Naturally, there are spoilers ahoy for Oppenheimer.
For the first time in his filmmaking career, Oppenheimer features a full-blown sex scene directed by Christopher Nolan, so it’s only fitting that it’s ended up generating controversy and potentially offended up to a billion people worldwide.
If anybody else had directed the biographical thriller about the father of the atomic bomb, you can guarantee they’d have turned the legendary “I am become Death, destroyer of worlds” quote into a money shot for the trailers and marketing, but the way Nolan went about it has proven to be even more contentious.
Deciding to drop it into the film mid-coitus was certainly an interesting choice, and the call to have Cillian Murphy quote it to Florence Pugh’s Jean Tatlock between bouts of lovemaking has generated an incendiary response from Uday Mahurkar on Twitter, an Indian journalist who’s also the government’s information commissioner.
Addressing Nolan directly, Mahurkar remarks that “It has come to our notice that the movie Oppenheimer contains a scene which make a scathing attack on Hinduism,” before outlining the offense the scene has caused among many.
“We do not know the motivation and logic behind this unnecessary scene on life of a scientist. But this is a direct assault on religious beliefs of a billion tolerant Hindus, rather it amounts to waging a war on the Hindu community and almost appears to be part of a larger conspiracy by anti-Hindu forces. We are living in a very polarised world. The agencies, media, politics and even your Hollywood film industry is very sensitive about the fact that Quran and Islam is not depicted in any manner that may offend the value system of a common Muslim, even if you make something based on Islamist terrorism.
There is a term that has become popular for those who attempt to cross this red line – Islamophobia. Why should not the same courtesy be also extended to Hindus? We urge, on behalf of billion Hindus and timeless tradition of lives being transformed by revered Geeta, to do all that is needed to uphold dignity of their revered book and remove this scene from your film across [the] world. Should you choose to ignore this appeal it would be deemed as a deliberate assault on Indian civilization.”
As a social media abstainer, it remains to be seen if Nolan will be made aware of the backlash and how he’ll choose to either respond or confront it head-on, but it’s a reminder that Oppenheimer‘s opening weekend isn’t all about busting the box office.