The Big Picture
- Despite her limited screen time, Emily Blunt’s Kitty Oppenheimer is a tremendously important figure in Oppenheimer’s life, providing him support and much-needed reality checks.
- Kitty’s character represents the limited opportunities afforded to women in that time period, highlighting the struggles she faced with domestic work and isolation.
- Emily Blunt’s standout performance captures the essence of Kitty, delivering impactful lines that reframe Oppenheimer’s actions and confront his martyr complex.
Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, which tells the story of the titular “father of the atomic bomb” J Robert Oppenheimer, is a three-hour epic populated by a dozen characters whose lives warrant a film of their own. We’re only given minor glimpses of physicists like Niels Bohr (Kenneth Branagh) and Richard Feynman (Jack Quaid), and two of the major women in Oppenheimer’s life, Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh) and Katherine “Kitty” Oppenheimer (Emily Blunt). Despite her limited screen time, Kitty was a tremendously important figure in Oppenheimer’s life, and in a film with many exceptional performances, Blunt’s is a definite highlight, getting the chance to deliver some of Oppenheimer’s most hard-hitting lines.
Who Is Kitty Oppenheimer?
Born in Germany but raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Kitty Puening studied at several universities throughout her life but ultimately graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in botany. She married three times before she met Oppenheimer, her fourth and final husband. While Kitty was in the midst of pursuing graduate studies at UCLA, she met Oppenheimer at a garden party in Pasadena. Still married to her previous husband Richard Harrison, she and Oppenheimer began dating just months after they first met, and Kitty eventually divorced Harrison once she became pregnant with her and Oppenheimer’s first child.
Kitty first joined the Communist Party during her common-law marriage to communist organizer Joe Dallet, who later died fighting in the Spanish Civil War. She even planned to join him but received the news that he had been killed before she ever left for Europe. Her relationship with Oppenheimer overlapped with his on-again off-again affair with Jean Tatlock, a member of the Communist Party USA, who plays a small yet significant role in Nolan’s film. Kitty’s previous affiliations with communism would later put her under scrutiny during Oppenheimer’s security hearing by the United States Atomic Energy Commission, as he too had a history with communism via his relationship to Tatlock.
Why Kitty’s Story Matters in ‘Oppenheimer’
Nolan has often faced criticisms over the lack of nuanced female characters in his films, who are often confined to gendered tropes, and in some ways, Oppenheimer is a step in the right direction. Though Jean Tatlock’s role is largely reduced to one of a mysterious temptress whose political affiliations and untimely death haunted Oppenheimer for the rest of his life, Kitty has a different fate. She was one of the most important relationships in Oppenheimer’s life, supporting him and providing some much-needed reality checks, a representation of the maxim “behind every great man is a great woman.” This adage is particularly true to the time period, when women, even highly educated ones like Kitty, were afforded very limited opportunities outside domestic work.
Kitty even briefly worked as a lab technician at Los Alamos, but the film focuses on her unhappiness with being largely stuck at home doing housework and raising their two children, using alcohol to cope. In an interview with MSNBC, Blunt expressed her empathy for Kitty’s plight, saying, “There were many women who sort of went to waste at the ironing board back then, and I think she was meant for greater things and I think drove herself insane in that isolation and loneliness of living in Los Alamos with nothing else to do but to drink and have children.”
It’s true that Kitty’s character isn’t given the depth she deserves, but in a film that’s so densely populated with characters based on real historical figures with equally interesting lives, it would be impossible to dig into all of them without completely losing focus. For much of the film, Kitty remains quite literally at the periphery, sitting stoically in the background as Oppenheimer is questioned by the United States Atomic Energy Commission, but when it’s finally her turn in the hot seat, she doesn’t back down. Despite her interrogators believing they could intimidate or outsmart her, Kitty is purposeful in her answers, and nothing seems to shake her, providing one of the most captivating scenes in the film.
Emily Blunt’s Performance as Kitty Is a Standout in ‘Oppenheimer’
Oppenheimer is chock-full of impressive performances across the board, like Cillian Murphy‘s haunting portrayal of the troubled physicist which acts as the film’s driving force, Robert Downey Jr‘s riveting turn as Lewis Strauss, and Matt Damon as General Leslie Groves, who brings rare but effective moments of levity to such a somber film. In a huge ensemble cast of heavy hitters like the aforementioned stars and an abundance of talented supporting actors, Blunt’s performance still manages to stand out. She also gets to deliver two of the most impactful lines of the film, both of which help reframe Oppenheimer’s actions and internal conflicts. As Oppenheimer shuts down after learning of Jean’s death, Kitty, who already knew of their affair, reminds him of the turmoil he himself brought to Jean’s life, telling him, “You don’t get to commit sin, and then ask all of us to feel sorry for you when there are consequences.”
Nolan presents Oppenheimer‘s thesis from the get-go, opening with the striking quote, “Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to man. For this, he was chained to a rock and tortured for eternity.” Oppenheimer is consistently haunted by the catastrophic consequences his actions brought upon the world, shown visually through various hallucinations. During his security clearance hearing, he has to be prodded into answering questions and isn’t particularly forthcoming with his answers, in contrast to Kitty’s bluntness during her own hearing. The film itself doesn’t let Oppenheimer off the hook just because he’s plagued with guilt, and Kitty is quick to confront him about his martyr complex, saying “You think because you let them tar and feather you that the world will forgive you? They won’t.”
Kitty Oppenheimer’s character plays a small but meaningful role in one of Nolan’s most ambitious films, and Blunt deserves any accolades coming her way during awards season, but Kitty’s story could undoubtedly stand to be told on its own (as could Jean Tatlock’s, to be fair). She was a well-educated, well-traveled woman, perceived as unlikeable by many at Los Alamos, but with a story worth being told from her perspective, as she struggled with motherhood and alcoholism all while watching the Manhattan Project unfold from the sidelines.
