{"id":1106,"date":"2011-08-09T09:58:43","date_gmt":"2011-08-09T09:58:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/filmgaze.com\/blog\/?p=1106"},"modified":"2011-08-09T09:58:43","modified_gmt":"2011-08-09T09:58:43","slug":"countdown-to-zero","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/filmgaze.com\/blog\/documentary\/countdown-to-zero\/","title":{"rendered":"Countdown To Zero ****"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Good documentary film-making informs and provokes debate, and hopefully, addresses all sides of the argument. So in recent times, we\u2019ve had some highly emotive big-screen subject matter (Inside Job<\/a><\/em>\u2019s banking crisis, for example) that\u2019s naturally one-sided to stir up a hornet\u2019s nest of public outrage. It seems film-makers need to find a common concern to guarantee their mainstream audience, and Lucy Walker<\/a> addresses one of the biggest here in her new film Countdown To Zero<\/em><\/a> about nuclear power falling in the wrong hands \u2013 or \u2018proliferation\u2019. Oh, and if an act of terrorism wasn\u2019t enough of a worry, the world could go up in a cloud of radioactive smoke through an act of failed diplomacy (like in the Cold War years) or a simple accident (a rising moon that was thought to be an in-coming bomb). Nothing to fear, then\u2026<\/p>\n

Walker\u2019s film features chilling commentary from international statesmen and former leaders Jimmy Carter<\/a>, Mikhail Gorbachev<\/a>, Pervez Musharraf<\/a>, F.W. de Klerk<\/a> and Tony Blair<\/a> and traces the history of the atomic bomb, from one of its bright-eyed and later remorseful inventors, J. Robert Oppenheimer<\/a> (who makes a weepy confessional in the film), to the present state of global affairs and the nine nations with nuclear arsenal, USA, Russia, UK, France, Pakistan, India, North Korea, Iran and Israel. But more disturbingly, the film highlights how unprotected we are against the threat of the material (highly enriched uranium or HEU) and the know-how falling into the wrong hands, such as Al Qaeda. After all, according to Rolf Mowatt-Larssen<\/a>, former CIA Operations Officer for 22 years (1928-2005), to acquire HEU you can simply steal it, buy it or build it \u2013 and the film makes all three seem so feasible, like going food shopping in your local supermarket.<\/p>\n

With such volatile material in itself, Walker doesn\u2019t have to try too hard to make an unnerving and highly persuasive ticking time-bomb for going ‘zero’ tolerance on nukes, supported by real-life interviews with \u2018those in the know\u2019 and news footage. Taken quite literally: \u201cWe’re doomed\u201d, seems to be the sensational standpoint, especially if, as the film states, Iran and North Korea are ready to begin trading their technology, and a tiny amount of HEU (25kg) needed to make a bomb can easily be smuggled through ports in kitty litter, without a whiff of detection.<\/p>\n

Looking at Walker\u2019s film objectively, it suggests how damn lucky we\u2019ve been so far, and attempts to finish on an \u2018upbeat\u2019 note \u2013 after scaring the bejesus out of us \u2013 with a last push of hope: There\u2019s been a 50 per cent reduction in US and Russian nukes \u2013 but there are still around 23,000 bombs and 1,700 tonnes of HEU worldwide. Barack Obama and the Russians have agreed to reduce their stockpiles by another 50 per cent. That\u2019s good to hear, but it\u2019s not the big super powers that are the biggest \u2018villains\u2019 of the piece, rather the other, more unsettled players \u2013 according to Blair and others: Pakistan and Iran. In this sense, Countdown<\/em> seems to serve as a propaganda tool for the West\u2019s latest political concerns. In fact, this film is dated already as it\u2019s pre-Osama Bin Laden demise, clearly pointing to Pakistan\u2019s political instability and untrustworthiness with it\u2019s harbouring of the world\u2019s most wanted man. To balance matters a little, it does offer the highly rational argument of \u2018defence\u2019 used by the West from Iran\u2019s Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, leading you to think for a moment, who are the real scaremongers here?<\/p>\n

In terms of its general picture, Countdown<\/em> doesn\u2019t tell us anything we don\u2019t already know, but the well-presented details enforce what we already fear, bringing it back to public attention. Perhaps the most alarming memory of Countdown<\/em> are the famous words from John F. Kennedy<\/a>: \u201cEvery man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us\u2026.\u201d (Address before the General Assembly of the United Nations, NYC, 1961). Food for thought, which is precisely what Walker has achieved above all else.<\/p>\n

\u2018Demand Zero Day\u2019 on June 21 sees over 72 participating venues across the UK, where you can watch a screening of the film, followed by a live stream of the panel from BAFTA, including Queen Noor, Lawrence Bender, Valerie Plame and Margaret Beckett.<\/strong> http:\/\/countdowntozerofilm.com\/screenings<\/a>.<\/p>\n

WATCH THE TRAILER<\/strong><\/p>\n