newspaper 63, August 2008

The Dud Effect
by Deimantas Narkevicius

For a time, we knew that the world could end any day. As children of the Cold War, the event of a nuclear doomsday was an imminent threat that loomed large on the horizon of collective historical experience. It deliminated that horizon, epitomizing both the end of history and the condition for the present continuation of life, for everyday life continued simply because that one event, the logical conclusion to the modern history of industrialized warfare, total annihilation, had not yet occured, not just yet. Life went on because history was put on halt. The next step in the historical chain of events, in the process of modernization - its self-termination - was in front of everybody’s eyes. But those in whose powers it lay to take that step, agreed to presently not do so but just consider its possibility. The historical horizon of the cold war era, in this sense, is the suspension of history. It is the history of a historical void.

Things may have changed since then. After the crumbling of the bi-polar world order, we no longer seem to expect the history of global conflicts to culminate in one seminal event. There appear to be far too many players in the game, too many geographically specific conflicts on the news, for us to imagine that these diverse antagonisms could crystallize in one single manifestation. In the media, the bomb has been replaced by multiple smart bombs and portable explosives. Yet, factually, nuclear apocalypse is still possible. The bomb exists and if the news can be trusted, many countries in the world will soon get it, eager to revisit the void. The horizon of the past therefore still demarcates the threshold to the present: the nuclear threat remains a force, yet an invisible force - inspectors scan so-called ‘rogue states‘ in vain to locate its source - that continues to influence the global balance of power.

It is precisely this threshold between the historical horizon of the Cold War era and the contemporary condition that Deimantas Narkevicius delineates in his recent film The Dud Effect (2008). The film creates an experience of temporal slippage: shot on the site of a former Soviet nuclear missile base in the northwest of Lithuania, The Dud Effect reanimates the past of the site in re-enactment sequences; yet it also documents the base’s present state of abandonment and thereby evokes the invisible presence of nuclear power through the traces of its withdrawal. The film begins with a series of black and white still images of troops and rocket launcher trucks; they look like photos from a private album as soldiers pose for the camera to be remembered by family and friends. On the soundtrack you hear a kettle whistle and cups click as an older male voice resounds and recounts, in Russian, how the first Soviet missiles were stationed in Lithuania in 1961 and that he, the speaker, was put in charge of the regiment in 1975. The film switches to colour and moving images. After a short glimpse of a guard post, we see a Soviet military commander get dressed for work. Filmed on 16mm, these pictures continue the tone set by the photographic material: they look like historic found footage, or at least this is how you look at them, since the narrative voice-over at the start of the film made you expect to see a documentary. It still takes a while before it begins to dawn on you that this is not, not really, what you are presently watching.
The commander receives an official phone call whereupon, at his office, he calmly proceeds to make a series of short calls himself. Each consists of one order in a sequence of commands required for the launch of a nuclear missile and is answered by a call back confirming its execution. It takes endless minutes to go through all steps in the protocol. Meanwhile soldiers hustle for cover underground. Then a blinding light from the window gives evidence of a successful launch. After this the film slows down further. You see a tree in the morning light. A bird flies away. The camera travels through deserted spaces inside and outside the base, through tunnels, past disused terminals until it reaches the place where, as curved support structures indicate, the holding bay for the missiles must have been. They are gone. But you can feel their presence. On the soundtrack rain begins to fall. The film ends.

By having a historical witness re-enact his former role as base commander, Narkevicius performs what in film terms is know as “emplotment”. He translates an atmospheric scenario into a series of acts with a story. The details are unique. Still, when you see it you know you have seen it before. Movies have often portrayed it. There are influential anti-war movies like War Game (1965) by Peter Watkins that made nuclear apocalypse seem gruesomely real. Yet, the nuclear missile launch sequence has since the 1960s also become a standard plot pointin action thrillers (Bond and beyond). By isolating this plot point, Narkevicius highlights the paradox that the one historical event that never happened (The bomb always remained a dud) and, had it happened, would have left no society behind to tell its story, became a key motif in the cinematic imaginary and a story often told. In re-telling it, however, Narkevicius un-works it: the bureaucratic prolongation of the launch process, required by its protocol, erodes the eventfulness of the event from within. No red button is pushed. No glaring digits count down to lift off. No dramatic instantineity. A stoic officer ticks boxes on a list of steps. The ultimate event turns out to be a monotonous procedure and therefore, strictly speaking, a non-event. In portraying the launch like this, Narkevicius, foregrounds the liminal status of the event: it marks the threshold between the possible and real, the imagined and unimaginable and, as such, also the threshold between the graphic nightmares of the cold war era and our current inability to picture a future threat other than through historic imagery. On the threshold of this (non-)event time turns into place. It’s an empty abandoned place into which history inscribed itself in the moment of transition when the bomb went away – to another, invisible site.