Recommendations of the Editorial team
The review contains fundamental spoilers.
Kathryn Bigelow’s “House of Dynamite” is based on Annie Jacobsen’s docufiction bestseller “Nuclear War: A Scenario,” which Denis Villeneuve originally wanted to film – until he received an offer he couldn’t refuse: the new Bond film.
Jacobsen’s (read our in-depth interview with her here) in-depth report on the attack by a previously thought impossible North Korean nuclear submarine, which slips unnoticed to US shores and fires two SLBMs at the United States, examines the before and after: the failure of the American General Staff to plan an adequate response, the dysfunction internally and externally Communication and the inability to even classify the threat – is this really North Korea? Regardless of the fact that the country is circumventing international nuclear conventions and carrying out long-range missile tests unannounced?
The central question
The USA has been sensitive to Kim Jong Un for years. The nuclear false alarm in 2018 remains traumatic in memory, when early warning systems in Hawaii reported that the dictator had launched a bomb. For around half an hour, many Hawaiians believed they were going to die. US President Trump, fallen for the failure of his own warning systems, threatened Kim Jong Un with “Fire and Fury”; A spokesman for the dictator then declared Trump mentally ill.
The question in “House of Dynamite” is: Why does North Korea only fire a single ICBM when it wants to commit an act of war – perhaps to make the launch appear accidental? In Bigelow’s film, a colonel recalls the nuclear false alarm of 1983, when Russian Colonel Stanilslav Petrov – later honored by the UN as the “Man Who Saved the World” – correctly classified the hoax report of five US ICBMs that had allegedly been launched as a false alarm. Caused by a reflection of the sun on Soviet satellites. Petrov thereby prevented total nuclear war.
The apocalyptic horizon
Jacobsen describes the consequences of the two detonations so drastically that it is hardly surprising why atomic bomb literature rarely becomes a bestseller: the thought alone is hardly bearable. A global Third World War that will wipe out all human life unless you find refuge in New Zealand or southern Argentina in time. After identifying the North Korean atomic bomb, the USA launched hundreds of long-range missiles towards North Korea – over the Russian Arctic Sea, which Moscow interpreted as an attack.
Bigelow’s cinematic decision
In hers NetflixAdaptation, Bigelow refrains from showing the American response to the impact of a nuclear missile in Chicago – and thus the likely counterattack. Likewise, the impact of the North Korean missile remains invisible. Fade out.
You can do it like that.
But it is legitimate to ask the Roland Emmerich question: Why doesn’t it show the consequences of the impact?
Focus on system failure
Bigelow focuses her attention on the collapse of military and political order, at STRATCOM, NNMCC, the White House and the Pentagon. It shows how the human element in people in power – swearing, stuttering, hesitation – leads to an unwillingness to make a clear decision on which the existence of humanity may possibly depend. It makes it clear that humans are no match for their own command systems (what an artificial intelligence would do in DEFCON 1 situations remains an open question). “Jamming the President” here means: Generals are using the threat of nuclear war to talk to him. The doves from the left, the hawks from the right – “Wait and see, Mr. President.” – “No, order the counterattack.”
The president as a mirror
The casting of Idris Elba as POTUS is both smart and unfortunate. He plays the president as a narcissist who – like Trump, Obama or George W. Bush – was never interested in the nuclear codes in the “Black Book” and now has to decide on counter-targets within minutes. Bigelow shows him late; his Zoom screen remains black during staff meetings, only his voice can be heard. So you can spend a long time imagining which presidential actor will be sitting in the Oval Office. When Elba finally appears in the last quarter of the film, his star power pushes the action somewhat to the sidelines. Remember “24” President Charles Logan? A more inconspicuous actor like Gregory Itzin would have been a better choice here.
Political dimension and gaps in interpretation
Experts agree that any nuclear counterstrike, including a nuclear winter, would lead to the destruction of at least six of the eight billion people. So why, unlike Jacobsen, did Bigelow not clearly name Kim Jong Un as the cause of the world war? Does Netflix fear the economic power of the famous North Korean film industry? Or that other Hollywood productions will disappear from the screens of the countless cineplexes in Pyongyang? The crazy Rocket Man’s motives are also mentioned in “A House of Dynamite”: recognition as a military power, bargaining chip. And when nothing helps, Kim Jong Un takes refuge in his gigantic nuclear bunker, which is said to be the size of a city and has a waterfall. He would certainly have his place in the history books as the true “destroyer of worlds”. As long as books can still be written and read.
The powder keg metaphor
Every major nuclear power is a “house of dynamite”: If one explosive device ignites, the others follow and the entire house goes up in flames. Astrophysicist Carl Sagan put it similarly well in the must-see ABC “Viewpoint” program in 1983: “Imagine a room full of gasoline – and two bitter enemies in it. One has 9,000 matches, the other 7,000. Both are worried about who is stronger…” Whoosh. The so-called balance of terror is shaky.
“Viewpoint” aired on US television after the premiere of “The Day After”. Whether this film could have persuaded President Reagan to sign the INF agreement with Gorbachev in 1987 to destroy all medium-range nuclear missiles remains controversial in film history. But Reagan wrote in his diary that “The Day After” had made him very depressed: “It made it clear to me how important it is that there should never be a nuclear war.”
In the best case scenario, Donald Trump sees “A House of Dynamite” and learns the right lesson. However, since Bigelow focuses primarily on the failure of American bureaucracy, Trump’s opponent in the East is likely to be happy about the chaos – “That would never be possible in my country!” Even if that’s definitely not true.