When the wind blows (contains spoilers of this film)

My boy loves films. I am his mum and because of this bias, I have secret ambitions for him to grow up and live in the film world. I see, looking through my rose-tinted spectacles: a concept artist, director or stuntman of the future. The boy understands films in a way I have not observed in other children. Before he had the skills to read, he 'wrote' films he had seen through storyboards. The boy can remember cinematography and events in a way that leave me baffled. I am not really looking at the cinematography when I watch a film, I am sucking up the feelings like a vampire. I hoover up the happys or the tragic, or the poignant and the mad. After I have finished watching a film (not even a good film) my reality can be temporarily altered, and sometimes that takes some time to recover from. My boy is less moved (unless animals are involved) and more curious in camera angle, effects, colour, composition and detail. After we have watched a film, and whilst I am still trying to catch my breath if it has been a tragic, he'll recall details that passed me by and remembers events carefully. However, he is less aware of the nuance of film conversation and often needs explanation beyond the literal. My boy has a particular film list he wants to watch whilst we are on quarantine, on that list are two films in particular: Plague Dogs and When the Wind Blows.

The other day, and whilst the boy was still under the influence of a temperature we watched 'When the Wind Blows', an animation by Raymond Briggs.  It has taken me considerable time to recover. In fact I blame the delay of this post on that recovery. My emotional vampire fattened unto pain on the bleakness. In the film we meet  Jim and Hilda Bloggs, they are simple folk, enjoying retirement in a remote cottage in the Sussex countryside. They are World War 2 survivors. They survived World War 2 by trusting in the powers that be and adopting a disposition of cheery obstinance. They have no real sense of the new danger that faces them and Hilda shows her lack of awareness by declaring: 'It will take more than a few bombs to get me down'. Jim, or James as Hilda calls him, are living during the Cold War and in a scenario where threat of nuclear destruction is more than my vague childhood recollections. James and Hilda like to keep a routine and traditional roles. They punctuate their schedule by oodles of tea poured into yellow mugs. James has armed himself with a couple of pamphlets from the government and the County Council and in the few days before the nuclear bomb warning, he follows instructions of how to make an 'inner refuge' to protect them from radiation fallout. In those days he manages to remove the doors from the house and use them to make a lean-to (inner refuge). James and Hilda discuss the cosiness of their shelter and they pause to wonder how a family of 4 or 5 could fit inside. But they are reassured that the government would have accounted for that. The survival activities undertaken by the Bloggs' seem ridiculous especially with the background knowledge my generation has of Chernobyl. The government has given the every-man a project to take his mind off imminent suffering and death. Men with power play with terribly dangerous toys whilst the Blogg's just want to be able to go about their business and pour tea into yellow mugs.

The 4 minute warning is given, and we look at the efforts of James and in our hearts we know that this is the end. But even the most cynical of us are warmed by the blind faith of these two, and we convince ourselves that the open-ended inner refuge will provide protection against high levels of radiation. Somehow, the non-living, unseen thing that is radiation will obey the rules laid down by a tightly, clipped reassuring English accent that has commanded the common man to build a flimsy lean-to through government funded public infomercials.

Our hearts are right and this is the end, but we had no warning for how terribly horrific the end would turn out. After the blast, depicted in terrifyingly beautiful animation, James and Hilda try to carry on as if their daily lives have just been temporarily interrupted and that the 'powers that be' will sweep in at any moment and rescue them. There is no communication, and they rely fully on the information James gleaned from the pamphlets. They try to punctuate their slow deaths through mugs of tea poured into yellow mugs (strangely unharmed by the blast) and Hilda's true lamentation comes when they run out of water supplies to wash up. This is despite the obvious pain and deterioration her body is going through.  In the days leading up to their slow and painful death, they manage to make great inroads into the mess that the bomb blast created and I cannot help but be awed at the energy and determination these folk put into being ordinary.

When their light finally fades away, I am left puzzled. Am I cheered by their dogged determination or angered by it? Does the shelter prolong the pain or is it a partial inner refuge? I think of this sort of war strategy and picture powerful men as boys holding a playground to ransom because they are bigger and tougher than the rest of it. Only they're not withholding the best toys but playing carelessly with mortally dangerous ones. I hate the pamphlets, with their 'how to' style, and the lack of clarity on the clear and present danger. Instructions for activity, but no truth of the pain and danger  coming. Do governments treat us ordinary folk this way because they feel we have not the capacity for truth? The lies ooze and are given to us in that comforting, clipped voice of those that rule and the common folk follow blindly.