'Oppenheimer's Most Powerful Quote Has a Complicated and Surprising Origin Story (2024)

Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer completely dominated Hollywood. The latter half of last summer's iconic Barbenheimer box office smash not only pays off the long collaboration between visionary director Christopher Nolan and star Cillian Murphy by giving the Batman Begins actor his first lead role in a Nolan film, but it also explores the origins of the new world order that arose from the ashes of World War II. Examining the necessity of nuclear weapons from a scientific and philosophical perspective, Nolan's chilling film ponders humanity's own obsession with destroying itself, with the power of J. Robert Oppenheimer's atomic bomb and the foreboding tone of Nolan's film best demonstrated by the movie's most ominous quote.

After struggling through the theoretical and practical challenges of building the world's first atomic bomb on the army base at Los Alamos, New Mexico throughout most of the film, Cillian Murphy's Oppenheimer finally makes his breakthrough two-thirds of the way through Nolan's biopic masterpiece. Pressed for results by Matt Damon's General Leslie R. Groves, the embattled scientist observes the atom bomb's first successful test with shuddering astonishment, with a voice-over delivering the lines "And now I am become Death. The destroyer of worlds." On its own, the quote sounds like a fitting inclusion in the script on Nolan's part, words that signify how Oppenheimer's destructive invention has granted him divine power over life itself, but in reality, Oppenheimer's most unsettling quote has a long and storied history.

Oppenheimer

910

See Also

4 dead after Debby slams Florida, causing massive flooding and widespread outages: UpdatesFive things to know about Tim Walz20 Inspirerende Quotes over zelfkennis en zelfinzicht - Blijvengroeien.nlVP pick Tim Walz faced accusations in 2006 of embellishing his military service, which he called slander | CNN Politics

R

Biography

Drama

History

The story of American scientist, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and his role in the development of the atomic bomb.

Release Date

July 21, 2023

Director

Christopher Nolan

Cast

Cillian Murphy , Matt Damon , Robert Downey Jr. , Emily Blunt , Alden Ehrenreich , Scott Grimes , Jason Clarke , Tony Goldwyn

Runtime

180 minutes

Main Genre

Biography

Writers

Kai Bird , Christopher Nolan , Martin J. Sherwin

Studio

Universal Pictures

'Oppenheimer's Darkest Quote Is Taken From a Real-Life Interview

Part of what makes Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer so enthralling is the fact that the film doesn't stop at depicting the trials of developing the world's first atomic bomb. Embracing the life of its subject by dramatizing the pitfalls of Oppenheimer's early career in academics and delving into the controversy of his public life in the years following World War II, Oppenheimer is at its most compelling when its fictional representation of events intersects with broader fears still plaguing modern society. As a world still living under the shadow of the godlike power Oppenheimer unleashed back in the 1940s, Nolan's Oppenheimer can't help but cling to its own prophetic relevance, with one of the film's most subtle real-world connections being that Murphy's haunting quote is actually taken from an interview given by J. Robert Oppenheimer himself.

While Nolan effectively chose to interpose these words over the movie's first atomic test to underscore the cause of Oppenheimer's deathly status, the real Oppenheimer delivered this quote during a 1965 interview with NBC on the decision to drop the bombs on Japan. Reflecting on the moment when the bomb first went off, Oppenheimer recounts the mixed reactions to the test among his peers, with his crackly, reserved voice describing the laughter and crying that ensued following the explosion. Most of all, however, Oppenheimer recalls that many responded to the world-changing experiment with the same dramatic silence depicted in Nolan's Oppenheimer. He follows this revelation with his now infamous quote, revealing his belief that everyone felt the enormity of the power they had just unlocked in their own personal way.

