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Before Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer was released, the Indian media was excitedly discussing how the film incorporates a quote from the Gita by the story's protagonist. The press happily reported that Cillian Murphy, who portrays the titular character, immersed himself in the Gita to prepare for the role. In one of the interviews, he was quoted as saying , "I did read the Bhagavad Gita in preparation, and I thought it was an absolutely beautiful text.

" But the excitement turned to outrage when Indian viewers found out that Nolan chose a sex scene for the hero to quote from the Gita . While it's well-documented that J Robert Oppenheimer was interested in the Gita to the extent that, according to his biographical accounts, he carried a copy of it to Los Alamos while supervising the test of the atomic bomb. He remembers quoting the Gita when he witnessed the explosion in a television interview broadcast much later.



He loved the Bhagavad Gita so much that in a letter to his brother, he wrote that it was "very easy and quite marvellous", and called it "the most beautiful philosophical song existing in any known tongue". However, the sex scene in which he reads from the Gita appears to be entirely fictional. It's Nolan, the writer, setting up the verse to pay off at the right moment.

Why did Nolan choose a sex scene to set up verses from the the Gita that Oppenheimer used to describe the atomic explosion? Only Nolan knows, but it's fascinating that he isn't the first American dir.

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