When The Wind Blows (1986)

As my blogging tendencies might indicate, I'm deeply affected by cartoon carnage of all shapes and sizes, but if you were to ask me which animated death stands out as being the singularly most traumatic of my own childhood, I would vote without hesitation for the titular character from the 1982 adaptation of Raymond Briggs' The Snowman.  Just so there's no misunderstanding here, I love The Snowman dearly and consider it to be one of the finest animated films ever made (it is certainly the finest seasonal animated film).  But as a small kid, I never got why adults were so keen on shoving this incredibly distressing story down our throats at every opportunity.  The Snowman was everywhere when I was a kid - books, toys, jigsaw puzzles, the works (this actually hasn't changed much, only these days he's typically accompanied by that odious coattail-rider The Snowdog).  Not only was it a fixture of seasonal viewing, they frequently rolled it out for us to watch at school at absolutely any time of year.  I sat and watched in silence, but I was extremely grateful to the one child who commented, with vague undertones of protest, that it was "a sad story".  No fooling.  The Snowman broke my heart as a four year old (what it left intact of my childhood innocence was subsequently finished off when we rented the VHS of Benji The Hunted) and it still breaks my heart today as a full-grown adult.  I fervently maintain that it's the saddest ending of all-time, way sadder than E.T. the Extra Terrestrial or whatever topped the most recent poll of tearjerker moments.

Of course, as I got older I also gained a greater appreciation for the aesthetic and atmospheric merits of the film, which are beyond wonderful.  But what really helped to take the sting off that ending, for a while, was that enchantingly bizarre live-action opening in which David Bowie walks in and introduces the film as something that happened to him as a child - really now, if we were supposed to conclude that the young child in the story grew up to be DAVID BOWIE, then suddenly the ending doesn't seem quite so glum after all.  That Bowie was possibly just supposed be in character, as the young protagonist's grown-up counterpart, didn't occur to me until years later, when some spoilsport pointed out that the present he receives from Father Christmas bears a name tag reading "James" - actually, I think I'd always willfully overlooked that detail because it didn't exactly mesh with my fantasies (regardless, which of those two interpretations would you rather have as the official one?).  Nevertheless, I've always held the Bowie opening close very to my heart, and I'll never forget how fuming I was when I tuned in one year, in the early 00s, and discovered that they'd replaced it with one featuring Briggs' version of Father Christmas (with no disrespect to Mel Smith, who always did a charming job voicing him), which rubbed further salt into my wounds by very explicitly calling the boy "James".  I recently tuned in again for the 2016 broadcast and was delighted to see that the Bowie opening had returned, but...um, yeah, obviously that came with its own very heavy dash of poignancy this time around.  Actually, it's safe to say that the 2016 broadcast of The Snowman left me even more weepy-eyed than usual.

We'll talk more about The Snowman, the profound effect it had on my life and my petty resentment toward The Snowdog at a later date.  I bring it up now because it never ceases to surprise me how many people, when discussing Jimmy T. Murakami's other adaptation of a classic Raymond Briggs tearjerker (also with Bowie's fingers somewhere in the pie), will utter something along the lines of, "Hard to believe that something as harrowing as this came from the very same mind as The Snowman".  Actually, I don't find it hard to believe at all; not when I look back and recall how many buckets of tears I've shed over that damned Snowman film.  Raymond Briggs absolutely loved to tear at his readers' heartstrings - it's something he did pretty consistently throughout his career.  When The Wind Blows may well be the darkest, most terror-inducing entry in his canon, but it's by no means an anomaly on the grimness front (see also - The Man, Ethel & Ernest, the screenplay for Ivor The Invisible).  Father Christmas and its sequel, Father Christmas Goes On Holiday, are actually quite unusual among Briggs' output for containing no real horror or heartbreak of any variety.

