“When the Wind Blows”, to anyone who may wander into a viewing on television without knowing exactly what it’s about, seems like a typical British animated film. It “stars” a rather adorable senior couple who live in a decent-sized home somewhere out in the English countryside. The film begins rather innocently, as the elderly husband, Jim Bloggs, returns home after reading a newspaper article about escalating confrontations between the United States and the Soviets. With the aide of government-issued pamphlets, Jim begins working on “bomb-proofing” his home, while he and his wife, Hilda, exchange dialogue about what they think the war will be like.
The dialogue during the first half is rather sweet and lighthearted; even though the war is the main focal point, the uninformed banter of the couple (both of them still hearken back to their experiences during World War II, expecting the same style of fighting) is played for humor. So is Jim’s unfailing belief in his government; he follows every order in the pamphlets, from painting his windows white, to creating a little fort by tearing all the doors off the house off their hinges, and leaning them together and against a wall at sixty-degree angles. It’s obvious that Jim doesn’t know why he is doing these things, despite Hilda’s constant questioning, yet he does them anyway, simply because he has faith that the government will know exactly what’s best for the people.
That’s when the couple hear a radio announcement that a missile will hit in three minutes. Desperate, Jim and Hilda hide behind their door fort, and wait for the explosion. It’s massive. Though their house was far away from the initial blast, there is still extensive damage to their house. As far as they can see, it’s nothing but dead trees and barren landscape. Yet the two happily live on, endlessly believing that the government, or the military, is on their way to help. Little do they realize that, chances are, no one could help them even if they tried, and that they are slowly succumbing to the effects of radiation poisoning.
While the plotline certainly sounds disturbing, and maybe even a wee-bit genius, I didn’t feel the execution was as high as it could have been, at least on the story side. While I understand that Jim’s naivety is pretty much the entire point of the movie, it simply gets ridiculous toward the end as he’s constantly dismissing their odd symptoms (weird rashes all over the body, black urine, etc.) as just more signs of “old age”. Now this could have been sad, if not heart-wrenching, had be been doing it simply to calm his wife down, in an attempt to shield her from the realities of what was actually going on. But it’s the fact that he honestly believes what he’s saying; that he is so confident in his pamphlets and beliefs that he, not even for a single second, stops to think about the potential long-term effects of fallout and radiation.
Even as Hilda’s hair starts to fall out, they both seem to ignore what should have then been obvious–I’m sorry, but one of my cinematic pet peeves are people that are stupid for longer than they should be (another example in which this has ruined a movie for me is “Straw Dogs”, in which the main character takes days too long to stand up to the people that are tormenting his family), and this is a classic example of that. The very ending, a sequence which should have been heart-wrenching and emotional, is instead ruined by happy end credit music that seems to kick in far too quickly, as if it wants to hurry up and take away some of the sting of the grim finale.
But where I feel “When the Wind Blows” really excels is in its animation, and overall presentation. While the film mostly relies on dialogue (aside from the opening scene, just about the entire movie takes place within their house), there are still some visual flourishes–while the movie is an animated film, there are nevertheless occasional three-dimensional sets that really make the backgrounds feel like they’re an actual part of the film, rather than just painted backdrops. A good example of this is during the climactic explosion, in which the inside of the Bloggs’ house blows up in 3-D, thus creating a rather realistic effect. There are also dream sequences of intentionally crude animation, as well as live action snippets thrown in. The score, by Roger Waters, is also very effective, mainly because it is rather sparsely used.
Overall, “When the Wind Blows” is a good film, but not the masterpiece that I was expecting. The vocal performances (by John Mills as Jim and Peggy Ashcroft as Hilda) are very well done, and the animation (and overall presentation) is superb and unique. On those grounds, it succeeds, and very well. But once it focuses on the main story, about two people who are so naive and have such endless faith in the world, and the people, around them, it slowly becomes more than a little irritating.
