With Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer being a dramatization of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s life as opposed to being a documentary, there were a number of liberties the filmmaker took with real events, resulting in the figure’s grandson Charles Oppenheimer taking issue with one specific sequence. In the film, Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) is seen injecting an apple intended for his professor with poison, before Oppenheimer has a change of heart and tosses out the apple. Grandson Charles points out that, with Nolan drawing direct inspiration from the book American Prometheus, it was through that book’s dramatization that Nolan then dramatized and speculated further. Oppenheimer is in theaters now.
“When I talked to Chris Nolan, at one point he said something roughly like, ‘I know how to tell a story out of this subject. There are going to be parts that you have to dramatize a bit and parts that are changed. As family members, I think you’re going to like some parts and dislike some parts,’” Oppenheimer shared with TIME. “That’s probably led into my acceptance of the movie, even though I saw it very late, just when it came out. As a dramatized representation of the history, it was really largely accurate. There are parts that I disagree with, but not really because of Nolan.”
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He continued, “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. 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.”
This isn’t the only criticism that has been lobbied against the movie, as historical inaccuracies such as the number of stars on the American flag as well as the omission of the number of families displaced in order to build Los Alamos for the sake of the Manhattan Project. Even though Charles Oppenheimer admits that he would have removed the apple scene, he also confessed that, not being a filmmaker, he didn’t feel it was his place to influence Nolan.
“I definitely would have removed the apple thing. But I can’t imagine myself giving advice about movie stuff to Nolan. He’s an expert, he’s the artist, and he’s a genius in this area,” Oppenheimer admitted. “But one amusing family story is that, if I invited myself to the set, they would entertain me coming, which I did twice. And so 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. 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 in theaters now.
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