Oppenheimer's Grandson Reveals He Dislikes A Scene From Christopher Nolan's Movie, Says There Is ‘No Record’ Of It

Charles Oppenheimer recently addressed a scene from Christopher Nolan's film when asked if he thought any portion of the movie was "inaccurate."

New Delhi: The biopic 'Oppenheimer', directed by Christopher Nolan, may be dominating the box office, but it has a few flaws in terms of many of its historical accuracy. Along with the incorrect depiction of the American flag, the movie's scene in which the physicist is seen reading passages from what is supposedly the Bhagavad Gita during an intimate moment has drawn criticism. 

Now, Charles Oppenheimer, J. Robert Oppenheimer's grandson, recently addressed a scene from Christopher Nolan's film when asked if he thought any portion of the movie was "inaccurate."

In a TIME interview, Charles mentioned that the "poison apple reference" was part of the movie that he liked the least. He said that was an issue in American Prometheus and that he would have absolutely cut that scene out. In the scene in question, Cillian Murphy's teenage Robert Oppenheimer injects potassium cyanide into a green apple. Then he hands it off to Patrick Blackett, his professor. After some time, Oppenheimer changes his mind and throws away the fruit before Niels Bohr can take a bite.

"There are parts that I disagree with, but not really because of (Christopher) Nolan. 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 told TIME.

"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. 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 rumour that we want to put in our book to make it interesting. But I like some of the dramatizations. I thought Einstein's conversation with Oppenheimer at the end was really effective even though it wasn't historical," he added. 

The movie 'Oppenheimer' by Nolan is based on Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin's 2006 biography of the theoretical physicist, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, which won the Pulitzer Prize.