Oppenheimer ending explained: What did Oppenheimer say to Einstein?

Christopher Nolan’s film has gone down a storm at the box office – but what is the significance of its closing scenes?

By Patrick Cremona

2023-07-25 14:05:36

WARNING: This article contains major spoilers for Oppenheimer

The biggest box office battle of 2023 kicked off this weekend as Oppenheimer and Barbie landed in cinemas. 

While Barbie appears to have won the race, raking in $337m globally, Oppenheimer still amassed nearly $175 globally, shattering box office expectations. 

The film has also been met with rave reviews, with Nolan’s writing and directing coming in for particular acclaim, as well as Cillian Murphy’s central performance as J Robert Oppenheimer – the real-life American physicist who played a pivotal role in the creation of the atomic bomb.

Although different from the majority of Nolan’s filmography, in that it is a character study of a real historical figure, the film nonetheless features many of the popular director’s trademarks, not least his penchant for non-linear storytelling.

The film unfolds across various timelines, and that has left some cinema goers a little confused about the closing chapters of the film and their exact significance.

If you’re one of these viewers, read on to have the Oppenheimer ending explained.

Oppenheimer ending explained

"Robert
Robert Downey Jr is Lewis Strauss in Oppenheimer.

Although many cinema goers might have expected the film’s climactic moments to be the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, this is not the case.

Indeed the only – admittedly impressive – bomb scene in the film is a reenactment of the Trinity test, which comes roughly two-thirds into the film’s runtime before the final hour explores the repercussions, both for the world at large and more specifically for Oppenheimer’s psyche.

Much of that hour focuses on Oppenheimer’s inner torment as he reckons with the fact he is responsible for a bomb that not only killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, but that has now led to a nuclear arms race from which there is no turning back.

In one scene, he meets with US President Harry S Truman (Gary Oldman), who chastises him for feeling guilty about the bomb, explaining that he was the man that made the call rather than Oppenheimer, but this does little to make him feel better.

We also see him campaign against further nuclear proliferation, which was one of the key reasons behind the security hearings that form a bulk of the film’s narrative and was also one of the reasons for Lewis Strauss’ staunch opposition towards him.

Why did Strauss go after Oppenheimer?

Later, Strauss’ own motivations for wanting Oppenheimer’s clearance revoked are also made clear.

It emerges that he thought that Oppenheimer had badmouthed him to Einstein during a conversation that had been teased but left mysterious for much of the film.

"Albert
Albert Einstein, Oppenheimer.
Universal

What did Einstein say to Oppenheimer?

In the film’s closing moments, we learn that Oppenheimer and Einstein had not actually been discussing Strauss at all, but rather were having an exchange about the bomb’s impact on the world.

Specifically, Oppenheimer reminds Einstein that while the bomb was still being constructed, they had fears that it might accidentally set in motion a chain reaction that would destroy the entire universe. “What of it?” asks Einstein.

Oppenheimer’s answer is the final line of the film. “I believe we did,” he says, before we are shown a sequence depicting the world being destroyed by modern nuclear weapons.

What he means here is that although they might not have scientifically created such a chain reaction, the political ramifications of the bomb’s creation are so huge that he believes they started an inevitable journey towards nuclear holocaust and the end of the world.

Nothing – not even his eventual political rehabilitation later in his life – can save him from this inner torment, that he really has “Become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds”.

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Oppenheimer is in UK cinemas now. Check out more of our Film coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what’s on tonight.

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