THE WAR GAME (1965)

Country: U.K.

Genre(s): Documentary / Science Fiction / War

Director: Peter Watkins

Cast: Michael Aspel / Peter Graham

Plot

Following a Soviet nuclear attack, England deals with death, devastation, chaos, and disease.

What I Liked

A hard to categorize film chronicling the results of an imagined nuclear war based on scientific facts and conjecture, “The War Game” does not follow standard dramatic structure but instead presents itself as something between either a school documentary or a television report.  There’s not much to enjoy about this movie, but of course that’s not the point.  Made at the height of the cold war, this is both a warning of the destructive power mankind has unleashed upon itself and an expose of just how poorly prepared the British were for such an event, should it happen.

There is running commentary throughout the film’s length, part of it giving true facts about international politics, the dangers of nuclear war, and the British disaster plan in place for possible nuclear war.  The other part concerns description of the fictional events acted out before the camera, a supposition of exactly how the horrors would unfold.  There are also interviews with the English public, some apparently real and others staged.  The obvious intention of acting out all the trauma of a potential nuclear attack is to bring the threat to life for the British people, have them witness the piles of bodies, the break-down of government, the onset of disease, and the destructive firestorms in their own cities.  Many of the sights remain teeth-grittingly disturbing today, particularly those portraying the deformed, maimed, or psychologically traumatized survivors.

What I Disliked

While the scenes chronicling the post-attack events are indeed chilling, from what I’ve read on the bombs that went off in Hiroshima, they still do not account for the true gore and annihilation of nuclear attack with sufficient visual accuracy.  Still, these are better done than the rather hokey depiction of what happens during the blast itself.  While the commentating accurately describes what would happen, the scenes on screen are obviously staged and the special effects unconvincing.  They make the blast seem more like a very bright flash followed by a mediocre earth quake.  One scene has a family hiding under a small table in their kitchen while the house shakes and a tea cup falls to the floor and shatters.  It doesn’t exactly drive the truth home with the same level of intensity as the later scenes concerning the aftermath.

Most Memorable Scene

Toward the close of the film, we see homeless survivors huddled together in a mass, many of them with scarred and burned faces, still others with mangled or disfigured limbs.  All appear without hope, love, or faith.  They are clearly starving, thirsty, sick, and in some cases on death’s doorstep.  They look into the camera accusingly, staring back through the TV screen at the viewers who have the opportunity to avoid such a catastrophe.  This is the most moving part of the film, the human cost.  For, as the film points out earlier, quoting Nikita Khruschev without giving him credit, “The survivors would envy the dead.”

My Rating: 3 out of 5