(5 of 5)
Paradoxically, when the film is vaguest it is often at its strongest. Impending nuclear war is announced in a series of bulletins on radio and television, casually broadcast and half-heard at first. The sound track carries snatches of references that accelerate to slightly longer descrip tions of airport blockades and MiG-25s "invading West German airspace" and that end, finally, with a shocked anchorwoman saying, "Three nuclear weapons in the low-kiloton range were airburst this morning over advancing Soviet troops." There is only calamity after that. ABC's determination to keep up appearances of political evenhandedness have helped the film makers conjure up what seems like a spookily accurate scenario for Armaged don: the beginnings of worldwide disaster as a series of barely overheard frag ments. This is global tragedy with no fixed responsibility.
Screenwriter Edward Hume and the film makers were correct in choosing to avoid blaming either the U.S. or the U.S.S.R. for the initiation of catastrophe. This moral neutrality may be one reason the network is actually going to broadcast their film, advertisers or not, champions or not, critics or not. Less than 20 years ago, the BBC refused to show Peter Watkins' very similar but far more devastating The War Game because it was "too horrifying." The Day After, nowhere near as strong or as skillful, is still frightening enough, and here it is, occupying more than two hours of prime commercial network time. But such a signal of cultural change can also be an intimation of trouble. The generally shabby quality of The Day After is of major concern because, rather than startling audiences into a new awareness, it is just as likely to anesthetize them with mediocrity.
This process will not stop with The Day After. Paramount already has a movie in the pipeline called Testament, about one family trying to survive a nuclear blast. One of the hottest commercial novels due next spring is Warday by Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka, which shows America reeling from atomic desolation and California, intact and safe, effectively closed to the rest of the country. "There's a hell of a percentage increase in these day-after-nuclear scripts," says Michael Fuchs, president of Home Box Office's entertainment group. Apocalypse has clearly become something more than the fate that looms just over the horizon line. It may be the growth industry of the ' 80s.