‘I wonder who was spared…’
It is no surprise that the very imminent fear of nuclear war from the ’60s through to the ’80s bled through into cinemas and television sets. The most notable example of this in the UK is Mick Jackson’s gruelling masterpiece Threads. The problem with The Day After – a kind of American version of Threads – is that even though it came out a year earlier, it will always suffer in comparison with Jackson’s work. That being said, it is still an intriguing insight into the psyche of America at the dawn of the ’80s…
Following the lead up to and aftermath of a nuclear event through the eyes of a doctor (Jason Robards), a soldier (William Allen Young) and erm… Steve Guttenberg, TV movie The Day After is an admirable attempt to hypothesise what would happen to society in the event of the unthinkable. While there are many poignant moments here – doctors and nurses struggling under the strain of radiation poisoning, looters and murderers roaming the streets – there is also a nagging feeling that director Nicholas Meyer and writer Edward Hume spread themselves too thin. We don’t spend enough time with these characters throughout the film and the result is a sprawling uneven movie that has moments of greatness but also moments of tedium.
The Day After works better as a time capsule than it does a movie. As a tableau of American anxieties about nuclear war, it’s invaluable but as a film made primarily for entertainment, it is sometimes found lacking. Having said that, the nightmarish conclusion is as grim as anything that happens in Threads and still has the capacity to shock today.