A House of Dynamite

 

A House of Dynamite is a new Netflix film, the sort of political thriller about a potential nuclear encounter, which those of a certain age might have associated with the time of the Cold War, now repurposed in this new era by director Kathryn Bigelow and written by Noah Oppenheim. The film follows different officials in their response to a nuclear missile launched by an unidentified enemy in the Pacific and aimed at Chicago.

The film depicts the same sequence of events three times from the different perspectives of Captain Olivia Walker, the oversight officer for the White House Situation Room, Jake Baerington, Deputy National Security Advisor, and lastly the President of the United States himself. If one does not know this in advance, it may seem somewhat confusing at first as the same characters seem to be rediscovering the crisis and responding to it. It wasn't until the third scenario that I clearly came to understand that the movie was doing this. In retrospect, however, it highlights the unexpected and unique characteristics of the crisis and is very effetive dramatically.

Each of the three sequences is given a distinctive title: Inclination is Flattening, Hitting a Bullet with a Bullet, and A House Filled with Dynamite. The third title, which gives the entire film its title, reflects the reaction of the President, whose final decision is not shown.

The film unfolds mainly through a video conference connecting the President himself, Situation Room, the Secretary of Defense, the Pentagon, and various on-site military commands. It highlights the complexity of the processes employed by these inter-related agencies and the effects upon the individuals involved, who are simultaneously reacting as government officials and as individuals concerned about their particular families. In the process, we get some insight into the unpredictability of complex defensive systems, which sometimes just do not work as expected.

There is no particular ongoing political crisis that precipitates situation. It starts out as an ordinary day like any other, when suddenly everything changes almost as if by accident. The characters are married with children, or are planning to get married, when suddenly and unexpectedly a missile appears out of the Pacific with Chicago as its target. It reminded me of how, back when I was a kid in the deep freeze of the Cold War, we regularly participated in drills, hiding under our desks, But in between we went about our ordinary lives and planned our futures, as if we fully expected the world to have a future.It highlights how quickly and unexpectedly a nuclear attack can occur, and how officials can be called upon to respond to circumstances they may never actually have expected to respond to, in ways they never expected to have to respond.

It is a frighteningly dramatic reminder of how precarious our world still is in the light of nuclear proliferation.