EMILY KWONG, HOST:
Movies can tell us a lot about what scares us. And ever since the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki 80 years ago this week, the fear of nuclear war has reverberated across decades of film, like in the best picture winner "Oppenheimer," about the so-called father of the atomic bomb.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "OPPENHEIMER")
MATT DAMON: (As Leslie Groves) Are we saying there's a chance that when we push that button, we destroy the world?
CILLIAN MURPHY: (As J. Robert Oppenheimer) Nothing...
KWONG: While director Christopher Nolan turned to history, other filmmakers have explored the nuclear age through speculative fiction...
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "CRIMSON TIDE")
DENZEL WASHINGTON: (As Ron Hunter) If we launch and we're wrong, what's left of Russia is going to launch at us.
KWONG: ...Or science fiction.
(SOUNDBITE OF GODZILLA ROARING)
KWONG: To talk through the art inspired by the nuclear age, we've brought in NPR science correspondent Geoff Brumfiel and investigations correspondent Sacha Pfeiffer. Hi, you both.
SACHA PFEIFFER, BYLINE: Hi, Geoff and Emily.
GEOFF BRUMFIEL, BYLINE: Hi there.
KWONG: So much of this genre, to me, is about making sense of horror, right? It's about speaking about unspeakable things, of which nuclear disaster, for those who survive it, is really one of them. And also just the fear that nuclear war brings - it's really psychological. So Sacha, can you talk about the first movie you ever saw that brought nuclear anxiety to your attention?
PFEIFFER: Yes, and I want to say that when a editor on the show asked me to join this conversation, it's not because I'm a particular expert in nuclear war movies, but he knew I was Gen X, and there were a lot of nuclear war movies coming out in the '80s. And he made...
KWONG: It's a trait of your generation...
PFEIFFER: (Laughter).
KWONG: ...Yeah.
PFEIFFER: We were in sort of still in the grips of the Cold War. And I - it made me think back to when I was probably 12 years old, and this TV movie came out called "The Day After."
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE DAY AFTER")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) This is not an exercise.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) Roger, understand. Major Reinhardt, we have a massive attack against the U.S. at this time. ICBMs, numerous ICBMs. Roger, understand. Over 300 missiles inbound now.
(SOUNDBITE OF SIREN)
PFEIFFER: This was before there was cable, so there were just a few stations. Most of the country watched "The Day After." It was basically a nuclear holocaust movie. It scared me so badly that I can remember the next day saying to my parents, are we going to die? And, you know, I have never watched that movie since, and it may not even be as scary as I remember, but I'll never know because I'm too scared to watch it again. But it made me realize that I wanted to go back and watch some movies I hadn't seen and see how our society has wrestled with all these issues of what have we created? And are there machines more powerful than us? And...
KWONG: Yeah.
PFEIFFER: ...Can you win a war in an era like this? So for me, this was a great chance to go back and watch a lot of things I hadn't seen or rewatch some things I had seen.
KWONG: Yeah. I'm glad you brought up "The Day After," Sacha, because this is a film that really had a real-world effect on society. Geoff, can you talk about that?
BRUMFIEL: Yeah. Well, Sacha was not the only one who had the pants scared off of her by this movie. About 100 million Americans, I think - I looked it up - watched it at the time...
KWONG: Oh, wow.
BRUMFIEL: ...As she said. So a huge portion of the population saw it, including Ronald Reagan, who actually had it privately screened about a month before it aired. In his diary, he wrote the movie was, quote, "powerfully done and left me greatly depressed." And it's believed that actually this was one of the factors, not the only one, but one of the reasons Reagan started pushing for some nuclear arms control during his presidency. And it may have led in part to the signing of the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty that limited the use of nuclear missiles in Europe. Reagan really was affected by the movie, by all account.
KWONG: A movie doesn't get more impactful than that. I mean, that's pretty astonishing. There have been literally dozens of movies inspired by nuclear war, nuclear fear. Geoff, you Slacked me, like, 30 of them.
