A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE. “Not exactly escapist fare,” was my first thought, which was followed rapidly by the notion that maybe, in the face of racist, fascist theocracy on the rise internationally, a movie about mutually assured destruction by nuclear annihilation can offer some fleeting relief.
I kid (sort of), because A House of Dynamite is an unrelenting, paranoid thriller-procedural about what might/could/will happen when a nuclear missile of indeterminate origin is launched at the mainland United States. And, because it’s a Kathryn Bigelow picture, it bristles with the sort of research-based authenticity (read: horror) that is one of her many trademarks.
Bigelow was, by my lights, unfairly and retroactively maligned for her work on Zero Dark Thirty (2012). It became a punching bag for critical revisionism, with Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal becoming straw people for accusations of secret war collusion. I found it all hogwash but the backlash (not to mention the director’s gender) seems to have been enough to all but bury her subsequent feature Detroit (2017), another examination of the politics of violence (violence of politics?) in the U.S. There are any number of other financial and socio-political factors in play, but it is disheartening, to say the least, that a filmmaker of such skill and dedication, intent on illuminating this country’s response to — and role in — domestic and international unrest, should have spent so much time in the proverbial penalty box.
Bigelow’s near-decade away from the big screen is all the more frustrating for the fact that her late-period work is deliberately absent any sort of misplaced proselytizing or advocacy. She has turned her focus and her cameras on contentious issues, but her primary methodology has been to allow the research to guide the narrative, rather than any predetermined or overlaid sensibility. I’ve been a fan for a long time, not least of all because Bigelow is a bona fide action director and one who knows how to manage large-scale productions without heavy-handedness or reductionism. And for now — whether it’s because or in spite of her “politics” I will probably never know — she’s back.
And she is back with the sort of Cold War, ticking-clock thriller most of us thought, in our restless naivete, became something like irrelevant half a century ago.
Set discomfitingly in a parallel present-day America, A House of Dynamite, written by Noah Oppenheim, is broken up quasi-Rashomon style, following high-ranking members of the government’s defense apparatus, from the White House situation room to Strategic Command to the president himself (Idris Elba, in a wishful, wistful masterstroke of casting) from the moment the aforementioned nuclear device is observed, through the 20-minute response window before it makes impact.
The intense plausibility of the thing is ratcheted up, made palpable and almost unnerving, by the degree of uncertainty and unprecedentedness at its center. Nuclear proliferation having gone viral, the notion of glasnost abandoned and arcane, a cohesive, measured response seems to have been foregone, with the emphasis instead on the hope that the threat of retaliation would have been enough to curb an international conflict. Not so, positsA House of Dynamite. So what next?
One of the great strengths and potential weaknesses at play here is in the movie’s adamant refusal to provide solutions. In adhering to its own construct (and, one suspects, a modicum of harsh reality), the narrative moves from one power player who doesn’t know what to do to the next. Who speaks Mandarin? Can we get that person on the phone? Will the Russians agree not to attack us if we don’t attack them? Do we have assurances beyond “probably?” What might happen if a senior official decides to walk off a roof instead of getting in the helicopter?
There are answers to be had, in the form of an ominous black nuclear response binder hauled around by a fresh-faced Navy lieutenant commander, but they range from mild to medium to major nuclear holocaust; not exactly a menu with something for everyone. And, to heighten the effect of its own, apparently unsolvable problem, the movie does not hand us a convenient conflict within the command, a subplot to distract from the horror of its inciting event. Instead, everyone retains something like composure (if not coolheadedness) and it doesn’t relieve the tension, even a little bit. Faced with cataclysm, the best-suited minds are at a loss, scrambling to find somebody who can provide anything like an answer. And that person, tragically, does not exist.
A House of Dynamite may not present us with a completely hopeless scenario, but it built one in such a way that hope may not be the thing at all; more like resignation. R. 112M. NETFLIX.
John J. Bennett (he/him) is a movie nerd who loves a good car chase.
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For showtimes, call Broadway Cinema (707) 443-3456, Minor Theatre (707) 822-3456.
This article appears in Halloween.