This film clearly shows that there is a very wide gap between realistic acting and reality. Although the production is clever enough, and well enough done, never for a moment do you feel that you're looking at a real event. The closest the production comes to capturing reality, I feel, is in the crowd scenes at the evacuation centre in Sweetbriar, S.C.
Now, of course, this film was made in 1983, not 1999, so changes in fashion alone will make it impossible for it to pass as real today. But does it look like a tape of actual events, of news events, which occurred in 1983? I don't think so. As I was watching this, a friend commented, after seeing it for perhaps one or two minutes, "Is this a spoof?"
The tension level is all wrong. These people are people pretending to be people experiencing life and death situations. That's different from people who are actually experiencing them, and you can tell. It's perceptible.
I'm ignoring the fact that there is, obviously, no RBS network with affiliates everywhere, and the fact that at least half the cast members are familiar faces.
The filmmakers clearly modelled their production after the famous Welles/Wells "War of the Worlds" radio play. There is the same compressed chronology, with a couple of days elapsing during the course of the programme. There was at least one disclaimer saying that this was only a dramatization. Welles was forced to say the same during his radio broadcast. There was a soap opera ad at the beginning designed to disarm the viewer. Welles had quite a few "normal" musical interludes scattered throughout his broadcast.
Marshall Herskovitz, the screenwriter, seems to be having a joke at the viewer's expense on several occasions. No one refers to the Civil War as "the late unpleasantness with the North". That's the most glaring example, but there are other jarring anomalies. That's not what a Wheeling, W.Va. accent sounds like. Local TV news reporters don't use words like "flabbergasted", except in teleplays written by novices. And so on.
Of course, the biggest giveaway is that the story progresses like a drama. There is constant forward motion. Have you watched CNN news coverage of any actual major event? Where the reporters, and the anchors, and the talking heads, and the experts, all say the exact same things in slightly different words over and over and over again? New information trickles in at a maddeningly slow pace.
Now, I'm an admirer of Ed Zwick and his work in general. Messrs. Zwick and Herskovitz had a great idea, and, especially given the limits of their budget, did a fine job in pulling it off.
But, for my money, the best of the nuclear scare dramas of the 1970's and '80's is still "Threads" from the UK. ("Where Have All the People Gone?" certainly seemed good at the time, but that time was 1974, and that particular TV movie has been hard to see since then.) And, since many people in North America seem not to have heard of it, I will also seize this opportunity to draw attention to the animated (yes!) "When the Wind Blows", also from Britain.
Now, of course, this film was made in 1983, not 1999, so changes in fashion alone will make it impossible for it to pass as real today. But does it look like a tape of actual events, of news events, which occurred in 1983? I don't think so. As I was watching this, a friend commented, after seeing it for perhaps one or two minutes, "Is this a spoof?"
The tension level is all wrong. These people are people pretending to be people experiencing life and death situations. That's different from people who are actually experiencing them, and you can tell. It's perceptible.
I'm ignoring the fact that there is, obviously, no RBS network with affiliates everywhere, and the fact that at least half the cast members are familiar faces.
The filmmakers clearly modelled their production after the famous Welles/Wells "War of the Worlds" radio play. There is the same compressed chronology, with a couple of days elapsing during the course of the programme. There was at least one disclaimer saying that this was only a dramatization. Welles was forced to say the same during his radio broadcast. There was a soap opera ad at the beginning designed to disarm the viewer. Welles had quite a few "normal" musical interludes scattered throughout his broadcast.
Marshall Herskovitz, the screenwriter, seems to be having a joke at the viewer's expense on several occasions. No one refers to the Civil War as "the late unpleasantness with the North". That's the most glaring example, but there are other jarring anomalies. That's not what a Wheeling, W.Va. accent sounds like. Local TV news reporters don't use words like "flabbergasted", except in teleplays written by novices. And so on.
Of course, the biggest giveaway is that the story progresses like a drama. There is constant forward motion. Have you watched CNN news coverage of any actual major event? Where the reporters, and the anchors, and the talking heads, and the experts, all say the exact same things in slightly different words over and over and over again? New information trickles in at a maddeningly slow pace.
Now, I'm an admirer of Ed Zwick and his work in general. Messrs. Zwick and Herskovitz had a great idea, and, especially given the limits of their budget, did a fine job in pulling it off.
But, for my money, the best of the nuclear scare dramas of the 1970's and '80's is still "Threads" from the UK. ("Where Have All the People Gone?" certainly seemed good at the time, but that time was 1974, and that particular TV movie has been hard to see since then.) And, since many people in North America seem not to have heard of it, I will also seize this opportunity to draw attention to the animated (yes!) "When the Wind Blows", also from Britain.