VENICE: US director Kathryn Bigelow launched her latest movie “A House of Dynamite” at the Venice Film Festival on Tuesday, saying she hoped the tense thriller would sound the alarm over the ever-present danger of nuclear catastrophe.
Her first film in eight years traces the launch of a lone, unidentified ballistic missile towards the United States, triggering a desperate race to find out who is responsible and how to respond.
“This is a global issue, like where we are with nuclear weapons,” said Bigelow, who in 2010 became the first woman to receive the best director Oscar for her Iraq war movie “The Hurt Locker”.
“Of course, hope against hope, maybe we reduce the nuclear stockpile someday, but in the meantime we are really living in a house of dynamite,” she told a press conference, alongside some of her stars, including Idris Elba and Rebecca Ferguson.
“How is annihilating the world a good defensive measure?”
The film tracks the 18 minutes it takes for the missile to be launched from the Pacific until it reaches Chicago, unfolding through the eyes of myriad officials - from the U.S. president to an anti-missile crew based in Alaska to military brass working inside U.S. Strategic Command.
“(There are) these incredibly competent people operating on an infinitesimally short timeline, and the fate of the world is at stake,” Bigelow said.
Bigelow’s last major movie was the 2017 historical crime drama “Detroit”. Before that, she dramatised the decade-long hunt for Osama bin Laden in “Zero Dark Thirty”.
With “A House of Dynamite”, Bigelow revisits the sweeping, politically resonant storytelling that defined her most celebrated work.
Mutually assured destruction
Defence analysts believe there are up to 13,000 nuclear weapons in the world, in the hands of nine countries - more than enough warheads to destroy life on earth many times over.
“We’ve constructed this weaponry that could end all life, and it’s miraculous, frankly, that something horrific hasn’t happened already. So many of these weapons are on a hair trigger system in countries like ours,” said the scriptwriter Noah Oppenheim, a former president of NBC News.
Cast members said portraying characters caught inside a nuclear crisis was harrowing.
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“I learned I don’t have the courage to be in politics,” said Elba, who plays the U.S. president. Jared Harris, who plays the U.S. defense secretary echoed that sentiment. “I am grateful that I will never be put in that situation,” he said.
“A House of Dynamite” is one of three films U.S. streamer Netflix is showcasing at Venice. The other two are Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein” and Noah Baumbach’s “Jay Kelly”.
All three are competing for the prestigious Golden Lion prize, which will be awarded on September 6.
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