Playing as part of a radical season in Cinemateca, The War Game is a curious blend of horror and lost Englishness. A mock documentary set in Kent, describing the impact of a nuclear strike on Britain, the film is famous for having been banned by the BBC after being initially commissioned by them. Watkins manages the horror superbly. The film escalates in its brutality, starting with a kind of normality and then moving on to full blown nuclear firestorm, inspired, as made clear by the commentary, by Hiroshima, Nagasaki, but also Dresden and Hamburg. You can readily understand why the BBC got cold feet about screening it, as the images of a devastated Kent and its citizens are genuinely shocking. The horrors of war had rarely been so surgically captured.
At the same time, as an Englishman, there is something nostalgic about viewing a lost Britain, with its clipped accents and eccentric dress sense, and a certain reticence which seems to have been foregone with the coming of Britpop, Brexit and post war prosperity. At one point the documentary mentions ration cards, reminding us that the film was made at a time when every adult would remember what a ration card implied, something subsequent generations would never have to contemplate, or even understand. There is also something in the tone of Watkins’ film, a blend of the extreme with a tight-lipped understatement, which speaks to the qualities which might once have been perceived to represent Britishness, or at least a version of Britishness which this writer might identify with.
No comments:
Post a Comment