Transcript
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Narrator/Commentator (1:36)
Welcome back to another four minutes of when the Wind Blows. Jim and Hilda are in a desperate state. They lie slumped on the sofa with dirty blankets thrown over them, and their faces are drawn and pinched with bleak black shadows under their eyes. This terrible decline has obviously happened to them gradually, in line with the principle of boiling a frog. You don't notice the severity of the pain and distress as it advances upon you so slowly. If they'd been thrown instantly into this condition after the bomb dropped, then they'd be forced to realize the danger. But it's happened so, so slowly. If a limb had been blown off, for example, or one of them blinded or crushed in the blast, then everything would be different. Indeed, the story would lose a lot of its power because it comes from their slow, sad, lonely decline. Think of Mr. And Mrs. Kemp in Threads. After the bomb drops, they are instantly injured, instantly in a destroyed house, instantly have to contend with the gruesome death of at least one of their children. With them, we experience horror, but with Jim and Hilda, it's overwhelming sadness and pity. As our current four minutes begins, we view them from above. Jim is stretched out on the sofa. Hilda is lying on sofa cushions on the floor beside him. Why is she not on the other sofa, which is across the room? Presumably, she wants to be as close to Jim as possible, so she's dragged the cushions over to his side and made up a bed on the floor, which sounds almost cute and childish, as though they're having a sleepover or something. And also shows us how listless and sick Hilda must be, because we know from earlier in the film how house proud she was, always dusting and mending and plumping the cushions. And indeed, she was wary of her cushions being used in the inner refuge because they might get dirty. And yet here she is now, dropping them on the floor, sleeping on the carpet amidst the dust. She is past caring about such trivial things. Two other objects are in the foreground. One is a cracked chamber pot, mercifully empty, which Jim has placed on the floor by his head. As I said last week, this implies that it will be used for vomiting and not for its original intended use. But it's empty. There is no vomit. Is this because the filmmakers are too genteel to portray vomit in a bowl? Hardly, because they're showing us all other kinds of horror. So it probably indicates there is no vomit being produced simply because he and Hilda have empty stomachs. They have stopped eating, no doubt due to a combination of nausea, but also the simple lack of food in the house. Also, even if the kitchen did have food, such effort is now required of them to prepare that food that even if it had been available, it would have been a terrible obstacle for them to make something to eat. They would have to wipe down the tins, find some relatively clean crockery, and if there was nothing clean, then they'd have to scour the used plates with sand. That was the solution of cleaning plates without water. And then they'd have to heat the food over the camping stove. Now, that is all some amount of effort when they are so clearly sick and weak. Think how it feels when you're in the midst of a flu or even a bad cold. The thought of just getting up to make a simple cup of tea is just too much for you. I remember being ill once and I was watching UK Gold. That certainly makes me feel old. And I was just lying there on the sofa, weak as a Kitten and I desperately wanted to change the channel, but couldn't because the remote control was on the floor and reaching for it was just too much of an effort. So how could we expect Jim and Hilda to go through all of that just to prepare food? The wiping and the cleaning and the scouring and then the cooking added to that. They don't have an appetite, they're plagued with nausea, so it's easier then just to lie on the cushions and get weaker. We also know they have no water to drink, so that also would make eating difficult because their throats would be painfully dry. So I think they have simply stopped eating, just stopped. And therefore the little chamber pot by Jim's head is dry. The other object in full view is their telephone. It's bright red, which always seemed obvious and symbolic, suggesting it was something to be used to call for help, something to do with emergencies. And now, of course, the lines are all completely dead. And so the phone just sits there. Its redness dulls with fallout dust, sits there as a useless reminder of help and aid and friends, neighbours, communication, everything, which is now impossible. The red telephone is, of course, a symbol of nuclear tension. Hollywood has often portrayed the President picking up the red phone to talk to his Soviet counterpart or to issue terrifying orders. To see the symbolic, slightly scary red telephone in this cute country cottage, where everything else comes to us in nice faded pastel shades, has always seemed deliberately jarring. And I think we got the same effect with their radio, an ugly black block planted on their neat white dining table. Both the phone and the radio communication devices, of course, both capable of bringing alarming news and warnings into their peaceful countryside home. And because the outside world at this moment is so terrifying, both of these communication devices were stark, blocky, jarring, intrusive. But with the telephone, it's notable that its red glossy paint has started to fade. The handset is blackened in places and the wire looks cracked with white beginning to show through the red paint. So the red telephone, once so imposing, is now starting to degrade. It's as if, having done its job, it can now retire. The metaphorical red telephones in Washington, Moscow, London have done their jobs too. There is no more need of them, indeed, no more need of any communication, because there's no one left to speak to. The only person Jim and Hilda used their phone for was to speak to their son, Ron, in London. London? Well, he's gone for sure, so by all means, let the phone decay. So they both lie there, Jim on the sofa, Hilda on a little makeshift bed of Sofa cushions on the floor at his feet. And I feel for Jim because as they both lie here, Hilda keeps quietly talking, talking, talking. And Jim, gallant and kind to the end, doesn't think of telling her to pipe down. Give it a rest, for God's sake, woman. Let me sleep. No, there's not a bit of it. Even though he's exhausted and is struggling to keep his eyes open, he responds to all her little questions with his usual mix of naive nonsense. He is determined to keep their spirits up. Hilda concludes that the best thing to do is to lie here and wait for help. And she says that as though it's a decision, a decision made having taken Jim's wise advice. But of course there is no decision making here. They have no choice but to lie on the floor. There is literally nothing else they could do. They can't even choose a different room to sleep in. If you must lie there and wait for death, you could at least perhaps lie in your bed. But no, because they don't have the energy anymore to climb the stairs to the bedroom. We saw a suggestion of that in the earlier scene where Hilda saw the rat and Jim stumbled and struggled as he tried to run upstairs to her aid. They've declined fast since then, so there's no way now that they could tackle those stairs. So no, there is nothing to do but lie here on the dusty sofa cushions and wait for the end. I hope Beryl and Ron got back all right. Oh, they'll be all right. They'd have been safely home long before the bomb. Arg. Ron's a sensible boy.