First published in 1982, When The Wind Blows tells the tragic story of Jim and Hilda, an elderly English couple who survive a nuclear attack by constructing a lean-to shelter in their living room, only to find themselves helpless and left to fend for their ill-equipped selves when faced with the prospect of long-term survival in a devastated Sussex.  One of the book's stranger attributes is that it is, technically, a sequel to a book published two years prior, titled Gentleman Jim, although thematically there's not much to link the two, other than Jim's pitiful ignorance on surviving in a world that's quite a bit harsher than he anticipates.  With not so much a hint of impending nuclear annihilation in the air, Gentleman Jim sees Jim ditching his dead-end job as a public convenience janitor in favour of pursuing his boyhood dreams of being a highwayman.  It never skirts anywhere close to When The Wind Blows' levels of bleakness, but it still doesn't end terribly well for Jim, with his painfully naive, if well-intentioned antics ultimately landing him behind bars.  No reference is made to any of this in When The Wind Blows, leaving me a bit unclear as to whether the two stories are actually supposed to take place within the same timeline or if Briggs was merely recycling the characters in a brand new context.  Now out of jail and retired, Jim spends most of his days at the public library, keeping up to speed on the deteriorating international situation with the Soviet Union.  Hilda, meanwhile, refuses to immerse herself in her husband's growing fear of nuclear warfare, preferring to carry on as normal under the assumption that it will all blow over (and besides, nothing can get too out of control as long as she's able to keep the home in order).  Their son, Ron, whom we never actually meet first-hand, is resistant to Jim's instructions that he likewise prepare for nuclear attack, insisting that if the bomb does fall then there could be no hope of survival either way (note: anyone who's read Ethel & Ernest will twig that Jim and Hilda were clearly modeled on Briggs' own parents, with Ron being a stand-in for Briggs himself - he went to art college and was corrupted by some "blessed beatniks", according to Hilda).

Broadly, When The Wind Blows was Briggs' searing critique of government-issued civil defence materials on nuclear warfare, notably the infamous Protect and Survive pamphlet published in 1980, with Jim's blatantly misplaced trust in the directions therein (and in authorities in general) providing much of the story's pathos.  The title of the book is lifted directly from the traditional lullaby "Rock-a-bye Baby" (its references to the breaking bough here signifying the fragility of life and civilisation in the face of nuclear attack), but it also echoes the warning found in Protect and Survive that "radioactive dust, falling where the wind blows it, will bring the most widespread dangers of all."  What makes Protect and Survive such a chilling read, thirty-seven years on, are its distressingly unconvincing attempts to graft a sense of order and control onto a backdrop of sheer apocalyptic chaos; the notion that you could survive by hiding under a heap of doors and bin-bags and cleaning your plates in a box of sand when the wind was blowing deadly poison in all directions.  Occasionally, there's a slight slip-up which betrays just how dire such a predicament would truly be; notably, the warning that the sick and injured within your party should not expect to receive medical treatment for quite some time, and the subtle hint that if you live in a caravan, then you're basically screwed - contact your local authority for advice because we're pretty much clueless on this one.  Jim does his best to follow the government instructions to the letter, although he struggles to understand the reasoning behind a large chunk of them and is frequently bewildered by the strange and sometimes contradictory advice.  Whenever the situation becomes too dislocating for them, Jim and Hilda remedy their confusion by falling back on their nostalgia for the wartime spirit and optimism of their youth - a recurring source of both humour and horror throughout the story is the manner in which their memories of growing up during World War II have coloured their perception of the present conflict and how they anticipate things will play out (Briggs is keen to highlight the perils of such nostalgia, along with the irony that, once upon a time, Britain regarded Stalin as one of the good guys).  Despite Jim's steadfast confidence in The Powers That Be endeavouring to keep the general populace informed and united in the event of emergency, and providing assistance and leadership in the aftermath of attack, it's painfully obvious that once the bomb goes down it'll be every man and woman for themselves.  And a stiff upper lip is a very poor defence when there's fall-out in the air.

Murakami's film, which debuted in 1986, is enormously faithful to Briggs' book - not only is the original plot recreated in painstaking detail, but the screenplay (written by Briggs himself) replicates much of the book's dialogue word-for-word.  Jim and Hilda are voiced by John Mills and Peggy Ashcroft, respectively, and each is imbued with all the right levels of naivety, vulnerability and charm (Robert Houston, meanwhile, provides the voice of the radio announcer).  Where Marukami's film differs from the book is in expanding upon the level of visual narration, adding in a handful of non-dialogue sequences which create an additional fantasy life for Jim and Hilda while also revealing more of the local devastation in the aftermath of attack.  Whereas the book remained very tightly focused upon Jim and Hilda's perspective, the film intermittently pans away to show the rows of smoking rubble and charred sheep carcasses just a stone's throw from their doorstep.  In the book, the nuclear blast is represented, hauntingly, by a double page of stark whiteness with pink around the edges, with the images of Jim and Hilda huddled inside their lean-to shelter gradually regaining visibility over the following two pages.  The film, by contrast, contains an entire sequence showing the surrounding environs completely unraveling in what looks like an unnaturally strong wind.  Another particularly striking aspect of the original book is its use of colour throughout, the warm reds and greens of earlier pages being replaced by colder, grimier colours once the bomb has been dropped, and the pale, washed-out sickliness of the final pages mirroring the couple's slow deterioration and eventual death from radiation poisoning. This isn't strictly replicated in the film, where the post-blast world is instead characterised by a dark, persistent smogginess.  It also creates its own unique visual identity by combining traditional animation with three dimensional props and backgrounds, giving the picture a curiously quaint aesthetic; the kitchen-sink banality of Jim and Hilda's life at once beguiling but also eerie, as we anticipate its inevitable and irrevocable destruction.  The film's soundtrack, which includes a title track by David Bowie and a score by Roger Waters, likewise adds immeasurably to the mood and character of the overall piece, the opening Bowie contribution being a stirring torrent of loss, desperation and dread, and the Waters score evoking a harrowing sense of a wide-eyed innocence giving out its last dying flickers amid the turmoil.

