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Barnaby Clay recommended All That Jazz (1979) in Movies (curated)
Awix (3310 KP) rated The War Game in TV
Sep 14, 2019 (Updated Sep 15, 2019)
Time and its own successors have robbed Peter Watkins' famously embargoed docu-drama of some of its power - it does seem to be set in another world, and to the modern viewer the form of the piece occasionally resembles a Monty Python sketch of a particularly black kind. It is 1966, and escalation in Vietnam leads to the outbreak of full-scale nuclear war; millions die, the survivors are left traumatised, and society crumbles in the aftermath.
Not as utterly horrible as Threads (itself inspired by The War Game), but still amazingly bleak, and given extra power by the juxtaposition of firestorms, depictions of radiation sickness, food riots, etc, with absurd contributions drawn from the actual words of 'experts', the government, and so on. Looking at this film you do feel slightly astonished that the world lasted as well as it did; perhaps this film played a small part in that.
Not as utterly horrible as Threads (itself inspired by The War Game), but still amazingly bleak, and given extra power by the juxtaposition of firestorms, depictions of radiation sickness, food riots, etc, with absurd contributions drawn from the actual words of 'experts', the government, and so on. Looking at this film you do feel slightly astonished that the world lasted as well as it did; perhaps this film played a small part in that.