(LAUGHTER)
KWONG: But what are the films that have really defined the genre for you both?
BRUMFIEL: So I would argue probably the most important and best of all the nuclear movies is "Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb."
KWONG: What a title.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "DR. STRANGELOVE OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB")
PETER SELLERS: (As President Merkin Muffley) You know how we've always talked about the possibility of something going wrong with the bomb. The bomb, Dimitri - the hydrogen bomb.
BRUMFIEL: And then one you had me watch that I realized I had actually seen before, but the original 1954 "Godzilla" is absolutely one of the best nuclear dramas, I think, that's ever been put on the screen.
KWONG: Yeah, "Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb" - Geoff, why do you think that movie entered the zeitgeist like it did?
BRUMFIEL: Well, for those who haven't seen "Dr. Strangelove," it is an amazing movie directed by Stanley Kubrick, starring Peter Sellers in several different roles. And it involves a sort of bizarre scenario in which the U.S. and the Soviet Union destroy the world through a doomsday device that's sort of built as a form of nuclear deterrence. What makes it so great is that it is a farce.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "DR. STRANGELOVE OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB")
SELLERS: (As President Merkin Muffley) Gentlemen, you can't fight in here. This is the war room.
BRUMFIEL: It is a very, very funny movie about humans screwing up, basically, and - with the help of machines and ending all life on the planet. Kubrick himself said, like, they started trying to make it as a drama...
KWONG: Really?
BRUMFIEL: ...But it felt so weird and so hilarious that they just ended up making it a comedy. And what's interesting is there's another movie that came out around the same time called "Fail Safe," which is very similar but was a drama but never really landed in the same way "Strangelove" did. So I think this is a feature of some of the great nuclear movies is that they don't always kind of try and play out the straight drama of a nuclear apocalypse, whether it's a monster, like "Godzilla," or it's a comedy, like "Dr. Strangelove." They kind of look slightly askance at the horror of nuclear war, and I think that helps viewers to...
KWONG: Process it.
BRUMFIEL: ...Kind of process it.
PFEIFFER: The other thing that really struck me about "Dr. Strangelove" was it is a terribly cynical look at government and military and the people in power making decisions that affect people in the field and the sky. But it was a reminder that for decades and decades, we have felt quite cynical about the decision-makers. It was a reminder of how it parallels today.
KWONG: I think that that's what makes "Godzilla (1954)" so interesting, actually, because the film - I know it's about a lizard that comes out of the sea and makes those buildings and train cars look like models - which they were for the time. It was all, like, practical effects. But it is dealing so directly with government and scientist decision-making.
PFEIFFER: Yes.
KWONG: Can you talk about - Geoff, you watched "Godzilla (1954)". What did you think?
BRUMFIEL: You know, what's so interesting about it is that a lot of people say "Godzilla" is a metaphor for the bomb, and...
KWONG: Right.
BRUMFIEL: ...Certainly the scenes where it's incinerating Tokyo and killing people feel that way.
KWONG: Yeah.
BRUMFIEL: But it's also interesting to me. They're sort of wrestling with these larger issues. You know, the humans in "Godzilla," whether they're the scientists or the military men - they're always making the wrong decision. They're always provoking Godzilla, you know? And I also think it's kind of interesting Godzilla is a 2-million-year-old monster that emerges from the deep and...
KWONG: Because of H-bomb testing.
BRUMFIEL: Because of...
KWONG: He was created by, like...
BRUMFIEL: Well, he was wrested from his roost by an H-bomb test.
KWONG: That's right. His habitat is...
PFEIFFER: (Laughter).
BRUMFIEL: His habitat.
KWONG: ...Destroyed.
BRUMFIEL: And so much of "Godzilla" focuses on the civilian experience, on the hospitals filled with casualties and the burning, you know, apartment buildings. It must really feel as though some sort of ancient beast deep inside all of us has been awoken. And, you know, I think that there's sort of that interesting juxtaposition as well. The H-bomb is something new, and yet, these fears and destructive tendencies are very old. And that, of course - those parts of human nature are what led to these devices in the first place.
