I didn’t watch The Day
After in 1983 but I do remember the discussion about whether parents should
let their kids watch and I have a vague memory of adults talking about the
movie a few days later at Thanksgiving dinner. My parents made the right move
not having us watch it (we were 9 and 6) because I saw the movie a few years
ago and it is horrifying, even decades removed from that kind of imminent
nuclear threat. Those scenes of the mushroom cloud over the highway and the
people reduced to X-rayed skeletons in the blast are rough. These were very real fears in the early ‘80s.
One hundred million people watched, including everybody in
the cast of The Americans and it’s no
wonder the scenes of nuclear destruction had an effect on all of them. The Day After seems to have changed
everybody just a little. After seven months of keeping up the appearance of
being a nuclear family, with Philip and Elizabeth rested and healthy, Paige
taking driving lessons, and mundane travel agency crises, the movie was a
wake-up call.
The world came perilously close to the mutually assured
destruction in the movie. After enthusiastic sex, Oleg tells Tatiana some
classified information: The Soviets almost dropped the bomb after mistaking the
reflection of sunlight on clouds for inbound U.S. missiles. Only a skeptical
Russian called off the nuclear bombs. (This really happened, a story that
always fascinated me, and that the general public didn’t know for years.) Oleg
wonders if he would have had the courage and clear thinking to defy orders and
not start World War III.
William finds a bioweapon even worse than glanders: lassa,
which liquefies your organs and makes your blood come through your skin. He
contemplates not telling Gabriel, one of several instances of characters
pondering disobeying authority, perhaps destabilized by the TV movie. Philip
tells William he and Elizabeth were on a break. “A break?” William deadpans.
“We get breaks?”
For Elizabeth, seeing the TV nuclear winter (nice callout to
that with “Winter Kills” by Yaz) wakes her up and she has new urgency to
support her country. “These are the people who dropped the atom bomb twice,”
she tells Philip. “We can’t sit in our comfortable house and pretend. This is
why we’re here.”
Pastor Tim ominously wants to talk to the Jennings family
once he’s back recording “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” in Ethiopia. This can’t
be good. Paige’s driving lesson (nicely scored to “Major Tom (Coming Home)” by
Peter Schilling) was funny, with Philip’s reminders for her to blink, and broke
the tension of Elizabeth’s seduction of Don.
That whole seduction was sad and hard to watch, despite
Patty’s fabulously pink apartment, because we had gotten to know Young-Hee and
Don and this will damage their marriage. At first I didn’t understand why
drugging Don would gain Elizabeth any information. She was so thorough
searching the house so what would she find searching his person. Then I
realized: This is a breakup scene. Elizabeth’s not going to get anything from
this family so she makes a clean break by faking an affair. It takes a toll on
her.
Elizabeth’s “I’m going to miss her” was very sad. She could
use a friend like Young-Hee and they understood each other, being outsiders to
the American experience. But Patty can’t reveal her real name and it’s implausible
for Elizabeth to keep wearing that wig and be a friend without the espionage,
so it’s over. Like Philip losing Martha, Elizabeth is losing what precious
opportunities for confidantes she has.
No comments:
Post a Comment