"A House of Dynamite"

"As a teenager, I was stupefied by On the Beach (1959), the cinematic portrayal of Nevil Shute's 1957 novel about the extermination of human life in Australia as a lethal radioactive cloud drifts from the Northern Hemisphere (where it was generated by a cataclysmic nuclear war) to the South Pacific. Next came Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove (1964), still the most powerful dramatization of nuclear war's utter madness."

"These, and other memorable films-most recently, Oppenheimer -helped us fathom the unthinkable: the annihilation of most, if not all, human beings in a global inferno. They also sparked widespread public debate about the morality and rationality of nuclear war planning and helped boost anti-nuclear organizations like the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy and the Nuclear Freeze Campaign (now combined in Peace Action)."

"Now comes A House of Dynamite, arriving on Netflix on October 25. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow-the first woman to receive an Academy Award as Best Director (for The Hurt Locker of 2008)-the Netflix film begins with the radar detection of a nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) headed toward the continental US. It goes on to depict the horrified reactions of US officials as they are informed of the missile's deadly trajectory"

Films such as On the Beach, Dr. Strangelove, The Day After, and Oppenheimer portray nuclear annihilation and the chaos that follows. Those portrayals convey the possibility of global extermination, the moral and rational questions of nuclear war planning, and the human suffering that would result. Cinematic depictions helped energize anti-nuclear organizations and public debate about nuclear policy. Kathryn Bigelow's A House of Dynamite opens with radar detection of an ICBM aimed at the continental United States and depicts officials confronting imminent radioactive destruction. The film appears amid rising nuclear tensions among major powers, adding contemporary urgency to the theme.

Read at The Nation