Hullabaloo: Saturday Night at the Movies by Dennis Hartley --- Destroyer of worlds: Top 15 Nuke Films

At the beginning of this year I was ensconced in knee surgery recovery, so I completely missed the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists January 22 news release announcing that the hands on the Doomsday Clock had now been moved to 3 minutes to midnight (I’ll lay odds the story received little to no media coverage anyway, because it held nowhere near the import regarding future generations as that national nightmare we called Deflategate).

Today, unchecked climate change and a nuclear arms race resulting from modernization of huge arsenals pose extraordinary and undeniable threats to the continued existence of humanity. And world leaders have failed to act with the speed or on the scale required to protect citizens from potential catastrophe. These failures of leadership endanger every person on Earth.

In just over a week from now, we will mark the 70th anniversary of mankind’s entry into that “different country”. So what have we learned since 8:15am, August 6, 1945-if anything? Well, we’ve tried to harness the power of the atom for “good”, however, as has been demonstrated repeatedly, that’s not working out so well (Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima, et al) Also, there are enough stockpiled weapons of mass destruction to knock Planet Earth off its axis, and we have no guarantees that some nut job, whether enabled by the powers vested in him by the state, or the voices in his head (doesn’t really matter-end result’s the same) won’t be in a position at some point in the future to let one or two or a hundred of ‘em rip. Hopefully, cool heads and diplomacy (as most recently demonstrated by the Iran nuclear deal) will continue to keep us all rad-free.

Given that nukes are sexy again (at least for the next week or two) I am sharing my picks for the top 15 nuke films you should watch before…we all go together (when we go). Why 15, instead of the usual 10? Long-time readers may be aware that I have published several nuke-themed posts in the past; however this is my “ultimate” list, revised and culled from all previous. In a way, it’s “new”. Clear? As per usual, in alphabetical order:

The Atomic Cafe -Whoopee we’re all gonna die! But along the way, we might as well have a few laughs. That seems to be the impetus behind this 1982 collection of cleverly reassembled footage culled from U.S. government propaganda shorts from the Cold War era (Mk 1), originally designed to educate the public about how to “survive” a nuclear attack (all you need to do is get under a desk…everyone knows that!). In addition to the Civil Defense campaigns (which include the classic “duck and cover” tutorials) the filmmakers have also drawn from a rich vein of military training films, which reduce the possible effects of a nuclear strike to something akin to a barrage from, oh I don’t know- a really big field howitzer. Harrowing, yet perversely entertaining. Written and directed by Jayne Loader, Pierce Rafferty and Kevin Rafferty (Kevin went on to co-direct the similarly constructed 1999 doc, The Last Cigarette, a takedown of the tobacco industry).

Black Rain-For obvious reasons, there have been a fair amount of postwar Japanese films dealing with the subject of nuclear destruction and its aftermath. Some take an oblique approach, like Gojira or Kurosawa’s I Live in Fear (see my reviews below). Others deal directly with survivors (referred to in Japan as hibakusha films). One of the top entries in the latter genre is this overlooked 1989 drama from Shomei Imamura (The Ballad of Narayama, Vengeance is Mine) which tells a relatively simple story of three Hiroshima survivors: an elderly couple and their niece, whose scars run much deeper than the physical. The narrative is sparse, yet contains more layers than an onion (especially when one takes the deep complexities of Japanese society under consideration). Interestingly, Imamura injects a polemic which points an accusatory finger in an unexpected direction.

China Syndrome– Well directed by James Bridges (who co-scripted with Mike Gray and T.S. Cook), this nail-biting thriller centers on an ambitious reporter (Jane Fonda) who ends up in the “wrong place at the right time” while conducting a routine interview at a nuclear power plant. Her cameraman (Michael Douglas, who produced) captures (at first accidently, then surreptitiously) potentially damning footage of what appears to be a serious radioactive containment issue and subsequent scramble by officials to cover it up. To their dismay, Fonda and Douglas discover that getting the truth out to the public might require them to make loathsome moral compromises, not only with plant officials, but with the brass back at the television station. Jack Lemmon gives a heartbreaking performance as a conflicted man desperately wrestling with his conscience. The film is a dire warning about the inherent dangers of nuclear energy, and of a too-compliant media.

