Venice 2025: “A House of Dynamite” by Kathryn Bigelow
by Alex Billington
September 2, 2025
Whoa. Kathryn Bigelow I just made a surprise suite to Oppenheimer. It is one of the most intensely exciting films of the year. Graceful God. My palms are always Sweaty Writing on this subject a few hours after the screening. A dynamite housewho should have kept the original title as indicated in the dialogue, A house filled with dynamiteis the first feature film directed by Kathryn Bigelow from manufacturing Detroit in 2017. She is back with a fury, revengeWith a story that will make things happen and make people talk. But of course – that’s the point. The whole film is designed to bring people to start discussing, well, everything about the state of the world at the moment. It is not really a series of Oppenheimer But that actually corresponds because it is the most lively continuation of the second half of this Masterpiece film. Nuclear fears are back and more powerful than ever in the real world. And this film wonders: what would we do in just 20 minutes if there was only one nuclear missile pulled towards a big American city? How would the United States react? What would happen? The president “Press the button“And to retaliate with more clouds? He does not give answers but that do make us think of real Answers to all these questions.
Directed by the Brain Director of a large military thriller A dynamite house presents a script written by the former president of NBC News Noah Oppenheim (also writer of scripts for Jackie & “Zero Day”). The concise configuration: When only one unmatched missile is launched in the United States, a race begins to determine who is responsible and how to respond. The film also presents a Rashomon Narrative concept – Three different scenarios presented as a triptych. In everyone, we follow a group of people in various posts of American government / military to find what to do and how to respond in the countdown of the 20-minute clock after discovering the missile, verifying it and following it while it flies towards the continent in the United States. A dynamite house is actually very specifically not political, it is rather neutral, saying to a mechanics “how a government realistically Answer “the story of procedural thriller. It’s a fantasy, with Idris Elba As a current American president. He does not comment on the policy of the real world, nor comments on America or its imperialism or its jingoisem or anything. It is ultimately a story about the way any The nation would be on board, how the whole world would be completely fucked, if anyone Send a missile to any other nation. This means making us think but not commenting on American problems in addition to storing our own nuclear weapons. The only thing he wants to remind us: we cannot fuck this if it really happens.
The first segment of A dynamite house focuses on members of the White House staff in the situation room, with Rebecca Fergusonas well as soldiers in a base in Alaska (with Anthony Ramos) This is the first to notice the missile, then to draw the preventive countermeasures intended to intercept and to stop the missile. It is the most intense of the segments because it sets up history. As the 20 minutes are exhausted, you will tremble with fear, trembling with apprehension achieving how one “shit“It would really be. Answer and what to do. After At any rate. But do you wait and discover? This is what makes this story such an intense examination of modern nuclear fears. It is no longer the time of the atomic bomb, they are massive, frightening and rapid nuclear weapons.
Just like with The injured locker And Zero black thirty Before that, cinema is exceptionally realistic. This is what Bigelow is extraordinary thanks to years of understanding real government and military interior work. So many Hollywood films are cheesy, which makes it all, from the situation room to missile pimples, but in this film, everything is specifically precise. Almost Also real. This is a realistic response (giving or taking what is happening with fascist control in the real American government in the real world) to this possibility. Including the idea that 20 minutes is extremely limit Time and Hollywood likes to look like 20 minutes at 2 hours when this is simply not the case. There is a line of dialogue where in a few minutes of the missiles strike, the American president says “give me a minute” and that cuts the clock and the public let escape a very cathartic and strong laugh because it is very seriously “Holly shit us don’t do it have a minuteMr. President. “I deeply appreciate this representation of realism because this is exactly what made my heart beat the race. I was not destroyed by watching a film for a while. One of the big questions in my mind: it will be just as exciting to look at how everything feels on the big screen without knowing? Nothing Before it starts – because this experience was breathtaking. I literally wiped sweat on my forehead for almost 2 hours.
The other remarkably intelligent thing in this case is the casting of Bigelow. There are a huge set of recognizable actors. One of my favorite meta-astces is that she throws actors playing the same character as they have already played in other series or films. Idris Elba has just played British Prime Minister in the streaming film Heads of state. Actor Gabriel Basso Plays a secret agent in the White House which is involved in a plot when an attack occurs in the very successful series The night agent on Netflix. Here, he also plays almost the same character – a person working in a top secret role in the White House. Whether or not they made all of these casting choices consciously, I am not sure, even if I should believe it. But the fact is that they finally connect to the greatest idea of what she is trying to do with A dynamite house. The film makes us rationalize and realize the fear of modern and real nuclear fears, and use these actors playing similar roles obliges viewers to withdraw from the fantasy of these other stories and, for two hours, seriously Think of the implications of the real world of us against them. Oppenheimer ends with exactly the same message. The great fear of nuclear weapons nowadays and that time is that, if someone draws one, the world will be changed forever. There is no return at the time. But if this happens, we (which means that whoever really pushes the pimples) must decide carefully how to react without erasing the rest of the planet. Are they going?
Alex Venice 2025 note: 9.5 out of 10
Follow Alex on Twitter – @Firsthowing / Or letterboxd – @firsshowing
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