When I was watching the movie “House with Dynamite Landed”, I was reminiscing about the issue of another image with a akin subject – The Day After. Nicholas Meyer's work in his era worked like a moral shock.
Filmed for ABC television, devoid of Hollywood flair and peculiar effects, it became 1 of the most poignant warnings against atomic warfare. The movie premiered in the US on November 20, 1983 and was watched by over 100 million viewers. Almost 40% of all households followed him at the peak. Ronald Reagan was watching a screening at the White House. In the diary he wrote that he was "deeply moved" – and the movie changed his approach to disarmament talks with the USSR.
In both paintings, it is easy to decipher common motives. There's no happy ending. The heroes are average people who become victims of fear, their own illusions and the logic of the system. In the final sequence, the most terrifying sound is silence. "The next day" ends with silence not due to the fact that the planet is silent, but due to the fact that there is no 1 left to speak. "House laden with dynamite" keeps us quiet before the catastrophe – people inactive say, but they don't hear each another anymore. These are 2 films of the same end, shown in different phases: 1 – about the demolition of the world, the another – about the demolition of humanity.
I watched Meyer's movie 41 years ago. At that time, Polish tv was at the tallness of the task and aired "The Next Day" on January 26, 1984, just 2 months after the American premiere. I remember well how long the movie was the main subject of conversation. For many viewers, this was the first contact with the imagination of atomic war presented without beautification – in the form of cold, without passionate death record. The scenes of radioactive fallout and dying in makeshift hospitals were shocking.
Today, in times of war in Ukraine and ubiquitous images of violence, that movie would most likely not have electrocuted so much. The war has been tamed. More frequently talk about money and arms contracts than bodies, screaming and funerals. Even the possible of another global conflict no longer gives emergence to tremors – alternatively a shrug of arms. We utilized to be afraid of the end of the world. present we are utilized to his slow decay. Not due to the fact that we are braver, but due to the fact that we learned not to perceive to the silence that always comes after the explosion.
Leszek Miller
Za: X
