“in a nuclear war EVERYONE loses. war isn’t what it used to be.”
what an absolute masterpiece. boy does Sidney Lumet know how to make a motion picture.
i stumbled upon this film whilst looking through the Top 500 List and when i saw it was a Lumet directed thriller about a looming nuclear strike starring Henry Fonda i became puzzled immediately. why? because i don’t understand how this flew under my radar for so long.
on the surface, this could be seen as a simple war thriller but its actually quite the opposite. this film tackles 2 very large subjects.
A.) the folly of nuclear war.
~
when your only option to prevent complete and total nuclear annihilation is to drop 2 nukes on your own most populous city, i cannot think of a more absurd prospect, but within the context of the film, it is somehow entirely reasonable. that is what i found so brilliant about this film, it highlights how the absurd has become reasonable through a domino effect who’s conclusion will almost certainly result in omnicide. its genius and in my opinion the primary theme of this film.
B.) fear of technological dependency.
~
even over 60 years later, we still fear the potential of our own creations. then they feared such technological complexities were removing the human from the equation, and now we face a similar dilemma with the rise of artificial intelligence. its not that we fear technology lacking humanity, us humans are already quite proficient in that subject, rather its the fear of lack of control. we inherently fear that which we can not control, for whatever is not under our control, instead controls us.
i almost want to say i enjoyed this more than ‘12 Angry Men”. it may not be as iconic or even not as good from a technical perspective but i dont know, i just thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed this. its a perfect thriller in my opinion. its tense enough to make your palms sweat while still maintaining a strong and relevant message and the ending was perfection. it really just blew my socks off.
“in a nuclear war EVERYONE loses. war isn’t what it used to be.”
what an absolute masterpiece. boy does Sidney Lumet know how to make a motion picture.
i stumbled upon this film whilst looking through the Top 500 List and when i saw it was a Lumet directed thriller about a looming nuclear strike starring Henry Fonda i became puzzled immediately. why? because i don’t understand how this flew under my radar for so long.
on the surface, this could be seen as a simple war thriller but its actually quite the opposite. this film tackles 2 very large subjects.
A.) the folly of nuclear war.
~
when your only option to prevent complete and total nuclear annihilation is to drop 2 nukes on your own most populous city, i cannot think of a more absurd prospect, but within the context of the film, it is somehow entirely reasonable. that is what i found so brilliant about this film, it highlights how the absurd has become reasonable through a domino effect who’s conclusion will almost certainly result in omnicide. its genius and in my opinion the primary theme of this film.
B.) fear of technological dependency.
~
even over 60 years later, we still fear the potential of our own creations. then they feared such technological complexities were removing the human from the equation, and now we face a similar dilemma with the rise of artificial intelligence. its not that we fear technology lacking humanity, us humans are already quite proficient in that subject, rather its the fear of lack of control. we inherently fear that which we can not control, for whatever is not under our control, instead controls us.
i almost want to say i enjoyed this more than ‘12 Angry Men”. it may not be as iconic or even not as good from a technical perspective but i dont know, i just thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed this. its a perfect thriller in my opinion. its tense enough to make your palms sweat while still maintaining a strong and relevant message and the ending was perfection. it really just blew my socks off.
