Cillian Murphy's J. Robert Oppenheimer Had A Tragic End In Real Life
Though J. Robert Oppenheimer is a figure who has been relegated to the pages of history in more modern times, Christopher Nolan's biopic on the influential physicist has made the scientist (played by Cillian Murphy) who helped build the atomic bomb into a household name once again, coming off the back of a nearly $1 billion box office take as of press time.
Of course, there's an irony there, as the famed theoretical physicist was once well-known enough to grace the cover of Time Magazine, as did his antagonist in "Oppenheimer," Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.). Furthermore, while the movie does dig into the sadness and tragedy that defined much of the titular scientist's life, it stops short of showing his final years.
As audiences who have watched "Oppenheimer" will likely have noted, the character is almost always seen with a cigarette in hand, even at the most pivotal moments of the development of the bombs. With this in mind, it probably won't surprise many viewers to learn that the physicist eventually died of throat cancer in 1967. A lifetime devotee of Princeton University, the historical figure passed away at his Princeton home at the age of 62 following unsuccessful treatments for his illness.
The later life of Oppenheimer was defined by tragedy
The pain and tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer's life, however, preceded his death by many years. A heavy focus of Christopher Nolan's film is the exhaustive Senate hearings that eventually sullied his good name in his home country. Isidor Isaac Rabi (David Krumholtz) was quoted on this very subject, saying, "He was a man of peace, and they destroyed him. He was a man of science, and they destroyed this man. A small, mean group."
While Oppenheimer had once been heralded as an American hero, speaking out against the development of the hydrogen bomb made him many enemies, and, as a result, he was the subject of the aforementioned Senate hearings. Of course, it wasn't this that is seen haunting him at the end of Nolan's film, but his own work and what he had unleashed from the Pandora's Box of theoretical physics.
The debates about Oppenheimer still rage to this day as a result. While some see the scientist's invention as a necessary force that was needed to end the WW2 conflict with Japan as peacefully as possible, others suggest that he was the architect of the destruction of the human race. The latter feeling is coldly summed up in one of his most famous quotes, which comes from the Bhagavad Gita: "Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds."
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