I saw a glimpse of this film when I was about eight or nine and it left me with nightmares for quite a few days after (especially since I live in a viable British target for a bomb) and, even now, I have a fear about nuclear attacks. And no matter how many times I see 'The Day After', it still leaves me with the chills and contemplating how easily the world can be destroyed on the whim of arrogant politicians. The film is set in Kansas, circa the early Eighties, against the backdrop of growing aggression between the US, UK and West Germany against the USSR and East Germany, normal people go about their daily lives. But when the Soviet attack the US and are hit with a counter-attack, we follow various characters as they cope with nuclear attack and the bleak aftermath of a world changed forever.
Actors like Jason Robards, John Lithgow, Steve Guttenberg, John Cullum, Bibi Besch, William Allen Young, etc all rise to the occasion in roles as various characters caught in a desperate, dire situation with their own ways of coping. The ones which stick out most were Robards as the doctor who knows his family are very likely dead yet continues to do his best to help his patients and Besch as the housewife who initially is in denial in the face of the nuclear attack then descends temporarily into hysteria because she is aware of the reality of the dark future ahead for her family.
Some people do complain this film lacks the bleak realism of the British nuclear film 'Threads', I think it still succeeds in depicting normal, everyday folk and their plight as they are left floundering in the wake of an attack. I was too young to be aware of the very real fear of attack the Cold War evoked in the early Eighties but am now more than old enough to see how it is all too easy for diplomacy to fail and for politicians with too much power to allow the world descend into a holocaust where it will be ordinary people who suffer while the rich and those in high up positions will safely be cocooned in nuclear shelters. This is why this film is so horrifying, especially at the moment when relations between the UK and Russia are not at their best in a disagreement that has nothing to do with the needs and wants of normal civilians.
This film is as powerful now as I imagine it was in 1983 and should be compulsory viewing for everyone on the planet past primary school age as a reminder of why nuclear weapons have no place in the world.
Actors like Jason Robards, John Lithgow, Steve Guttenberg, John Cullum, Bibi Besch, William Allen Young, etc all rise to the occasion in roles as various characters caught in a desperate, dire situation with their own ways of coping. The ones which stick out most were Robards as the doctor who knows his family are very likely dead yet continues to do his best to help his patients and Besch as the housewife who initially is in denial in the face of the nuclear attack then descends temporarily into hysteria because she is aware of the reality of the dark future ahead for her family.
Some people do complain this film lacks the bleak realism of the British nuclear film 'Threads', I think it still succeeds in depicting normal, everyday folk and their plight as they are left floundering in the wake of an attack. I was too young to be aware of the very real fear of attack the Cold War evoked in the early Eighties but am now more than old enough to see how it is all too easy for diplomacy to fail and for politicians with too much power to allow the world descend into a holocaust where it will be ordinary people who suffer while the rich and those in high up positions will safely be cocooned in nuclear shelters. This is why this film is so horrifying, especially at the moment when relations between the UK and Russia are not at their best in a disagreement that has nothing to do with the needs and wants of normal civilians.
This film is as powerful now as I imagine it was in 1983 and should be compulsory viewing for everyone on the planet past primary school age as a reminder of why nuclear weapons have no place in the world.