The Day After Trinity-This thoughtful and absorbing film about the Manhattan Project and its subsequent fallout (literal, historical, political and philosophical) is one of the best documentaries I have ever seen, period. At its center, it is a profile of project leader J. Robert Oppenheimer, whose moment of professional triumph (the successful test of the world’s first atomic bomb, just three weeks before one was dropped on Hiroshima) also brought him an unnerving precognition about the destructive horror he and his fellow physicists had enabled the military machine to unleash. Oppenheimer’s journey from “father of the atomic bomb” to anti-nuke activist (and having his life destroyed by the post-war Red hysteria) is a twisted and tragic tale of Shakespearean proportions. Two recommended companion pieces: Roland Joffe’s 1989 drama Fat Man And Little Boy, which focuses on the working relationship between Oppenheimer (Dwight Schultz) and the military director of the Manhattan Project, General Leslie Groves (Paul Newman); and an outstanding 1980 BBC miniseries called Oppenheimer (starring Sam Waterston).

Desert Bloom-Although his off-screen political 360 in recent years may have obfuscated this fact for some of us lib’ruls, Jon Voight remains one of America’s greatest actors-take a gander at this overlooked gem from 1986. Voight is an embittered, paranoid, alcoholic WW2 vet, who runs a “last chance” gas station on the outskirts of Las Vegas in the early 1950s. He makes life nerve-wracking for his long-suffering wife (JoBeth Williams) and three daughters. On a “good” day, Dad is an engaging, loving and even erudite fellow. But there are more “bad” days than good, and that’s when Mr. Hyde comes to visit. This is particularly stressful to his eldest daughter (Annabeth Gish, in an impressive film debut). When a free-spirited aunt (Ellen Barkin) comes to visit, she sets off the emotional time bomb that has been ticking within this dysfunctional family for a long while. Director Eugene Corr and screenwriter Linda Remy draw insightful parallels between the fear and uncertainty of nuclear threat (the story is set on the eve of a desert bomb test), and the fear and uncertainty of growing up with an alcoholic parent. This is a unique, powerful and touching coming-of-age tale, beautifully made and splendidly acted by all.

Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb-“Mein fuehrer! I can walk!” Although we have yet (knock on wood) to experience the global thermonuclear annihilation that ensues following the wheelchair-bound Dr. Strangelove’s joyous (if short-lived) epiphany, so many other depictions in Stanley Kubrick’s seriocomic masterpiece about the tendency for men in power to eventually rise to their own level of incompetence have since come to pass, that you wonder why the filmmakers even bothered to make all this shit up. In case you are one of the three people reading this who have never seen the film, it’s about an American military base commander who goes a little funny in the head (you know…”funny”) and sort of launches a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. Hilarity (and oblivion) ensues. You rarely see a cast like this: Peter Sellers (playing three characters), George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Slim Pickens, Keenan Wynn, James Earl Jones and Peter Bull (who can be seen breaking character as the Russian ambassador and cracking up as Strangelove’s prosthetic arm seems to take on a mind of its own). There are so many great lines, that you might as well bracket the screenplay (by Kubrick, Terry Southern and Peter George) with quotation marks. BTW, if you are a fan of this film, check out HBO’s new series, The Brink; while initially a bit clunky (and distractingly derivative), it’s really begun to find its rhythm as of episode 4.

Fail-Safe– Dr. Strangelove…without the laughs. This no-nonsense 1964 thriller from the late great director Sidney Lumet takes a more clinical look at how a wild card scenario (in this case, a simple hardware malfunction) could ultimately trigger a nuclear showdown between the Americans and the Russians. Talky and a bit stagey; but riveting nonetheless thanks to Lumet’s skillful pacing (and trademark knack for bringing out the best in his actors), Walter Bernstein’s intelligent screenplay (with uncredited assistance from Peter George, who also co-scripted Dr. Strangelove) and a superb cast that includes Henry Fonda (a commanding performance, literally and figuratively), Walter Matthau, Fritz Weaver, and Larry Hagman. There’s no fighting in this war room (aside from one minor scuffle), but lots of suspense. The film’s final scene is chilling and unforgettable.

