Case Study - Oppenheimer

 Oppenheimer - 2023

Year: 2023

Director: Christopher Nolan

Distributor: Universal Pictures

Age rating by BBFC: 15 (strong language, sex) 

A woman is briefly hinted to be drowned in a bathtub by an unidentified assailant. There are frequent verbal references to bombing fatalities and victim injuries.

A man has terrifying visions of the end of the world, which feature burning skin, burned bodies, and disease. A nuclear bomb is cautiously prepared by scientists for testing. 

Strong profanity and other expressions are used.

There are a few brief moments of vigorous sex, including nudity of the breasts and buttocks.

The film has an underlying theme of antisemitism in the background of the 1930s and 1940s. There are passing mentions of the Holocaust. There are sexism allusions.

A woman's suicide is described in a way that casts doubt on that version of the events leading up to her passing. 

Controversies surrounding Oppenheimer: 

The first sexual scene in the film, starring Florence Pugh as Jean Atlock and Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer, generated some of the biggest Oppenheimer controversy. After meeting at a communist party, the two hit it off and eventually have sex. When Jean takes the Hindu text Bhagavad Gita off the shelf during this scene, it's one of the most unexpected scenes in the whole film. They carry on having intercourse as she has Oppenheimer read aloud from the holy book. This is the point in the film where Oppenheimer's real-life TV recitation of the phrase "Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds" appears.

In relation to the Oppenheimer sex scandals, Florence Pugh's nudity has also generated discussion. This isn't because she appeared in the film in her underwear; rather, it's because some nations used computer-generated imagery to hide up some nude sequences. In the theatrical version of the film, Pugh appears nude in a scene where Jean and Oppenheimer are conversing while seated across from one another in a hotel room. Oppenheimer is classed R elsewhere because, in India and other Middle Eastern countries, Florence Pugh appears in a modified version with a black computer-generated garment throughout certain moments.

The omission of Indigenous Americans' involvement in Los Alamos has resulted in another Oppenheimer controversy, similar to how the film omits the Japanese perspective on the atomic weapon. The film dismisses any worries about how the atomic bomb testing site will affect the native people by claiming that they don't reside close to Los Alamos. This ignores the fact that Native American tribes once owned the land on which the place was constructed. Additionally, it downplays the long- and short-term harm that the Los Alamos site has caused to the local tribes.