Customer Reviews

The War Game / Culloden

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Why it has taken all this time for these two films to make it to the US in DVD form is a story that I hope comes out. Peter Watkins is finally being ackowledged in the US for his radical, truly independent vision, what with the release in the last two years of Punishment Park and The Gladiators. But it is here, in his first two feature films, that he is arguably at his best. The War Game is a horrifying recreation, done in documentary style, of what the effects of nuclear war would be. It may not have the impact it had when it was first released in 1964 as the US and the Soviet Union had their fingers on the button that would have assured, as the film so disturbingly shows (so disturbingly that the BBC, who commissioned the film, refused to show it and it was effectively banned in England for years after), mutual destruction. Nonetheless, the threat of nuclear warfare has not totally disappeared from the radar screen, so the film still carries relevance. Culloden, which predates The War Game, is perhaps the more contemporary and frightening film. Here, Watkins introduces for the first time in a feature length piece his "you-are-there" technique, as participants in the Scottish uprising against Britain in the mid-eighteenth century are interviewed as though news and camera men existed at this time. Both films reek with realism, as they are acted by non-professionals; and in the case of Culloden, the grime and sweat of eighteenth century life and the ferocity and brutality of combat at this time comes across as though, indeed, cameras were available at this time. Watkins is clearly aghast at what people can do to each other, and Culloden, culminating with the massacre of the Scottish clans by the better armed and more ruthless British military, clearly, as Watkins himself as said, is another way of looking at what was occuring and would continue to occur in Vietnam. Today, with another war, the film retains its power and relevancy. These are not easy films to watch: they are no doubt one sided and pedantic: yet they speak to a time when filmmakers were willing to alienate and confound in order to make what they felt was a difference: a time when the idea of popular film instigating change, naive as it may be, felt possible.

a double bill of films made for bbc-tv, i had seen both of these some thirty years back and never got over them. the earlier of them, "culloden" is a recreation of the events leading up to and following the 1746 battle that spelled the final end of scotlands days as a seperate country from england. adapted from the classic book by john prebble (incidentally, the rabbits favorite book), the film is a brilliant reflection on the conflicts among the idiotic bonnie prince charlie and his advisors, the ruthless english army, and the average scottish soldieer caught in the crossfire. filmed on a minimal budget (they had ONE cannon!), the battle scenes are so creative that you will believe youre part of it. this was the old walter cronkite "you are there" concept taken to the heights of art. now as to "the war game" -- well, once watkins had a major surprise hit on his hands with "culloden", he got to make "war games". akin to the similar path of patrick mcgoohan a few years later, who followed up the overwhelming success of "secret agent" with the artistically brilliant but controversial "the prisoner", watkins shot his wad with "WG", and never recovered. this fantasy about an english town in the days leading up to and following a nuclear attack is far more frightening than any of the myriad of other films which have used the same conceit. its matter-of-factness and use of ordinary people in lieu of actors works in watkins's hands in a manner that would have been artsy in the hands of another director. the finished product proved so controversial that the bbc declined to air it, and the movie was ultimately released in theaters, where ironically it won an oscar as best documentary. as i said previously, i saw both films on television in the 70s -- back when pbs still carried out its mandate to air quality television, rather than wayne dyer infomercials or doo-wop retrospectives. i cant more heartily recommend a dvd to watch than this.

Watch this and after ask yourself how two films made in 1964 and 1965 are many times more powerful than most of the drivel you saw during this decade. The western world was during forty years scared to death with the idea of nuclear war but accepted it as a possibility. After "The War Game" and "Culloden", you will doubt also the reasons for the current war "on terror".

Remember that in 1965 we were in an intense cold war with the Soviet Union. It seems quaint now but is shot as a news story with immediancy to it. The documentary feel gives it life. We lived with the possibility of nuclear annilation always in the back of our collective minds. This film gives short shrift to Her Majesty's government's lack of preparation or the ignorance of the people affected by a nuclear attack on Britain. England is a small country & one wonders how indeed we would react in the U.S. to a nuclear attack with all our wide open spaces & places to escape. This movie gives the Soviets the benefit of moral relativism. Maybe U.S. foreign policy is responsible for this attack. It was totally devoid of references to God by the victims which is unrealistic but still refreshing. It's documentary feel made it seem like it could happen this way. The interviews with victims & government representative was effective & I suspect much more so 42 years ago.