Gojira-It’s no secret that the “king of the monsters” was borne of fear; the fear of “the Bomb” as only the Japanese could have truly understood it back in 1954 (especially when one considers it was released only 9 years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki). It’s also important to distinguish between this original Japanese cut of the film, and the relatively butchered version released in the U.S. in 1956 as Godzilla , King of the Monsters. That is because the original Japanese cut not only has a more haunting and darkly atmospheric quality, but carries a strong anti-nuke message as well (it’s an American H-bomb test that awakens the long-slumbering beast from his deep-sea hibernation). The U.S. cut downplays this subtext (replacing cut footage with inserts featuring Raymond Burr). This is why American audiences remained largely oblivious to the fact that the film was inspired by a real-life 1954 incident involving a Japanese fishing vessel (“The Lucky Dragon”). The boat was in an alleged “safe zone” near one of the Bikini Atoll bomb tests conducted by the U.S. in March of that year. Many of the crew members received serious burns, and one of the injured eventually died of radiation sickness. This original 1954 Toho version is the first and the best of what was to ultimately become a silly franchise.

I Live in Fear -This 1955 Akira Kurosawa film was the great director’s follow-up to The Seven Samurai, and arguably one of his most overlooked efforts. It’s a melodrama concerning an aging foundry owner (Toshiro Mifune, disguised in theatrically exaggerated Coke-bottle glasses and silver-frosted crew cut) who literally “lives in fear” of the H-bomb, to the point of obsession. Convinced that the “safest” place on Earth from radioactive fallout is in South America, he tries to convince his wife and grown children to pull up stakes and resettle on a farm in Brazil. His children, who have families of their own and rely on their father’s factory for income, are not so hot on that idea. In fact, they take him to family court and have him declared incompetent. This sends Mifune’s character spiraling into madness. Or are his fears really so “crazy”? It is one of Mifune’s most powerful and moving performances. Kurosawa instills shades of Shakespeare’s “King Lear” into the narrative (a well he drew from again some 30 years later, in Ran).

Miracle Mile Depending on your worldview, this is either an “end of the world” film for romantics, or the perfect date movie for fatalists. Anthony Edwards and Mare Winningham give winning performances as a musician and a waitress who Meet Cute at L.A.’s La Brea Tar Pits museum. But before they can hook up for their first date, Edwards stumbles onto a fairly reliable tip that L.A. is about to get hosed…in a major way. The resulting “countdown” scenario is a genuine, edge-of-your seat nail-biter. In fact, this modestly budgeted, 90-minute sleeper offers more heart-pounding excitement (and much more believable characters) than any bloated Hollywood disaster epic from the likes of a Michael Bay or a Roland Emmerich. Writer-director Steve De Jarnatt stopped doing feature films after this 1988 gem (his only other credit is Cherry 2000).

No Nukes -This 1980 documentary was compiled with highlights from a five-night Madison Square Garden concert series and one-off Battery Park rally organized the previous year by Musicians United for Safe Energy (“MUSE”), a collective of activists and Woodstock generation music icons aiming to raise awareness of non-nuclear energy alternatives in the wake of the Three-Mile Island plant incident. It’s a real 1970s “soft rock” time capsule: Jackson Browne, The Doobie Brothers, Bonnie Raitt, James Taylor, Carly Simon, and Crosby, Stills, & Nash are all here in their glory. They’re all in fine form, but the “California mellow” contingent is roundly blown off the screen by a rousing and cacophonous 20-minute finale courtesy of Bruce Springsteen and his E Street Band-at the peak of their powers. It’s not the most dynamically produced concert film (don’t expect the cinematic artistry of, say, The Last Waltz), but the performances are heartfelt, and the message is a positive call to action that is more timely now than ever.

