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Albert Einstein's role in 'Oppenheimer' movie

Einstein appears throughout Oppenheimer, and while the few scenes might add up to a sliver of the film's three hours, they're incredibly profound in terms of the film's bigger picture.

In these scenes, Einstein (played by Tom Conti) acts as a sort of mentor or confidant to Oppenheimer (played by Cillian Murphy). Like the film, Einstein and Oppenheimer were in fact colleagues and friends in real life.

Oppenheimer pulls a piece of paper from his pocket. Einstein takes it.

Einstein: Whose work is this?

Oppenheimer: Teller's.

Einstein: And what do you take it to mean?

Oppenheimer: Neutron smashes into nucleus releasing neutrons to smash into other nuclei. Critically, the point of no return, massive explosive force, but the chain reaction doesn't stop.

Einstein: It would ignite the atmosphere.

Oppenheimer: When we detonate an atomic device, we might start a chain reaction that destroys the world.

Einstein: And here we are, lost in your quantum world of probabilities, but needing certainty.

Oppenheimer: Can you run the calculations yourself?

Einstein: About the only thing you and I share is a disdain for mathematics. Who's working on it at Berkeley?

Oppenheimer: Hans Bethe.

Einstein: He'll get to the truth.

Oppenheimer: And if the truth is catastrophic?

Einstein: Then you stop.

What did Einstein say to Oppenheimer at the end of the movie?

In the film's closing moments, we see that Oppenheimer and Einstein were having an exchange about the bomb's impact on the world. Note that this conversation is occurring in 1947, just two years after the Trinity blast and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, events which had turned Oppenheimer into one of the most important men of his time.

Oppenheimer: Albert. When I came to you with those calculations. We were worried that we'd start a chain reaction that would destroy the entire world.

Einstein: I remember it well. What of it?

Oppenheimer: I believe we did.

The words linger in the air and Einstein turns away with nothing to say in response, the darkness consuming his face at the inescapable truth of what he just heard.

What Oppenheimer means by his comment to Einstein and his subsequent fantasy of a nuclear holocaust is that although they might not have scientifically created such a catastrophic 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 can save him from this inner torment, that he really has «Become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds».

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