar, Dunkirk, Tenet and The Dark Knight, among others. Fans have raved about this three-hour spectacle taking one through the life and times of the scientist, whose invention had a devastating effect on the world.

Oppenheimer is shown with his own flaws. While in the film, Truman owned his part, Oppenheimer was mostly self-serving. Later on, it mostly seemed like public relations exercise than any sort of guilt!

— Kabir Singh Chowdhry, filmmaker

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However, Nolan’s masterpiece has also come under fire for ‘whitewashing’ the man who made the world’s most noxious weapon that led to approximately 2, 50,000 casualties over time, after Hiroshima-Nagasaki bombings. The film is about the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy), from his early days of studying science in Cambridge to being the sheriff, mayor and director of the Los Alamos – the secret township where thousands worked for around three years to make the atom bomb.

Nolan paints his life in all its shades, from American Prometheus, which the film is based on, to his almost poisoning his tutor at Cambridge to affairs, associations with family and friends with left leanings, and the moral compunction at carrying on the experiment, despite some of his fellow scientists registering their protest. Watchful viewers point out that for his ultimate sin, if you may call it that, he was given a clean chit!

Christopher Nolan has made a remarkable film, but Oppenheimer’s character has been whitewashed. It could have been kept more real. People like me like to see the real stuff and we as audiences don’t judge.

— Aditya Deshmukh, actor

There is a scene in which Oppenheimer seeks to meet the then President Harry S Truman (Gary Oldman) after the Japan bombings, “Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not about you,” says the chuffed President, instructing his staff not to let this cry baby in again.

Online storm

Meanwhile, netizens have taken Nolan to task for ‘whitewashing’ the Father of Atomic Bomb. Twitter user Erinn O’Dear posted on the microblogging site, “I’m sad but not surprised Oppenheimer is whitewashed. It’ll take a few years, but this conversation is coming no matter how hard you try to stop it. People need to understand criticism isn’t censorship. It doesn’t even mean you didn’t like or love a film.”

While nuances of Oppenheimer’s life are well depicted, netizens also point out the full effect of Los Alamos — how people were thrown out of their land in 24 hours, their livestock shot, farms bulldozed and Hispanics made to work with beryllium sans any protection, which eventually killed them.

Also, how people, around the first test bombing called Trinity, were never explained the nature of the weapon or its longterm effects. The film gives Oppenheimer a clean chit here too, as he is shown mindful of the Los Alamos tragedy and intends to return the land to the natives. He also takes the blame in remarkably picturised climax when he talks to famous scientist Albert Einstein. “Albert, when I came to you with those calculations we thought we might start a chain reaction, that would destroy the entire world…I believe we did.”

As one’s heart goes out to the man who almost seemed wronged by the political powers, Nolan fights the charges to have turned a villain into a troubled genius. Twitter user Patch Kolan posts, “The whitewashed revisionist history of Oppenheimer… Oppie had the blood of locals on his hands as well as the Japanese.”

Objections galore

That’s not the only fault movie-goers have found in the film. In a scene shown to be that of 1945, the crowd is seen waving 50-star US flags while at that point American flag had only 48 stars (the 50-star flag came into being in 1960)!

In India, where Oppenheimer did huge business, there is objection to the quote from Bhagavad Gita that is purportedly mis-translated and put into a love-making scene. Woke populace elsewhere has objected to Oppenheimer cast being all white and no diversity at all!

Controversies aside, the film has won accolades on account of Cillian Murphy’s brilliant acting, the deafening silence that follows the atomic blast and earnest performances by the cast, including Emily Blunt, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh and Tom Conti. Nobel evaded Oppenheimer, but this film might win the elusive Academy for Nolan!