White Madness: A Feature Film Threatens to Turn into a Documentary 0 8

About War and Disorder

Fifteen years ago, at the 82nd Academy Awards, the modest "The Hurt Locker" by Kathryn Bigelow notably defeated the highest-grossing film of all time, made by her ex-husband, "Avatar." The celebration of feminism was further emphasized by the fact that Kathryn became the first woman to win the directing Oscar.

Realizing where the power lies, sister (at least, her personal superpower), the mistress of storms has since only made similar films – on the edge of fiction and reportage, based on scripts by professional journalists and publicists: Mark Boal ("The Hurt Locker," "Zero Dark Thirty," "Detroit") and Noah Oppenheim, also known as Noa Oppenheim ("A House of Dynamite").

These films are always unfunny (Bigelow has never been known for a tendency toward humor, let alone irony), but they are about war, special operations, or mass riots.

The characters are usually resolute men, less often women, with military, police, and intelligence ranks. However, Kathryn often filmed adrenaline junkies in her younger years: surfers and divers.

Moreover, almost all of Bigelow's films from the last one and a half decades are dramatizations of real events from the front pages of newspapers. Literally yesterday's ("Zero Dark Thirty" about the elimination of Bin Laden was released the year after that elimination) or tomorrow's (as in the case of "A House of Dynamite").

19 Minutes to Explosion

In the morning in the newspaper, in the evening in the verse – simply the screen verses of Bigelow can be dedicated to the next morning. A serene clear summer morning, when Washington clerks rush to their offices, their spouses sit in clinics with feverish children, dressed-up military historical reenactors play the Civil War, and a ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead falls on Chicago from a cloudless sky.

Who launched it is unknown: satellites malfunctioned, the launch site was not tracked. It is impossible to stop it: interceptors malfunctioned, they missed. The Russians claim they are not involved, the Chinese are gathering their Politburo, no one trusts anyone. The estimated time of arrival of the warhead in the city of Al Capone is in 19 minutes.

In these minutes, someone among the film's characters must try to identify the aggressor, someone must figure out how to evacuate their daughter from Chicago, and someone must mentally prepare for imminent death under the rubble of the White House (because duty demands staying at the post in the Situation Room, and at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, in the event of a massive nuclear exchange, it will be hit first).

The Clock is Ticking

Meanwhile, the American president, played by British actor Idris Elba, who is being rushed from a basketball school to a bunker, must decide: to absorb the strike – or to respond to all potential adversaries at once.

If you let it pass, the unknown enemy will confirm your indecisiveness and will strike not with one missile, but with a barrage. If you deliver a preemptive massive strike – you will certainly plunge the entire planet into nuclear apocalypse. It may, of course, have been a single launch, it may be that the missile has no nuclear payload, or it may not explode. Or perhaps your cowardice will doom your country. So decide. Alone, without a band. Time is running out. The clock is ticking.

This is Not a Game

Bigelow plays out the fateful third of an hour before the audience three times – each time changing the point of view and the main character. In the first chapter, it is the manager of the Situation Room (Ferguson), who sent her husband and feverish son to the clinic; in the second – the security advisor (Basso), who is late for a briefing and is calling the leadership on "Zoom" while on the run; and only in the last – the president himself, who had not appeared on screen before.

The clock is ticking, the tension is mounting, and sparse tears are falling. Children's toys (accidentally found in pockets) and wedding rings (which were planned to be given but never were) demonstrate the human side of Washington's "deep state." The toy war of the reenactors stands in stark contrast to the real one that is about to break out.

Against the backdrop of obligatory symbolism and the usual demonstration of directorial formal mastery (which no one doubted), only the final chapter is truly impressive – where a single, ordinary, by no means iron man, simply but effectively played by Elba, suddenly finds himself faced with a completely inhuman choice. And the audience clearly understands (and the director, with all the well-honed techniques of a fervent hyper-realist, helps him in this) that there is nothing fantastical about the situation depicted.

And We Said!

It is amusing that "A House of Dynamite" greatly pleased both those Russians who demand to provide Ukraine with all sorts of "Tomahawks" and those who understood Trump’s decision not to give them.

The former, with rehearsed hysterical modulations, cried out: we have long said that the third world war is inevitable!.. The latter – particularly A. A. Venediktov in an interview with Y. L. Latynina – admonished with a wagging finger: do you understand now why I didn’t give them?..

And the third category surely silently enjoyed the spectacle of the panicked hustle in the White House, which had suddenly turned into a real madhouse.