KWONG: Sacha, what film for you has defined the genre, of any we haven't mentioned or a perspective that you've learned from watching these growing up, or now?
PFEIFFER: There's another older movie I watched for the first time prepping for this called "On The Beach." It came out in 1959.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ON THE BEACH")
FRED ASTAIRE: (As Julian Osborne) Who would ever have believed that human beings would be stupid enough to blow themselves off the face of the Earth?
PFEIFFER: First of all, it's a chance to watch these great famous old movie stars - Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner and even Fred Astaire. And this has a really interesting plot. Basically, there's been an atomic war. Most of the world is gone. Australia has been spared because the radiation hasn't gotten there yet, but it's making its way there. So you see people wrestling with, how much time do we have left? What do we do? Should we end our lives preemptively, and how? And this is going to sound strange, but there's also a love story in it. And you see this kind of frisky, semi-risque-for-the-era relationship between Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner. So it's wonderful acting, very subtle and reflective. I feel like it's got it all, and I really enjoyed it.
KWONG: Is there any unifying message among some of these films, or do you think they all land in different places? Sacha, what do you think?
PFEIFFER: I think the unifying message is, be very careful. And sometimes the movies say it's too late, and sometimes the movies say there's still hope. What do you think, Geoff?
BRUMFIEL: Yeah. I mean, I think that it is - I think also these movies sort of fulfill a need humans have for wrestling with death...
KWONG: Yeah.
BRUMFIEL: ...Writ large. I think it's really interesting that kind of as we left the Cold War and moved into this century, that need has been replaced by a different genre, which is the zombie apocalypse movie. I think that that has sort of artistically replaced these nuclear apocalypse movies, which is kind of unfortunate in a way 'cause the threat hasn't really gone away.
PFEIFFER: Well, I did find myself wondering. You know, we saw a surge of these movies after World War II, the bombing of Japan. We saw another surge after Cuban missile crisis, Cold War fears. And now we are arguably having another heightened fear of nuclear power.
KWONG: That's true.
PFEIFFER: But I don't know...
KWONG: Yeah.
PFEIFFER: ...That we're seeing it reflected in our art yet.
BRUMFIEL: Yeah. I'd agree with that.
KWONG: Yeah. I mean, to talk about the present moment, you know, earlier this week, the mayor of Hiroshima, Kazumi Matsui - he marked the 80th anniversary of the bombing, and he gave a speech imploring the world's powers to give up nuclear weapons, which is not what's happening. What is happening now in today's - are we in another nuclear age, Geoff? And is the fear greater in some ways, even if it's not yet reflected in our art?
BRUMFIEL: We are absolutely on the brink of another nuclear arms race, yes. China is radically expanding its nuclear arsenal. Russia is developing new kinds of weapons. The U.S. is modernizing its nuclear weapons. And we also have, you know, a lot of new nuclear powers that are building up their stockpiles, whether that's India, Pakistan, you know, the risk of Iran going nuclear. So we are in a era of increasing nuclear peril, without a doubt.
And you know that treaty that Reagan signed after "The Day After" - it's gone. The U.S. and Russia have gotten out of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, and they're building those kinds of missiles again. Extraordinarily dangerous weapons because they give very little warning, so people have not much time to react and decide whether to launch nukes back.
KWONG: Well, if that's the - well, do you think art can save us in this moment? Do you think we'll heed the messages of these movies? It's odd that movies are the ones kind of pointing a moral compass, but...
PFEIFFER: Well, I think we've had so many movies trying to shake us into the realization that these are essentially unwinnable wars, that if we hadn't...
KWONG: Yeah.
PFEIFFER: ...We haven't gotten the message by now, I don't think it's getting through. And maybe we're not seeing any more movies now because there's no warning left to give that hasn't been given.
KWONG: That is NPR's Geoff Brumfiel and Sacha Pfeiffer. Thank you so much to you both for joining us.
PFEIFFER: You're welcome.
BRUMFIEL: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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