when the wind blows

Director: jimmy t. murakami

Actor: peggy ashcroft,john mills,robin houston,james russell

Data Published: Thu Nov 20 1986

Genres: Animation,Comedy,Drama,War

Key Words: tragedy,adult animation,nuclear war,nuclear fallout,black comedy

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090315/

WIKI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_the_Wind_Blows_(1986_film)

Description: When the Wind Blows is a movie starring Peggy Ashcroft, John Mills, and Robin Houston. A naive elderly British rural couple survive the initial onslaught of a nuclear war.

Plot: James and Hilda Bloggs are a retired couple living in a tidy isolated cottage in rural Sussex in southeast England. James frequently travels to London to read the newspapers and keep abreast of the deteriorating international situation regarding the Soviet-Afghan War; while frequently misunderstanding some specifics of the conflict, he is fully aware of the growing risk of an all-out nuclear war with the Soviet Union. James is horrified at a radio news report stating that a war may be only three days away, and sets about preparing for the worst as instructed by his government-issued Protect and Survive pamphlets. As Hilda continues her daily routine, and their son Ron, who is implied to have fallen into fatalistic despair, dismisses such preparations as pointless (referencing the song "We'll All Go Together When We Go" by Tom Lehrer), James builds a lean-to shelter out of several doors inside their home (which he consistently calls the "inner core or refuge" per the pamphlets) and prepares a stock of supplies. He also follows through seemingly strange instructions such as painting his windows with white paint and readying sacks to lie down in when a nuclear strike hits. Despite James' concerns, he and Hilda are confident they can survive the war, as they did World War II in their childhoods, and that a Soviet defeat will ensue. Hearing a warning on the radio of an imminent ICBM strike, James rushes himself and Hilda into their shelter, just escaping injury as distant shock waves rack their home. They remain in the shelter for a couple of nights, and when they emerge, they find all their utilities, services and communications have been destroyed by the nuclear blast. Over the following days, they gradually grow sick from exposure to the radioactive fallout, resulting in radiation poisoning. Ron and his wife Beryl are not heard from again, though their deaths are heavily implied. In spite of all this, James and Hilda stoically attempt to carry on, preparing tea and dinners on a camping stove, noting numerous errands they will have to run once the crisis passes, and trying to renew their evaporated water stock with (contaminated) rainwater. James keeps faith that a rescue operation will be launched to help civilians. Apparently oblivious to the dead animals, destroyed buildings and scorched, dead vegetation outside their cottage (apart from their own garden), they initially remain optimistic. However, as they take in the debris of their home, prolonged absence of other human company, lack of food and water, growing radiation sickness, and confusion about the events that have taken place, the couple begins to fall into a state of despair. After a few days, the Bloggs are practically bedridden, and Hilda is despondent when her hair begins to fall out, after vomiting, developing painful sores and lesions and experiencing bleeding gums. Either in denial about the extent of the nuclear holocaust, unable to comprehend it, or trying to comfort Hilda, James is still confident that emergency services will eventually arrive, but they never do, as they were also presumably destroyed in the attack. The film ends with the dying James and Hilda getting into paper sacks, crawling back into the shelter, and praying. James begins with the Lord's Prayer, but then switches to the first lines of "The Charge of the Light Brigade", whose militaristic and ironic undertones distress the dying Hilda, who weakly begs him not to continue. Finally, James's voice mumbles away into silence. Outside the shelter, the smoke and ash-filled sky begins to clear, revealing the sun rising through the gloom. At once, the skies clear fully as the fallout fades away, revealing a beautiful blue sky with clean white clouds drifting by. At the very end of the credits, a Morse code signal taps out "MAD", which stands for mutual assured destruction.