Kathryn Bigelow, the first woman to win a best director Oscar for The Hurt Locker in 2010, is back with a new film that confronts an urgent existential threat. A House of Dynamite tells the story of a nuclear missile launched at an American city and the events that follow, a scenario Bigelow describes as a reminder that "our world is combustible".
Bigelow's concern is rooted in a cold-war childhood in California, where school drills taught children to "duck and cover" under their desks. She recalls growing up hiding under her desk, too young to understand what she was doing there. The film, she hopes, will leave audiences as concerned as she is about the nuclear stockpiles that are rarely mentioned or questioned.
The cast includes Idris Elba as the US president, Rebecca Ferguson as a White House security analyst, and Jared Harris as the secretary of defence. One remarkable scene shows a civil war re-enactment, shot in documentary style, as the world hangs in the balance. The film deliberately keeps its fictional politicians free of reminders of real-world counterparts, though it is hard to ignore that the defence secretary post now carries a secondary title of secretary of war.
Bigelow has built a career in male-dominated genres, from the cop movie Blue Steel to the heist thriller Point Break, and has tackled political subjects such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Jamie Lee Curtis, who starred in Blue Steel, once compared her to a military general, a description Bigelow greeted with raised eyebrows. Tracy Letts, a member of the film's cast, says she was "the calm at the eye of the storm" on set, and that her motivation is genuine because she has already won the awards and has enough money.
The film aims to make everything else seem trivial in the face of nuclear Armageddon. Bigelow notes that America is a culture defined by war, adding: "I wish we could define ourselves differently." A House of Dynamite is a stark, cool-eyed reminder of the thin line between routine life and catastrophe.
