Threads

[Benjm]

Bit late in the day, but there's a free screening of the BBC's nuclear catastrophe drama Threads at the Tricycle Cinema in Kilburn this afternoon.

I've never seen this - by all accounts it's not easily forgotten - so looking forward to it.

[steveeeeeeeee]

Threads

I watched it again a couple of years ago. It's still grim, but time has distanced the absolute, terrifying fear it instilled into the 9 year old me when first broadcast. The threat of nuclear apocalypse thankfully seems slightly absurd nowadays.

The woman wetting herself in the shopping arcade as the one-minute warning rings out is still one of the most disturbing images that lives with me. I just imagine the fear would be exactly that.

[Giggler]

Threads

It's on YouTube in twelve ten-minute chunks too.

[Squarewheelbike]

Threads

Saw it when first broadcast as a 21 year old. Excellent film making and at that pre Gorby USSR time, not exactly unlikely!

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

Threads

We were shown it at school at the time and it was disturbing then, then for some reason I thought it would be a good idea to watch it again about five years ago and I was even more spooked by it. Probably had a lot to do with being a parent cos the bit just before the bomb goes off, when the lad is in the pigeon loft and the birds are going mental and he just sits there and cries is one of the most heart breaking things I've seen in a film.

[Benjm]

Threads

Whew, that was heavy duty stuff. I was feeling pretty shaken walking out at the end, more than by any other film or drama for quite a while. Drink was duly taken.

As suggested, it is brilliantly made and inventive in bridging any gap between its premise and budget. The sections covering the build-up, attack and immediate aftermath were unimprovable. Later in the ‘attack plus...’ timescale I found myself asking more questions, but those were beyond the scope of what any film could answer in twenty minutes.

It is brutal and I think a lot of the impact comes from the relentless message that any individual’s actions would have little or no bearing on their survival in that situation. Most films set during or after apocalyptic events, whether a nuclear war or a surrogate, are basically westerns. Characters can survive and even prosper as long as they have a bit of get up and go and some facility for violence. In Threads, whether you live or not is arbitrary and if you are lucky (?) gruelling subsistence farming is your reward.

The unpicking of social bonds and contracts resonates strongly today, albeit that the destruction is less violent, more gradual and, supposedly, more consensual. What the film only has time to hint at is the near certainty that the only people to prosper in such chaotic situations are the hardnosed bastards.

[Giggler]

Threads

benjm wrote:

It is brutal and I think a lot of the impact comes from the relentless message that any individual’s actions would have little or no bearing on their survival in that situation. Most films set during or after apocalyptic events, whether a nuclear war or a surrogate, are basically westerns. Characters can survive and even prosper as long as they have a bit of get up and go and some facility for violence. In Threads, whether you live or not is arbitrary and if you are lucky (?) gruelling subsistence farming is your reward.

I felt something similar when I first watched it. If you were Ruth, what would your motivation be to keep on living?

[My Name Is Ian]

Threads

Ah, Threads. King of the nuclear holocaust films.

Threads was based on three primary sources - the Protect & Survive series of films and the accompanying pamphlet, Operation Square Leg, a 1980 civil defence exercise which sought to definitively establish the effects of a nuclear attack on Britain, and still formulating research into the possible effects of nuclear winter.

Operation Square Leg was certainly flawed. It only considered that high-yield weapons would be used in any nuclear attack and discounted the possibility of a conventional land war in Europe first. It also took a somewhat idiosyncratic approach towards which towns and cities would be attacked. The figures used in Threads were taken directly from this exercise.

Protect & Survive, you're probably familiar with. It was widely mocked at the time, but it runs as a common thread through the programme. With varying degrees of subtlety, the characters all get involved in bits and pieces from it. The eeriest thing if probably that electronic jingle, which was written by the guy that wrote the "Magic E" song that was used on Look & Read (which a couple of people may remember). That would have been the soundtrack to the end of the world, right there. All of the Protect & Survive films are on YouTube there's one here:

Nuclear winter theory was starting to solidify by the early 1980s, but it was considered far from a certainty at the time and Threads was criticised at the time for taking it as read that nuclear winter would follow a nuclear attack. It's still carries a degree of controversy about it, but the idea that an all-out nuclear war wouldn't carry significant environmental effects is, umm, optimistic to say the least.

Threads took its cue from QED: A Guide To Armageddon, a half hour long documentary broadcast in 1982, which showed the effects of a single nuclear strike on central London and the futility of any attempts at civil defence. Many of the special effects come directly from that programme. It's on YouTube in three parts, starting here:

Threads is on Google Video in one, bite-sized piece, by the way. It's here: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2023790698427111488

I wrote an article for Dotmund on a brief history of nuclear war films, here: http://dotmund.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/apocalypse-then-brief-history-of.html

[Sits]

Threads

My Name Is Ian wrote:

The eeriest thing if probably that electronic jingle, which was written by the guy that wrote the "Magic E" song that was used on Look & Read (which a couple of people may remember).

Talking of Look & Read, we watched this in class once a week (aged 7 or 8) and the Thin Man UTTERLY freaked me out (watch out for a very young Silvestra le Touzel of assorted bonnet drama fame):

The Boy From Space

I will have to watch Threads again soon.

[Geoffrey de Ste. Croix]

Threads

I actually watched Threads again and it has lost none of its visceral impact. It left me as disturbed the second time I watched it as the first time I watched it years ago.

There's an interesting sub-narrative underlying Threads which deserves attention- as a metaphor for the crumbling social bonds and destruction of the North in Thatcher's Britain.

Threads was written by Barry Hines (of Kes fame) and carried on the concerns of the writers 1981 novel Looks and smiles. Looks and smiles central protagonist Mick Walsh struggles to maintain his identity and life as Thatcher's economic policies bring his hometown Sheffield to its knees.

In Threads, the characters main worries are not the intensifying international crisis (over the Soviet invasion of Iran) but the recession, the future of Sheffield and Ruth's unborn baby being born in an area of little hope.

What makes this dual storyline so effective is that the growing international crisis is played out over TV news bulletins which are very much placed in the background whilst the characters get on with their lives, discussing the issues and problems that they face on a personal and city level.

And naturally, the post apocalyptic scenes are a clear metaphor for Thatcher's scorched earth policy towards the North and Scotland.

The 'Threads that bind us together' are not just snapped totally and utterly by (theoretical) nuclear annihilation but also in reality by the Thatcher administration.

[Sam]

Threads

It's currently ten past midnight here. I've got an episode of Hand Of Pod to edit and get online, which will take a couple of hours, by which time MNII's Google video link should have finished buffering. If I can't sleep tonight, I'm blaming you.

[Central Rain]

Threads

Sam Kelly wrote:

It's currently ten past midnight here. I've got an episode of Hand Of Pod to edit and get online, which will take a couple of hours, by which time MNII's Google video link should have finished buffering. If I can't sleep tonight, I'm blaming you.

How'd that work out for you then?

[ad hoc]

Threads

My cousin's house was in Threads. It was where one of the two principal families lived. Been years since I saw it though so I couldn't tell you which one or the names of any of the characters.

[Jah Womble]

Threads

Threads. Brrrr. P*ssed all over The Day After, that did.

(Sylvie le Touzel was also the girl from those 'wow-ter in Ma-jowca' Heineken ads.)