Countdown to Zero

Countdown to Zero
Lucy Walker, director
Lawrence Bender, producer, for Participant Media
Feature documentary includes: Tony Blair, Jimmy Carter, Musharraf, Gorbachev, Valerie Plame, Oleg Khintsagov

It’s astonishing how many documentaries are released in cinemas these days. The numbers in Toronto have gone up from one-a-month seven years ago, on average, to once a week these days. Chalk it up to the decline of TV and newsprint journalism, which has reneged on its public service commitments and the rise of responsible, inspired work by Independent filmmakers in North America and Europe.

Though the number of Indie docs is rising, the ones with star power are relatively few. Countdown to Zero is so stellar that it practically gleams on the horizon. The film is produced by Participant Media, the good guys of Hollywood who bankrolled Syriana, Good Night and Good Luck, Fast Food Nation and a host of other politically engaging dramas and docs. Lawrence Bender, the producer, is Quentin Tarantino’s business partner, responsible for Inglourious Basterds, Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction—everything since Reservoir Dogs. Bender’s doc credentials includes a little film called An Inconvenient Truth, which did pretty well for the environmental movement and Al Gore.

Lucy Walker, the director, is so gifted and beautiful that the London Times wrote a profile of her called “The Blonde’s Bombshell.” Her previous films, all award-winners, include Blindsight about a heroic mountain climber who can’t see and The Devil’s Playground about Amish youth exploring hedonism during “rumspringa,” their year off from being religious.

Countdown to Zero is about a topic that was uppermost in everyone’s minds during the ‘50s and ‘60s, Nuclear War. Baby boomers were raised to fear the Bomb; it seemed the inevitable conclusion to the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The threat was so ubiquitous that Stanley Kubrick made the brilliant satire Dr. Strangelove—a film referenced by Walker---as a darkly comic comment on the nearly universal concern about the Bomb.

Now, 45 years later, no one seems to be worried about the Bomb. People-on-the-street interview footage shows that people are only vaguely interested in the subject of nuclear war. Walker, Bender and Participant know that’s all-wrong and spend 100 minutes terrifying us.

Back in the day, we were worried that the two super-powers would decide to duke it out, atomic-style; the results wouldn’t have been pretty. Now, lots of nations have the Bomb—among them are India, Pakistan and Israel. Looming on the horizon is Iran. Score one for Countdown to Zero: as the list of countries with nuclear capabilities rises, so does the chance that one of them will use it “only” against their mortal enemy. But what would happen then? Wouldn’t those countries have allies? Isn’t this how the two World Wars started?

Then, there’s Russia. Hardly the efficiently run dictatorship of the old Soviet Union, modern Russia resembles the Wild West. Gangsterism is rampant; security systems are rundown; and many people are broke. Walker interviews Oleg Khintsagov, a former factory worker of dubious morals and means, who was arrested with uranium stolen from his nuclear ‘factory.’ What did he want for it? Enough rubles to buy a fridge.

Who could potentially buy the kind of goods necessary to construct bombs? Terrorists, of course, and Walker connects the dots on this notion to great effect. Using interviews with a host of celebrity interviewees including Jimmy Carter, Tony Blair and former CIA agent Valerie Plame, Walker makes the case that other Bin-Ladens—wealthy terrorists—are lurking in the shadows, ready to strike.

So, what do we do? Here’s where Walker, Bender and the other “participants” run into a problem. The solution is to eliminate nuclear weapons. But is that likely? We all grew up hearing that it was impossible to get the genie back in the bottle.

All we can do is hope that nothing will happen and that the “scariest documentary of the year,” which is what the British press called Countdown to Zero, will make the powers-that-be increase their security measures.