[When the Wind Blows (1986) & The Torture of Waiting in Uncertain Times]

War, an ongoing topic in human history and a horrific pile of terrible events that in our current times has been impacting us in one way or another, bringing death, desperation, agony and all bad things that can come up in our heads.

When the Wind Blows is a movie released in 1986, its story is about a middle aged couple, Jim and Hilda Bloggs, that live in the British countryside in where they’re quite isolated depending mostly on the radio and the television to stay informed (and also from a library that Jim sometimes visit taking a bus to go there).But as any other story there is a problem present ready to crash with our protagonist lives, there’s a war about to broke down.And it’s no other type of war than a nuclear war, and with that and a our background time full of uncertainty and a suffocating sense of loneliness we are all set to dive in the movie.

This is not a regular type of movie, it is not even your conventional war story where you follow the steps of a soldier or a veteran of some kind, instead we´ll get a look to the potential victims of a what it fist seemed like a possible attack.First off I want to appreciate the way this movie was brought up into life, with the way I described the movie, whoever jumps in to read it without seeing the images in this post may imagine something like any other movie with real actors and real landscapes and what it could be a real scenario of our own world, but it isn’t like that, this not a live action movie, this a traditional animated (and kind of an hybrid) movie with elements of stop-motion, with characters looking like they got out of a children book of some sort, but please don’t be quick to judge it cause for now it’s a little too fast to do that, this is in no way a children movie, I don’t think it even can be seen by children (it probably would be to boring at first for them and then it would be too dark for a child to see), remember, this is a war story, a tragedy.
Coming back to the style of the movie, I easily can see why it was made to be animated, animation as a storytelling tool can be probably the most powerful ways to tell a story of any kind have an impact on the viewer and with that in mind, a story with a theme that’s always so hard to swallow and a chilling soundtrack, this is a movie that doesn’t hold on for too long to hit you with it’s truth.

At the very start we see Jim coming back home from the nearest town, looking and reading about information about the creeping war and the state of the country, after talking about his day with his wife Hilda they quickly began talking about the current situation and whether they believe in the news that are all over the newspapers, Hilda being one the refrains from it thinking its all baffling and nonsense and there’s Jim that’s quite preoccupied by it.We can pretty much see what kind of characters they are over these scenes, there’s one in particular where they sited down to eat together while listening to the radio that for a moment it’s playing music but Jim quickly changes the station to one that’s giving the news and Hilda doesn’t like it but doesn’t refuse to it either and just eat in silence while Jim listens to it just in time to hear about the escalating situation.With this prime demonstration we can expect that Jim is the kind of person that likes to stay informed with the news and the options that they are given in case of an emergency relying religiously in the news and in the pamphlets that he was given in the library (to the point where he doesn’t question it and doesn’t take other ways or measures that could help him and his wife in the hard-to-believe-context they are in) to survive and prepare a shelter in case a attack happens.
On the contrary with his wife Hilda, we see that she tries to keep an easygoing attitude over the situation and tries to reassure her husband that things will just happen as they did during the times of WW2, times where (as they related) didn’t seem as affected as in other areas and could still live their lives with no much to worry about.Even though she passes as a bit condensing here with her attitude towards the situation and the way he husbands worries about it, she doesn’t do it with malice, both of them fall short in their situation in a balance of worrying to much and ignorance, but she still cares and all she wants is not to worry and live a happy life with her spouse like any other person would.

One thing we are sure about is: Jim and Hilda are old, they are old people living in a still early developed world and pretty much living in their own in the middle of the countryside in England.They got newspaper and the radio and even a t.v but still, those times were nothing alike our days were having information and news at our hands is nothing more like a daily thing we can look at any time, but Jim and Hilda cannot.

Throughout what we see next, Jim starts to prepare their shelter inside their own house made of the doors of a couple of their rooms, and so he and Hilda talk about it a plan on getting things ready, even going to a store to get more supplies but only getting some of it thanks to the preoccupation that holds peoples mind in a state of fear and anxiety.
And then, the news broke out, there’s a missile coming to them in the next 3 minutes, with fear building up and the sense of not knowing what to do over them Jim successfully gets to his wife and the both of them get inside the shelter that Jim worked on, and with not much to say next.. the bomb stretches its arms and with the wind reaches and strikes them with its destructive light.

For was left of the story, we feel more than before that sense of isolation, desperation and the frustration of not being able to do anything in hope of getting them to a place safe.

The bomb exploded, they survived, but due to fear and even some deluded hope that everything will turn out alright at the end, they stay in their destroyed house awaiting for news, for help, for water, for a sign that the worse already happened, for help… but sometimes waiting too long doesn’t do it any favor to the situation, they stay in a place with a dead ground and a black filthy cloud depraving them from seeing the light of a better day, consuming them and making them fall ill right in their own beloved home with only but each other to accompany and console while trying their hardest to sweep away all their pain and shame. But even so, after all what is left with us is nothing more than the gut wrenching feeling that everything that we were waiting for was nothing more than the devastating reality of our final destiny and the realization that our love and fear might be as well the same thing.

Honestly, I didn’t expect the movie to make me feel so much despair neither did I expect it to be such a depressing journey to witness, but then again that’s always what war brings to us, to witness the failure and pain that no one should go thru, and at times that in so many places the biggest obstacle that people have is war, I can’t do much but feel my heart feel for them only hoping that one day a more peaceful and happy resolution comes their way.

I’m sorry, I didn’t intended to make anyone reading this depressed or anything, I just wanted to talk about this movie, I only knew about it not such along ago and even if it’s not what a lot of people are looking for to see, it’s still a good movie that I think people should see, because then again, our reality is far more darker than fiction, and in fiction there’s always a piece of our own world.Please let me know what do you think of this kind of movies and if you have seen this one yet, hopefully it was interesting to you all.

And like this, this post comes to an end, thank you for reading have a good day/afternoon/evening/night, Aufwiedersehen.

All of the images were taken by me