Three Two One - Zero!

CinemaSerf6/10

Jan 13, 2025

View on TMDb

It's been only three weeks since the first successful test of the atomic bomb when the "Enola Gay" travels to Japan to drop a payload that will end WWII. Whilst the families of the continental USA are celebrating a reduction in ration restrictions and watching the US PGA come to it's conclusion, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are reduced to rubble with virtually nothing left upstanding - structural, man nor beast. The imagery is ghastly, ruined, desperate and coupled with those similar pictures from a war-torn and defeated Nazi Germany, Alexander Scourby narrates a story of man's historical obsession with power, science and wealth - dating back to the ancient Greeks, using a mixture of especially written dialogue and quotations from a variety of spiritual texts that gradually turn magic into fact. It's a truly global industry that exists by the start of the 20th century when Einstein discovers the theory of e=mc2 (energy = mass x speed of light squared) that proves that unlimited energy can be produced by uranium atom splitting. Now the research focus moves to the USA where Roosevelt must consider just how much of a risk this may be in the hands of Adolf Hitler. Much of the next half hour of this well-resourced archive documentary follows the intricate development of the chain-reactions in both the science and people that will be required as "Project Manhattan" is born. The narration is complemented by an increasingly menacing score to help illustrate the trial and error procedures that led not just to the bomb, but to the generation of energy for the entire nation that came afterwards. It's the assembly of that archive that's most impressive here which coupled with some simple animation reveals the chronology of these processes in this example of the ultimate in alchemy. It's not gold they discover but endless fuel developed using robot technology and an evolving understanding of just how interconnected everything in the universe happens to be. Of course, the tripartite solution this technology fearfully offered to end WWII is soon forgotten as the world re-divides with China and the USSR on one side and the "West" on the other. New enemies emerge and this time the acquisition and development of these original weapons of mass destruction is the new goal. It's at this point that the narration becomes a little too jingoistic with endless disparaging remarks about the Communists and a little too many extolling of the virtues of the Americans clothing the naked and feeding the hungry etc. That's not to say they weren't or didn't, but the manner of the presentation now turns distantly propagandist and that rather compromises the integrity of what started out as a more interesting look at co-operative science in the face of terror and opportunity. It's still with a look, though, but maybe with a pinch of salt.