Warning! This article contains minor story spoilers for Oppenheimer!
Dramatizing real-life history can be a tricky business. Just ask Charles Oppenheimer, grandson of famed nuclear physicist Robert Oppenheimer, who has to watch his grandfather's story play out on the silver screen.
The younger Oppenheimer mostly seems fine with Nolan's biopic, which recently teamed with Barbie to set new box office highs for 2023. He does, however, have some big problems with one particular scene.
In Nolan's story, which was based on the book American Prometheus, a young Robert Oppenheimer leaves a poisoned apple for teacher Patrick Blackett in a fit of anxiety and homesickness, which is almost eaten by a visiting Niels Bohr. It's a compelling sequence, but one that isn't necessarily grounded in history.
"The part I like the least is this poison apple reference, which was a problem in American Prometheus. If you read American Prometheus carefully enough, the authors say, 'We don't really know if it happened.' There's no record of him trying to kill somebody. That's a really serious accusation and it's historical revision. There's not a single enemy or friend of Robert Oppenheimer who heard that during his life and considered it to be true," Charles Oppenheimer said in an interview with Time.
"American Prometheus got it from some references talking about a spring break trip, and all the original reporters of that story — there was only two maybe three — reported that they didn't know what Robert Oppenheimer was talking about. Unfortunately, American Prometheus summarizes that as Robert Oppenheimer tried to kill his teacher and then they [acknowledge that] maybe there's this doubt."
Oppenheimer talks at length about the movie's accuracy, his meetings with Nolan, and what it was like to grow up with the legacy of the atomic bomb. According to Oppenheimer, Nolan acknowledged that there would be historical revisions for the sake of the drama, which helped him accept the final product for what it was. He even said that he expected to feel worse about it than he ultimately did.
Still, while Oppenheimer considers trying to revise the historical record a losing battle, the film's reflection of real history is still very much on his mind.
"Sometimes facts get dragged through a game of telephone. In the movie, it's treated vaguely and you don't really know what's going on unless you know this incredibly deep backstory," Oppenheimer says. "So it honestly didn't bother me. It bothers me that it was in the biography with that emphasis, not a disclaimer of, this is an unsubstantiated rumor that we want to put in our book to make it interesting. But I like some of the dramatization. I thought Einstein's conversation with Oppenheimer at the end was really effective even though it wasn't historical."
'I would have removed the apple thing'
We were ultimately very positive Nolan's film, calling it "jolting thriller."
"A biopic in constant free fall, Oppenheimer is Christopher Nolan’s most abstract yet most exacting work, with themes of guilt writ large through apocalyptic IMAX nightmares that grow both more enormous and more intimate as time ticks on. A disturbing, mesmerizing vision of what humanity is capable of bringing upon itself, both through its innovation, and through its capacity to justify any atrocity," we wrote in our review.
Asked if he would change anything, Oppenheimer admits that definitely would have "removed the apple thing." But he hastens to add that he doesn't feel right giving advice to Nolan, calling him a a "genius" in the area of filmmaking.
He does, however, remember a story from one of his visits to the set.
"One time I visited the set in New Mexico. I saw them film and, in that particular scene, Cillian Murphy walks into a room and part of his line was calling someone an 'asshole.' And when I went back to Santa Fe and told my dad, he was horrified. He said, 'Robert Oppenheimer never swore. He was such a formal person. He would never, ever do that.' And I was like, 'Well, it's a dramatization.' But I was worried that in the movie he would be this swearing, abusive guy," Oppenheimer remembers.
"Anyway, I think he said one swear word in the movie and I just happened to be in the room. So there is a chance that if we had been consultants, we could have added some details and depth. But there's such a complete record. It was enough for Nolan to tell the story he intended to."
Oppenheimer is available in theaters now. For more, check out our look at just how realistic Oppenheimer really is, as well as 15 movies to watch after Nolan's blockbusters.
Kat Bailey is IGN's News Director as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.
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