I first saw these "documentaries" 40+ years ago and was impressed by their power and the logic of their messages. Seeing the programmes now is to lament the demise of powerful, committed and issue dominated documentary film making appearing on our TV screens. The War Game & Culloden haven't lost their ability to shock and stimulate debate.
Culloden, with its Vietnam war sub-text, carries, now, a message about decisions to declare war in Iraq while the War Game reminds us that policies of MAD & WMD are based on faulty logic.
This DVD is worth many viewings.

"The War Game" is a surprisingly effective documentary, especially for the time that it was released. I felt that it was actually more haunting than "Threads", due to its colder atmosphere of hard facts and ebony and ivory images of charred bodies and demolished edifices. I often found "Threads" to actually be somewhat of a disappointment, especially with the initial attack scenes and cinematography that REALLY looks dated--especially for a movie that was made in--1984?!?! (Looking more like it was made in the early 70's in many spots). "The War Game", I felt, did a better job at hitting you with both fists--especially without any element of a "standard British kitchen sink drama" that "Threads" contained. Don't get me wrong, I still feel "Threads" is a good film, but one that could have been better, especially in light of how brutally honest "The War Game" was with its theme. Overall, I will always feel that when it comes to nuke films, "The Day After", does it best, due to its extremely chilling atmosphere and convincing performances. Also, contrary to what people have said, "The Day After" is NOT a soap opera with nukes, nor is it "Mister Roger's Neighborhood" as some reviewers of "Threads" have mentioned, but a HIGHLY effective thriller and a bona fide wake-up call. In conclusion, for me "The Day After" is the best, but second in line is "The War Game" with its bona fide chilling effectiveness. Definitely worth a viewing.

I saw Culloden when I was kid and really liked it. This is the first time I've seen it in almost 40 years and it was better than I remember. There was a delivery hiccup but it was a problem at the post office and not with the vendor. Thanks!

Two Peter Watkins films here, pioneering examples, perhaps, of what we now call "mockumentaries", documentary-style films of fictional events (here, "The War Game") or past, you-are-there events (Culloden).

As for "The War Game," although it's very much a work from the Cold War era (1965) it's still effective in spite of, or perhaps because of, it being black-and-white, gritty, short in running time, and focused on a small part of a pre- and post-attack Britain. I've seen "Testament," "Threads," and "The Day After" and this seems more effective -- and more graphic -- and while the other three nuclear-attack films show a story, "The War Game" is more immediate. You are watching society coming apart in almost real time, and it's scary.

I differ from other reviewers in that I find that "Culloden" seems to have aged well, if you accept 1964 state-of-the art news media in 1745 as a premise. Given the few actors, and some clever camera angles, the story manages to suggest fragmentary and smoke-shrouded parts of the battle as believable (in a battle that involved 15,000 men in real life). No spectacle, just confusion and the sort of narrow field-of-vision that those caught in such a battle would see, with the participants talking to the camera as the battle unfolds, horribly wrong. The Greek-chorus commentary on the pre-battle failures on the Scottish side does not take away from the story, rather, the viewer is watching an unfolding and inevitable tragedy. Nor does the film neglect the post-battle search-and-destroy by the victorious British forces, in many ways as harrowing as the battle. And you learn something of the participants, famous or not, Scottish, British and Irish (they were there, too, as you see).

Highest recommendation for those with an interest in British/Scottish or cinematic history.

