The current generation may associate nuclear fear with the
fifties and early sixties, but it was something we very much continued to live
with in the eighties. I remember drills in which I was led out of class to
squat down in the hallway with my knees against my chest, because somehow, this
would protect a bunch of elementary school kids from a nuclear blast.
This seems like an idiotic thing to do. It was. But
governments have always tried to soften the realities of the idiocy of nuclear
warfare. In Jimmy Murakami’s 1986 animated adaptation of Raymond Briggs’s
graphic novel, When the Wind Blows, a
conservative, middle-aged, British couple refer to a government-issued pamphlet
to prepare for imminent nuclear annihilation. Discussing their doom as if nothing
more than a big snowstorm is on the way, Jim and Hilda paint their windows to
insulate themselves from radiation, take inventory of canned goods, do the laundry, hide behind
wooden doors and inside paper bags. It’s subtly played for laughs, but is it any
more ridiculous than cowering from fallout in a school hallway?
Ridiculously, the couple’s efforts help them survive the
blast. They’re not out of the woods yet, and the aftermath of the detonation
sees When the Wind Blows gradually
turn from droll satire to disturbing and depressing.
Murakami animated the most pungent nuclear-age satire since Dr. Strangelove in appropriately bizarre
fashion. He combines childlike drawings (Jim and Hilda look like refugees from
Nickelodeon’s “Doug”), sculpted live action backdrops, and stop-motion elements
in the same frame. I have never seen another film that looks like When the Wind Blows. Murakami also
employs flairs of other styles, such as the violently sketched sepia
animations that accompany the bomb’s impact, snatches of actual WWII news
footage, and the fantastical pastel passages that imagine a happier outcome for
James and Hilda in fairyland. Voicing our cast of two, John Mills and Peggy
Aschcroft employ a totally unaffected delivery that lends arresting realism
to all of the grim strangeness.
Twilight Time’s new blu-ray edition of When the Wind Blows
looks terrific and comes with a nice selection of extras. The jewel of these is
the feature-length Arts Council documentary Jimmy
Murakami: Non-Alien from 2010. Murakami’s experience in a Californian concentration camp during WWII haunt this intimate portrait of and narrated by the
artist. His focus on the horrid disruptions of war and the ways family helps
one endure relates to the feature presentation directly. An
excellent 24-minute doc specifically about that feature, The Wind and the Bomb, tracks When the Wind Blows from page to screen featuring interviews with Murakami, Briggs, and the animators. Their responses
to “What would you do in the event of an actual nuclear attack?” is disarming
and disturbing. The unrestored footage of the film in this documentary really
made me appreciate how good Twilight Time’s blu-ray looks. There’s also a
13-minute interview with the eccentric Briggs. He based Jim and Hilda on his
parents, and this interview reveals how deep his fixation on them goes. The
isolated music track showcases David Bowie’s memorable theme song and Roger
Waters’s soundtrack, which is as schizo as Murakami’s animation: doomy and synthesized
during the horrifying scenes of approaching planes and imploding buildings;
beautiful and acoustic during the fanciful interludes. A feature commentary
from editor Joe Fordham and film historian Nick Redman round out an impressive
lot of supplements to an extraordinary film.
