Christopher Nolan’s latest blockbuster movie “Oppenheimer” has sparked controversy among the Hindu right in India, with some calling for a boycott and demanding the removal of a sex scene in which the titular character utters a famous line from the religion’s holy scripture.
The film tells the story of the atomic bomb through the lens of its creator, Robert Oppenheimer, and the scene in question depicts actor Cillian Murphy, who plays the lead role, having sex with Florence Pugh, who plays his lover Jean Tatlock. Pugh stops during intercourse and picks up a copy of the Bhagavad Gita, one of Hinduism’s holiest scriptures, and asks Murphy to read from it. “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” Oppenheimer’s character says, as they resume intercourse.
The scene has been branded a “scathing attack on Hinduism”.
Nationalist group Save Culture Save India (SCSI) Foundation said the scene should be “investigated on an urgent basis” and called for those involved to be “severely punished”. Fury on social media erupted after SCSI founder, Uday Mahurkar, wrote an open letter complaining to the film’s director, Christopher Nolan. The letter, entitled “Oppenheimer’s disturbing attack on Hinduism”, said: “We do not know the motivation and logic behind this unnecessary scene on the life of a scientist. “But this is a direct assault on the 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.”
Mr. Mahurkar described the Bhagavad Gita as “one of the most revered scriptures of Hinduism” which has inspired thousands of people to “live a life of self-control and perform selfless noble deeds”.
He called on Nolan to axe the controversial scene, telling him: “We urge, on behalf of billions of Hindus and timeless tradition of lives being transformed by revered Gita, to do all that is necessary to uphold the dignity of their revered book and remove this scene from your film across the world.” And he warned: “Should you choose to ignore this appeal it would be deemed as a deliberate assault on Indian civilization.”
The film stars Murphy as Oppenheimer, who oversaw the creation of the atomic bomb during the Second World War. It has grossed around 600m rupees (almost £5.71m) since opening in India on Friday, according to Warner Bros Discovery. In the UK, Vue said it had the biggest weekend for cinema ticket sales in four years following the release of Oppenheimer and the Barbie film.
Ahead of Oppenheimer’s release, Nolan told a News agency the film was “just a very, very dramatic story about how our world changed forever” and warned – “the danger never goes away”.
Union Minister of Information and Broadcasting Anurag Thakur has sought an explanation from the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) over an “objectionable” scene in the film Oppenheimer that was released in India last Thursday.
The intimate scene was censored by the film’s Indian distributor to blur the cover page of the Bhagavad Gita, and shots featuring nudity were blurred or zoomed in. The pre-emptive censorship notwithstanding, the intimate scene features J. Robert Oppenheimer, who oversaw the invention of the atom bomb, reading aloud from the book in bed.
(With inputs from agen
