Apocalypse: nuclear war film on the rise | nd-aktuell.de

Only a good 500 people have had this view so far,” says Russian cosmonaut Alexey Pulov (Pilou Asbæk) to American astronaut Kira Foster (Ariana DeBose) as all crew members stand in amazement in the dome of the ISS space station. They look towards the earth and are happy about the beauty of the “Blue Planet”. Just a few hours later, the six crew members of the international space station in the film “ISS” discover how bright bits flash across the earth’s surface. There is more and more lightning until a spreading conflagration visible from space and a radio message bring certainty: a nuclear war between the USA and Russia is raging on Earth. The three Russian cosmonauts, like their American colleagues, are immediately given the task of taking control of the ISS – whatever the cost. The 90-minute psychological chamber play then shows how the crew members become more and more suspicious, soon circling each other like predators and sabotaging each other, until the murderous logic of the war on Earth also determines what happens on the space station. Escalating violence included.

The ISS is currently booming in film and is often used as a setting for the currently popular science fiction subgenre, which relatively realistically stages space travel in the near future. Three series set on the ISS have already come out this year: from the well-made Apple TV+ series “Constellation” with a dash of horror to “Infiniti” on Arte to the disappointingly flat Netflix series “Das Signal”. In 2022, the Russian feature film “The Challenge” was even filmed on the ISS.

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In »ISS«, the narrowness of the space station is presented in an aesthetically convincing way, with the camera sometimes literally searching its way under the actors’ armpits. At first there is an almost homely atmosphere on the ISS. The space station is reminiscent of a cluttered shared apartment: rock music plays constantly, and in the evenings the crew members discuss the end of state socialism while drinking schnapps and tipsily belt out “Winds of Change” by the Scorpions. But soon, after war breaks out on Earth, this place becomes a pure nightmare. The film shows how difficult it is for individual crew members to overcome their scruples – until the previously celebrated communality of obedience to orders, paranoia and sheer violence is overridden.

“ISS” was filmed and produced before Russia attacked Ukraine. The political developments of the last two years, including a renewed arms race, have made the film extremely topical. It was only in June 2024 that the Stockholm peace research institute Sipri reported that there are currently more operational nuclear warheads on Earth than ever before. The nuclear war on Earth isn’t even shown in the film. Rather, the crew members don’t know exactly what’s really happening there. Only when they look out of the hatch at the red blazing planet do they realize that the end of humanity may be approaching. This visual production is somewhat reminiscent of George Clooney’s film “The Midnight Sky” (2020), in which the Earth looks like a destroyed, festering wound from space. The beautiful, fascinating view of the “Blue Earth,” as Yuri Gagarin described it in 1961 as the first person in space and thus coined a term that is still used today, turns into a hellish nightmare. »ISS« joins the countless filmic depictions of an impending end of the world, of which a disturbing number have recently been staging a nuclear war.

In terms of craftsmanship, the film is, for the most part, a well-made thriller that powerfully depicts the space station and the fascination of the earth from space. The film also explores the psychological depths of this extreme situation in detail and stages it as a tense drama. But in the end the story drifts too far into the melodramatic and, as is usual in Hollywood, ends in a Hobbesian battle of all against all. That’s a bit trite, but the film still hits a nerve – because it doesn’t present the war as something historical, but as a current, impending danger. This is unpleasant and will probably leave many viewers with a strangely disturbing feeling. It is not unlikely that the nuclear war film genre will gain further momentum in the next few years. Christopher Nolan’s historical film “Oppenheimer”, which tells the story of the “father of the atomic bomb” J. Robert Oppenheimer, was a box office hit last year.

»ISS«, USA 2023. Director: Gabriela Cowperthwaite; Book: Nick Shafir. Starring: Chris Messina, Ariana DeBose, Pilou Asbæk, John Gallagher Jr., Costa Ronin, Masha Mashkova. 96 min. Now in the cinema.

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