Silkwood-The tagline for this 1983 film was intriguing: “On November 13th, 1974, Karen Silkwood, an employee of a nuclear facility, left to meet with a reporter from The New York Times. She never got there.” One might expect a riveting conspiracy thriller to ensue; however what director Mike Nichols and screenwriters Nora Ephron and Alice Arden do deliver is an absorbing character study of an ordinary working-class woman who performed an act of extraordinary courage which may (or may not) have led to her untimely demise. Meryl Streep gives a typically immersive portrayal of Silkwood, who worked as a chemical tech at an Oklahoma facility that manufactured plutonium pellets for nuclear reactor fuel rods. On behalf of her union (and based on her own observations) Silkwood testified before the AEC in 1974 about ongoing health and safety concerns at her plant. Shortly afterwards, she tested positive for an unusually high level of plutonium contamination. Silkwood alleged malicious payback from her employers, while they countered that she had engineered the scenario herself. Later that year, on the last night of her life, she was in fact on her way to meeting with a Times reporter, armed with documentation to back her claims, when she was killed after her car ran off the road. Nichols stays neutral on the conspiratorial whisperings; but still delivers the goods here, thanks in no small part to his great cast, including Kurt Russell (as Silkwood’s husband), and Cher (garnering critical raves and a Golden Globe for her supporting performance).

Testament- Originally an American Playhouse presentation, this film was released to theatres and garnered a well-deserved Best Actress nomination for Jane Alexander (she lost to Shirley MacLaine). Director Lynne Littman takes a low key, deliberately paced approach, but pulls no punches. Alexander, her husband (William DeVane) and three kids live in sleepy Hamlin, California, where the afternoon cartoons are interrupted by a news flash that a number of nuclear explosions have occurred in New York. Then there is a flash of a whole different kind when nearby San Francisco (where DeVane has gone on a business trip) receives a direct strike. There is no exposition on the political climate that precipitates the attacks; a wise decision by the filmmakers because it helps us zero in on the essential humanistic message of the film. All of the post-nuke horrors ensue, but they are presented sans the histrionics and melodrama that informs many entries in the genre. The fact that the nightmarish scenario unfolds so deliberately, and amidst such everyday suburban banality, is what makes it all so believably horrifying and difficult to shake off. As the children (and adults) of Hamlin succumb to the inevitable scourge of radiation sickness and steadily “disappear”, like the children of the ‘fairy tale’ Hamlin, you are left haunted by the final line of the school production of “The Pied Piper” glimpsed earlier in the film…“Your children are not dead. They will return when the world deserves them.”

Thirteen Days-I will confess that I had a block against watching this film about the 1962 Cuban missile crisis for years (it was released in 2000), for several reasons. For one, director Roger Donaldson’s uneven output (for every Smash Palace or No Way Out, he’s got a Species or a Cocktail to kill the buzz). I also couldn’t get past “Kevin Costner? In another movie about JFK?!” Finally, I felt that the outstanding 1974 made-for-TV film, The Missiles of October would be hard to top. But to my surprise-I found this to be one of Donaldson’s better films. Bruce Greenwood and Steven Culp make a very credible JFK and RFK, respectively. The film works as an exciting political thriller, yet it is also intimate and very moving at times (especially in the Oval Office scenes between the brothers). Costner provides the “fly on the wall” perspective as Kennedy insider Kenny O’Donnell. Costner gives a compassionate performance; on the downside he proves once again that he has a tin ear for regional dialects (that Hahvad Yahd brogue comes and goes of its own free will). According to a tidbit of trivia posted on the Internet Movie Database, this was the first film to be screened at the White House by George and Laura Bush in 2001. Knowing this now…I don’t know whether to laugh or cry myself to sleep.

Threads- Out of all of the selections on my list, this is arguably the grimmest and most sobering “nuclear nightmare” film of them all. Originally produced for British television in 1984, it aired that same year here in the states on TBS (say what you will about Ted Turner-but I always admired him for being the only American TV exec with the balls to air it). Mick Jackson directs with an uncompromising sense of docu-realism that makes The Day After (the similarly-themed U.S. television film from the previous year) look like a Teletubbies episode. The story takes a run-of-the-mill, medium sized city (Sheffield, England) and shows what would happen to its populace during and after a nuclear strike…in graphic detail. The filmmakers make it very clear that, while this is a dramatization, it is not designed to “entertain” you in any sense of the word. Let me put it this way-don’t get too attached to any of the main characters. The message is simple and direct-nothing good comes out of a nuclear conflict. It’s a living, breathing Hell for all concerned-and anyone “lucky” enough to survive will soon wish they were fucking dead.