This Is an ‘Oppenheimer’ Twist I Wasn’t Expecting

Here I was, minding my own business, thinking that Oppenheimer was going to be a sexless adventure into the making of the atomic bomb, and then I saw the ratings for Christopher Nolan’s latest film. Rated R for some sexuality, nudity, and language, I found myself suddenly shocked with the knowledge that J. Robert Oppenheimer’s tale of being the destroyer of worlds was going to include nudity and sexuality.

I thought to myself, “How did this man possibly have enough sex that it made it into Christopher Nolan’s telling of his work?” And boy oh boy was it shocking to learn the kind of man that J. Robert Oppenheimer was. I, like many others online, saw the warning that there would be sex in Oppenheimer and instantly made jokes about J. Robert Oppenheimer sleeping with his bomb.

Really though, we all made the same joke.

Like … seriously.

You can’t blame us. What many of us know about Oppenheimer the man comes from Nolan’s own interest in him and his comments in films like Tenet, or reading his name in one line of a history book. So learning about him is kind of the draw of Oppenheimer as a film.

What I ended up learning about the theoretical physicist was that he lived a far from sexless existence. In fact, the minute I tweeted my shock, many pointed out that Oppenheimer himself famously had to answer for his mistress, and there’s a lot more to this story than just the physics of a bomb.

Time to learn a lot about the man J. Robert Oppenheimer was

Jean Tatlock was J. Robert Oppenheimer’s girlfriend prior to his marriage to his wife Katherine. Jean is important to the story of Oppenheimer because even though he had proposed to her twice, the two broke up—that and Jean was most definitely a communist, which is why Oppenheimer was in trouble and had to answer for his affair.

While recruiting David Hawkins at Berkeley, Oppenheimer met up with Tatlock. There, the two slept together before she took him to the airport, and they would not see each other again. Still, he slept with her, and it became a problem for him because she was considered to be a communist, which the government was very concerned about at the time.

This is where I am assuming the movie’s sex takes place—not on the actual bomb, but in Oppenheimer’s relationship with Tatlock. It does add a level to this story that I did not previously know and honestly? Okay, Bobby. I see you. Learning that that’s what’s being discussed in the black and white section of the trailers for Oppenheimer is fascinating.

(featured image: Universal Pictures)