My Father has always said he has never been more afraid of the World Ending than in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Luckily she bailed me out and told me she read the book much later, but still while we were up to our eyeballs in the Cold War. I wanted to ask what it was like to have read this book in 1957, but that is a rather delicate question to a woman of an indeterminate age. When I checked this book out of the library, the librarian, the same one who gave me such good material for my In Cold Blood review, said that this book terrified her, not because of the horrifying circumstances in the book, but the plodding calmness of the characters. Those years between 1957-1963 proved to be tumultuous years indeed. On the Beach was published in 1957, but the novel is set in what was then the near future of 1963. I dare say it will get along all right without us.”Īn Instructional Manual from 1951 on what to do in the event of an A-Bomb attack. The world will go on just the same, only we shan't be in it. Unless you cannot bear to be confronted with your own mortality, this is a must-see.“It's not the end of the world at all," he said. The director uses several filming techniques that are rarely used so that the viewer gets time to think about the situation and feel the dilemma of the character.
The movie is played well, directed well and has great photography. You feel the difficulties in the way the characters choose to die. That might be true on the surface, but it is completely different when you keep in mind that they all are going to die. There are story lines that resemble soap opera's. Not much action, but for those who like to think while watching a movie, this film will stick to you. An American nuclear submarine that survived the war is boarded by an Aussie liaison officer and a cynical scientist, that used to date the sister-in-law of the officer, to search for possible survivors.
There is a chance that some people close to the north pole survived. Within two months, no one human will be alive. Australia gets spared initially, but its inhabitants face certain death as clouds of radio active fall-out nears. The plot is simple: War has broke out (in this case between the US and China, but it could be Iraq or North-Korea too.) and the US strikes with nuclear weapons. Very confronting and on the eve of a war in Iraq, not at all unthinkable. What would I do when I was confronted with my certain death and the end of mankind? That question was getting more and more to me when I watched On The Beach.
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