Florence Pugh’s nude scene in Oppenheimer has been censored in some Asian and Middle Eastern countries.
In the unedited version of the film, the actor, who plays psychiatrist Jean Tatlock in the biopic, appears topless in scenes with Cillian Murphy, who stars as physicist and ‘father of the atomic bomb’ J. Robert Oppenheimer.
In countries including India, Pakistan and Dubai, however, Florence’s body has reportedly been covered up with a computer generated black dress.
A photo showing Flo sitting in an armchair ‘wearing’ the CGI garment has also been shared on Twitter, where cinemagoers also said they had seen a censored version of Christopher Nolan’s biopic.
Variety reported that sources close to the film suggested the scenes were censored to secure a release in countries such as India and the Middle East, which have rules regarding nudity, sex or swearing on screen.
The intimate scenes in Oppenheimer have also been a source of controversy among Hindu right-wing groups in India for a very different reason.
In one such scene, Oppenheimer (Murphy) reads a line from the Bhagavad Gita, the Hindu sacred text, quoting: “I am become Death, destroyer of worlds.” It’s a phrase which the real Oppenheimer, who studied Sanskrit, recalled after the first atomic bomb was detonated.
Uday Mahurkar, India’s information commissioner and a member of the governing Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, claimed that the scene is “a direct assault” on “a billion tolerant Hindus” and suggested that it “amounts to waging war on the Hindu community”.
He went on to urge the director to “remove this scene from your film across [the] world”.
Oppenheimer currently holds a U/A rating in India, which means that it contains moderate adult themes but can still be watched by children under 12, as long as they are accompanied by parents.
It’s the first time that one of Nolan’s movies has included sex scenes, and the director recently explained about his decision to feature these intimate moments in the biopic, describing them as “essential” in understanding Oppenheimer’s life.
“His very intense relationship with Jean Tatlock [...] is one of the most important things in his life,” he told Insider. “But not least for the fact that Jean Tatlock was very explicitly a Communist and his obsession with her therefore had enormous ramifications for his later life and his ultimate fate.”
“It felt very important to understand their relationship and to really see inside it and understand what made it tick without being coy or allusive about it, but to try to be intimate, to try and be in there with him and fully understand the relationship that was so important to him.”
Oppenheimer is in cinemas now.