In the aftermath of its atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the US government embarked on an outlandishly dishonest campaign to assuage public fears about a nuclear attack.
One nine-minute public-safety film shown to American schoolchildren featured a cartoon turtle named Bert promoting the duck-and-cover method – aka hiding under furniture – of protecting yourself from a blast.
“You know how bad sunburn can feel,” the voiceover says. “The atomic-bomb flash could burn you worse than a terrible sunburn, especially where you’re not covered.”
At 73, Kathryn Bigelow, the first woman to win the Oscar for best director, remembers those TV spots and drills at school.
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“I literally grew up hiding under school desks in case of an atomic-bomb blast,” she says. “That was the go-to protocol. Well, that’s not going to help you. But it was a conversation.
“All dialogue about nuclear weapons has really been nonexistent for years. We are in a situation where it has been normalised that nuclear weapons are out there. Yet we’re living in a house of dynamite. My question is, how do we get the dynamite out of the walls?”
A House of Dynamite, Bigelow’s new film, is a tense, high-stakes thriller that imagines the final 18 minutes before a nuclear missile strikes a big US city. The script, by Noah Oppenheim, a former head of NBC News, replays the scenario from multiple perspectives, including those of Jonah Hauer-King’s strategy aide, Tracy Letts’s hawkish general and Rebecca Ferguson’s military communications officer, before culminating with that of Idris Elba’s overwhelmed American president.
“The first conversation I had with Noah was a question: ‘What if something like this were to happen’?” Bigelow says. “He’s coming from journalism, and he’s very knowledgeable in this space. So he said, ‘Well, this and this and this.’
“But it’s only 18 minutes. A feature film is longer than that. And we thought, well, it’s interesting to break it down, a period of time where you’re really looking at the intersection of all the different strata of people that would have to be impacted in this situation ...
“You’ve got the missile defence,” Bigelow explains. “Then you’ve got the war room – a couple of war rooms. The White House. Then you’ve got Stratcom”, or strategic command, the part of the US military responsible for the country’s nuclear response.
“And all these people who have these jobs, they’re incredibly competent, yet they can’t avert it. And it’s the chaos and the helplessness and the confusion that I thought was important to present. This is, in my opinion, a very informative film. Yes, it’s fictional, but it’s handled in a documentary style.”
The only two viable responses to an incoming nuclear warhead are retaliation or interception – and the latter is, as one character puts it, like trying to stop a bullet with a bullet.
“That idea of trying to stop a bullet, to me, was terrifying,” Elba says. “It made me realise how impossible it is to stop a nuclear warhead. But our governments tend to create and promote an illusion of safety.
“There’s a line in the movie about the interception: ‘$50 billion. That’s what this was!’ That was incredibly illuminating. We are spending incredible amounts of money on these defence mechanisms that are actually not safe.”
The feature’s grim portrayal of escalating chaos and institutional failure echoes such atomic-themed classics as Sidney Lumet’s Fail Safe and Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove.
“I love those films,” Bigelow says. “I love [Stanley Kramer’s] On the Beach and Fail Safe. But there hasn’t been a film made on this topic for years. This is speculative fiction. The events depicted have not yet taken place – nor, hopefully, will they ever. But the subject matter is very real. That’s also the hope of the movie, that we prevent something like this from happening.”
Bigelow has had a controversial relationship with the US military, particularly for her post-9/11 films The Hurt Locker, from 2008, for which she won her best-director Oscar, and Zero Dark Thirty, from 2012, which depicts the hunt for Osama bin Laden.
For those movies Bigelow and her screenwriter Mark Boal, who as a journalist had once been embedded with US troops, received varying levels of access to military personnel, locations and technical expertise. The Pentagon also confirmed the authenticity of the military tactics and hardware depicted in the films.
A House of Dynamite was similarly constructed.
“This is a scenario that, again, Noah has done so much research on,” Bigelow says. “We had three four-star generals on the set every single day, especially in Stratcom – ‘This is how it works’ – and we had a CIA expert in the situation room. So they were always there, guiding us and detailing an event or a moment, and helping the actors.”
The US senators John McCain and Dianne Feinstein argued that Zero Dark Thirty, which showed waterboarding and other illegal interrogation methods helping to find Osama bin Laden’s key courier, promoted torture. Some accused Bigelow of having being politically motivated, in wanting to see the re-election of Barack Obama. The director says that neither that film nor A House of Dynamite is rooted in partisan politics.
“It’s difficult, because you’re just the messenger,” she says. “I didn’t, for instance, in Zero Dark Thirty authorise these techniques that were used to garner information. We’re just presenting a situation that is factually based. In A House of Dynamite we’re presenting a very delicate situation. Very delicate. And it’s an apolitical situation. It’s not relegated to one country or the other. It’s a global conversation.”
Elba’s president is a careful amalgamation of various leaders. His phone manner is a little bit Trumpian, his glad-handing is of the Obama school and, with a nod to George W Bush reading a book to schoolchildren as news of 9/11 filtered through, the moment that Elba’s Potus – he isn’t given a name – learns that the world is in jeopardy comes when he’s meeting some high-school basketball players.
“Apart from, maybe, the depiction of the president receiving the news while at a school event, nothing was planned to be reflective of any president,” Bigelow says. “We didn’t want the audience to be distracted by, ‘Oh, is that meant to be …?’ or ‘Could that be …?’”
Similarly, she says, the message of A House of Dynamite is relevant for all administrations, not just the one led by the man who currently has his finger on the nuclear button.
“I’ve always been concerned,” Bigelow says. “But I think that concern is more acute. I don’t see guardrails in place that can protect us. The fact that, within moments, you could annihilate whole civilisations, I don’t see that as a smart defensive measure. That defends nothing.”
“If there’s a major conflict, and humans want to kill each other, well, okay, conflict is natural,” Elba adds. “But no red buttons, okay? That’s a hard thing to talk about. Because you’re having to say, ‘Well, actually, I’m not very good at fighting,’ or, ‘Actually, I’m more scared than you are.’”
A House of Dynamite received a 10-minute standing ovation after it was shown at Venice International Film Festival last month. It’s a welcome return for a director who hasn’t made a film since Detroit, in 2017. That hiatus was certainly not imposed on her, she says.
“I’ve never had that feeling of being held back ... I’ve never had the idea that, for whatever reason, I’m being chastened for something. I think film is such an incredible delivery system for ideology. I’ve never felt like the system would hold me back. Maybe I should, but it’s never occurred to me.”
A House of Dynamite is in cinemas now and on Netflix from Friday, October 24th