The film is interspersed with staged events and archival footage from the Second World War, and seamlessly edited. Rather crude special effects, such as shaking the camera to simulate the winds of a firestorm, are surprisingly effective. Traditional documentary techniques like maps, scrawled epigraphs of information and quotes from civic leaders, recitations of naïve quotes from public figures, man on the street interviews that show the ignorance of average Brits to nuclear war and civil defense (not knowing the effects of Carbon 14- would you or I?), as well as some yahoo and gung ho American military sorts, are very effective, as well, even if a bit over the top re: American enthusiasm for war (but, recall, this was only a few years after Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb was a hit, and showed reckless American militarism at its worst). The narration by Michael Aspel and Peter Graham is also very effective at conveying the faux realism of this horror film's fictive world, in impassive tones, as well as showing how utterly deluded civil defense measures were, then and retrospectively. Given the spate of nuclear Armageddon films made in the 1960s, and up through the early 1980s miniseries The Day After, it's remarkable how such a low budget effort like The War Game retains its effectiveness when almost all other films on the topic seem corny. It's likely that the reason the film retains its punch is the very reason it was banned for nearly two decades. Scenes of British police shooting civilians (rioters, two men who kill a police officer for food, and also shooting civilians to put them out of immediate post-blast misery) were too much for the still pre-Vietnam War era public. Also, the film's `realism' and unflinching look at the utter inability of the U.K. government to protect its citizens from an attack, much less handle the response of survivors after an attack, was sure to cause waves.

When the film was delayed for broadcast, Watkins resigned from the BBC, which was pressured into private screenings for public officials. Many officials denounced the film as anti-British agitprop, until one of the few instances where a critic played a positive role arose. Noted film and drama critic Kenneth Tynan championed the film as possibly the most important film ever made, which spearheaded a letter writing campaign by anti-nuke forces, which forced the film into limited theatrical release on college campuses across Europe and America in 1966.

Much of the information about a nuclear strike was cannily accurate for its day, if limited. This was pre-the idea of nuclear winter, so most of the information wa staken from reported effects of the two atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as the fire bombings of Tokyo, Dresden, and other Japanese and German cities. The effectiveness of the `extras' in makeup (some with severe deformity and scarring) is jolting, but made ever more `realistic' by the film being in black and white. Interestingly, some of the vox populi interviews pull back from the diegetic tale of nuclear horror, to ask real life Britons whether or not the U.K. should retaliate against the USSR in such a scenario, and most unstintingly agree their nation should. This is a nice contrast to some of the intertitle sequences that show often hilariously naïve comments by British officials written out in full. A voiceover intones, near film's end, that by 1980, the chances of such a scenario playing out at least once in the world is very high. That it never did is something to seriously pause over, for, despite the film's accuracy in depicting social and governmental inadequacies in responding to such an attack, as well as its accuracy in claiming over a third of all Britons would die from the attacks or their aftermath, it has to be acknowledged that the film also grossly understates the human will to survive, and whatever role that played at keeping the Cold War nuclear powers at bay for nearly half a century. Still, even though the film is technically a mockumentary (however un-Christopher Guest-like), it can be argued as a documentary, also, since it so perfectly captures its era's zeitgeist without severely dating itself. It's really a rare film, in all respects.

And, aside from its exposure of Cold War Civil Defense failures, the film also slyly comments on the media of the day, and its failings, especially in its depiction of the classism of that era. One wonders if any documentary done today could as readily capture the true and false beliefs we now have of global warming, Islamic terror, the international financial crisis, etc. Regardless, The War Game is a terrific film, and a great documentary- innovative and deep. I recommend its rediscovery to all who want to know what art and journalism can do, if far too rarely.

The Wargame, made in the mid-1960s, dealt with the prospect of a major nuclear strike on the UK. In its depiction of the effects and consequences of using these weapons it quite rightly pulls no punches. However, I would take issue with premise that it was all OUR fault. The Russians were lobbing their nukes at us because we had the temerity to arm ourselvs with our own deterrent, ie the V-Force of Vulcan, Victor and Valiant bombers, thus, so the argument went, making us a target.Just why the Russians would resort to such apocalyptic measures knowing the response would be their own inevitable destruction was never explored. I think the film was very well made, believable in its depiction of the transition to war and then the effects of that war, but at the same time I felt it was rather biased in the usual left-wing "blame the west" manner, ala CND. I think the other nuclear horror story "Threads" was more balanced in its presentation, and all the MORE terrifying for it.