Le Jour d'après

Scrolling through the comments, I was impressed with the number of people from the USA, who said that this movie really scared them, when they first saw it. In fact it is not surprising. Well, I am Russian, yet it scared me too.

But first, a little preface. I was in the second grade (appr. 1982), when I first heard about the nuclear war. We had a number of lectures on it - of course the information was adapted so that 8-9 year old kids could understand it. We were impressed, but childhood has a wonderful gift that lets you quickly forget what was bad. So during the only false alarm that was held in our school the whole lot of students and tutors were brought out into the schoolyard, and we all stood in lines and through snowballs at each other imitating air bombing, and there was a feeling of excitement everywhere. The fact is, that many of us treated the threat as something so-far-away-that-it's-not-worth-worrying-about.

The movie was shown on out TV once only (with all the necessary precautions like "don't let nervous people see it"). Well, to say that I was terrified is to say nothing. For what it did, was that it made the threat so ordinary - and so real. Though for me it happened on the other side of the planet, you could easily imagine that the same thing would happen in my own country - and no fools - it would be absolutely THE SAME.

For some period thereafter I became slightly phobic ("Ma, what's that roar over our house, it's too low for a plane heading to the nearest airport"). But now I regard it as a good experience, because it made me think. I got a clear understanding that this COULD happen. I guess there was quite a big number of people in our country with the same understanding, and together with the threatened people from other countries they prevented the whole thing from happening right then. Hope the plain old common sense will help prevent the nuclear apocalypse in future.

P.S. Recently I saw the movie one more time, and it stirred the same emotions, as it did in my childhood. A great movie, that's all I can say...

I first saw the film as a high school student attending a Department of Defense school in Germany in the early 1980's. The film was shown in school and it scared the bejeeezus out of me and many of my fellow students. We were dealing with Red Army Faction terrorism, car bombs, bomb threats at school and only a few hundred miles from the border to East Germany. The concepts were quite accurate: if the eastern bloc came over the border, then the ONLY NATO response could be to fight a delayed retreat, blowing up roads and bridges as the US and Nato forces were pushed back and most of Germany would have fallen to the Eastern Bloc before any offensive action could have been taken. The scenario leading to the nuclear attacks are quite real and plausible.

The critics say the film was not graphic enough (they prefer things like Threads) or too graphic (prefering more subtile films like Testament ). There is no need to be totally graphic and accurate in portraying the events. Yes, we know it would be worse. But the goal is not to gross everyone out. We want younger audiences to see the film too - and that would never happen with something like theads. Likewise, a mored emotional but action lacking film would not draw in the audiences. The purpose was to 'get the point accross' and I think it did that very successfully - bad acting, flubbed lines, stock footage and all. It showed enough of the circumstances surrounding the events for those who had some education in things could recognize issues and say,"Yes thats right" while not being overly graphic so that only adults could see it.

If you want to see an action movie about nuclear war or you want to see a touchy-feely emotional treatment of the losses due to war - this film is not for you. The purpose of this film is to show what nuclear war may be like (in a very superficial way) and to remind everyone that it must NEVER happen again. Back in the early 1980's with the Soviets under a rotating leadership of old hardliners and the US with Ronny talking smack - the threat was very real and the reality check this film delivers was needed. It doesn't play as well in the year 2002 - but you must remember when a film was made when you see it.

I just finished watching this movie for the first time and had to give a comment. I was only 5 when this movie came out and don't remember seeing it, but growing up next to a military base, the threat of a nuclear attack, although remote was in the back of our minds.

While this movie is not perfect (they should have had a couple less story lines going), this movie is the best attempt to show what was previously a very realistic scenario. While it's very toned down from what would actually happen after a nuclear attack, showing people out in the middle of nowhere trying to survive or just showing everyone die in a matter of a few days would not have had the same impact. This movie shows as graphically as could be shown on US network television a glimpse of the horror of nuclear war. The special effects and makeup are very good for a made for TV movie in 1983, impressive actually. The attack is shown is a very shocking and realistic manner (other than lessening the actual size of damage that would occur). The aftermath makes you realize that the lucky ones were those that were instantly vaporized. Although they don't show it, you realize that all of the characters that fought for so long against radition poisoning were not going to make it much longer. It shows many sides of human nature that would come to the surface under such circumstances and hints towards even worse ones that couldn't be shown. Although the cold war is behind us, these weapons are still around and there will come a time someone wants to use them. Everyone should see this movie to give them at least a small glimpse at why we can never allow that to happen.

I only stopped by to comment on this film after discussing Threads on another board and seeing how much of a beating it The Day After was getting. Having seen this during its premiere and Threads almost a year later I will say this. No matter how poorly the effects or the acting, or how graphic and extravagant the visuals were all these films serve one purpose. To educate us on the value we have as creatures that not only have control over our individual destinies but the destiny of our world and the lesser species. To show us what the cost would be, no matter how graphic and obscene. The Day After, Threads, Testament, The War Game, Failsafe, Wargames, and all the other media programming that has shown us the horror of nuclear war. Each has its strengths and flaws, its highs and lows, but the message inherrently remains the same.

So why is there any discussion of the differences? To debate the flaws and merits of one horror in many variations is pointless, for they are all important, all special and all as relavant today as they were when they were first created. Perhaps we have learned nothing?

I, like many of my age, saw this when it originally aired as a class assignment. It had a great impact on me, as the cold war was still going strong and the threat of a nuclear war was something that people still thought about. The movie may not be the greatest ever made, but the acting is more than adequate, especially from Jason Robards, and the script was far better than any other movies made for television at that time. I recommend it to anyone, even those with a low tolerance for grossness (radiation sickness is shown in progressive stages, and it is not pretty). It's dark, depressing, and if you get into it you will definitely need to follow it up with a musical or cartoons just to lift your spirits again. Still, the subject matter is not something that can be portrayed positively even at a tv-movie level of realism.