Oppenheimer's Quote Is Inspired by Hindu Scripture

While Oppenheimer's delivery of these words references the discovery that first introduced the ability to threaten all of humanity, the main focus of NBC's inquiry actually revolved around the broader implications of the Trinity Test, which is what the first true atomic bomb explosion conducted in New Mexico's Los Alamos would come to be called. The NBC documentary which features Oppenheimer's spine-tingling monologue even includes the physicist who directed the initial test, Kenneth Bainbridge, underscoring how archival coverage of Oppenheimer's work is frequently grounded from a present perspective. Yet, while NBC's interview and Nolan's Oppenheimer do more than most to root Oppenheimer's words in a modern context, the physicist's infamous utterance couldn't be more ancient, as the quote often wrongfully attributed to him is actually a quote itself taken from an important piece of Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita.

A source as spiritual as it is religious, the Bhagavad Gita is a section of a longer poetic work in Sanskrit, the Mahabharata, and similar to Plato's Republic in that the work is composed as a dialogue between two main characters: Prince Arjun and Krishna. In the story, Krishna is an avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu who serves as Arjun's charioteer, and the physicist's fascination with the text demonstrates the influence of Hindu philosophy on Oppenheimer's life. Not only did Oppenheimer study Sanskrit at the University of California, Berkeley, but he also references the 700-verse poem during his most intimate moments. Aside from his quote to NBC, Oppenheimer recited a stanza of the Bhagavad Gita two days before the Trinity Test, and he's shown reading the text in Nolan's movie after being intimate with Florence Pugh's Jean Tatlock, underscoring the personal solace that Hindu scripture granted Oppenheimer during his most confidential challenges.

The 'Bhagavad Gita' Relates Directly to the Dark Themes of 'Oppenheimer'

Aside from feeding his love for eastern philosophy and mysticism, however, the work from which Oppenheimer derived his infamous quote also depicts the conflict at the center of the physicist's controversial life. The quote itself originates from the moment when Arjun, who is hesitant to go to war against an army of his friends and relatives, is exposed to Krishna's true form. This revelation is meant to advise Arjun in his moment of doubt, providing him with a moment of sublime spiritual guidance to resolve his misgivings, but Vishnu's true incarnation is also terrifying. The divine being transcends disbelief, appearing with multiple mouths and eyes in a bright flash that reminds Oppenheimer of the explosion at Trinity, but Oppenheimer's relationship to the Bhagavad Gita is strengthened further by the fact that the story also depicts his inner conflict between conscience and duty.

Like Prince Arjun, both Nolan's Oppenheimer and the real physicist experience serious reservations about using their power to wage a brutal campaign against humankind. In Oppenheimer's case, these reservations stem as much from the physicist questioning his ability to build the bomb in the first place as they revolve around his bomb's potential use, but in each story, these characters' doubts are answered by a revelation of the true divine. Oppenheimer's ability to conjure the same earth-shaking display of divinity as Vishnu props him up as a figurative god of death in his own eyes, while Vishnu's appeal to Arjun's sense of duty as a warrior ultimately convinces the prince to commit to his painful battles to come. Unlike Arjun, however, Oppenheimer isn't able to fully reconcile his loyalty to the United States with the toll his creation takes on human life, with the guilt of his atomic bomb ultimately demonstrating how Oppenheimer's conscience never recovered from its sense of patriotic duty.

Just two years after the Trinity Test and the subsequent destruction of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Oppenheimer insisted that the physicists of Los Alamos could never forget their sins. As Jason Clarke's Roger Robb demonstrates when Cillian Murphy's Oppenheimer reports to the Gray Board later in Nolan's film, the question of whether or not Oppenheimer should have committed to this holy war would follow the scientist for the rest of his life. Far from a flourish added to the Trinity Test for dramatic effect in Oppenheimer, the physicist's iconic quote goes beyond a real-life Easter egg or hidden literary reference. The story of the Bhagavad Gita relates directly to the personal turmoil experienced by Oppenheimer at one of the most crucial crossroads in human history, underscoring the internal conflict of a complicated man and a divine power that could very well still destroy the world.

Oppenheimer is available to watch on Prime Video in the U.S.

WATCH ON PRIME VIDEO