This inkling of a waning hopefulness and purity is given greater emphasis in Murakami's film, with the film-exclusive fantasy sequences providing a gentle, mournful representation of Jim and Hilda's inner hopes and dreams, as well as glimpses into their bygone years as a younger, more carefree couple.  Featured in these sequences is a recurring image of Hilda blowing down upon a dandelion and causing the seeds to scatter - naturally, there are ominous echoes here of the nuclear blast and its dispersing radiation all around, but it also shows a more wistful, childlike side to the fussy and pedantic Hilda, as she immerses herself in an escapist fantasy characterised by imagery evocative of illustrations from fairy tale storybooks.  There are occasional disturbances within these fantasies - for example, a group of angelic children surrounding a stain glass lamb which is subsequently shown roasted and carved up on a dinner table (tying in with the images of dead, scorched sheep we later see in the fields surrounding Jim and Hilda's house), but overall there's a genuine sense of visual beauty and emotional transcendence to these interludes which provides a welcome catharsis to the starkness of the surrounding picture.  Much like Jim and Hilda, the viewer is submerged in so much pain and desolation throughout that they'll too find themselves gasping for the occasional fresh breath of oxygen.

The film retains the book's notoriously bleak conclusion, as Jim and Hilda, now covered in bruises and severely emaciated, finally resign themselves to fate by slipping into their paper bags (a measure which even Jim had previously been inclined to dismiss as a joke) and staggering back into the lean-to shelter to wait for death.  Neither character seems willing to admit to the other that all hope is lost, with Jim still reassuring Hilda that The Powers That Be will know what to do when they find them, but there is a definite air of retreat and resignation to this final move, not least with Hilda ensuring that the box containing the couples' medical cards and birth certificates is safe and to hand.  At the very end, Jim and Hilda consider praying, in what seems like a curious cry of desperation from two characters who have not, up until now, indicated that they have any kind of religious leanings.  The book and film both close with Jim attempting to recite the Lord's Prayer, but even then, Briggs insists upon one final disturbance, with Jim, in his confused and weakened state, mixing in lines from "The Charge of the Light Brigade" and Hilda feebly begging him to stop.  The film takes this anguish up a whole extra level by throwing in a chilling visual metaphor, in which the camera slowly pans away from a light being cast against the lean-to shelter and sees it disappear into a live-action shot of clouds sweeping across a darkened sky.  Some might find this final imagery comforting, an indication that Jim and Hilda have been freed of their decaying bodies and carried up to Heaven, but to my mind the film offers no such reassurance - the fading Jim and Hilda are merely lost amid a merciless and chaotic wind that continues to blow death and destruction wherever it goes, the rays of sunlight which overwhelm the screen in the closing moments being eerily reminiscent of the same overpowering brightness that accompanied the blast.

When The Wind Blows undoubtedly earns its place as one of the all-time heart-breakers in the history of animation, almost on a par to the ending of The Snowman, in fact.  But then as we discussed, cheerfulness was never exactly Briggs' thing.

Finally, When The Wind Blows contains one of my all-time favourite end-credits stingers - as the last of the credits roll, we catch the eerie sounds of "MAD" being tapped out repeatedly in Morse code.  This stands for Mutual Assured Destruction, the principles of which Jim had previously attempted to explain to Hilda whilst killing time inside the shelter.  Here, it seems like yet another cry of desperation in the darkness; a third lost soul trying frantically to establish if there's anybody left alive out there to hear them.  And, of course, lamenting the overwhelming insanity of it all.

We'll close this review by taking it back to where it began (more or less), with David Bowie, on the first anniversary of his passing.  This dark and scary world is an infinitely brighter place for having had you, Starman.