Coming to theatres today, Friday, September 18: THE MAN WHO SAVED THE WORLD
Peter Anthony’s hybrid account of mankind’s closest brush with nuclear destruction debuted at Woodstock last year. It also screened at CPH:DOX, Denver, Docville, and the International Uranium festival.
On an innocuous evening on September 26, 1983, an unassuming Soviet lieutenant named Stanislav Petrov made a split second decision that averted assured armageddon. Warned by malfunctioning Russian computer detection systems of an incoming American missile strike, his cool head prevailed over protocol, which demanded immediate retaliation. The world wouldn’t know of his pivotal act for years to come, and party officials downplayed the incident internally. In the post-Cold War years, Petrov’s life unravels, and he descends into alcoholism and bitterness. Sadly, despite the drama and pathos at the core of the story, Anthony fails to trust his material and instead muddies the waters in his retelling by wrong-headedly incorporating a messy and utterly unnecessary fictional element, as well as a general sense of staginess, to the whole proceeding. The resultant docudrama is a hokey, ineffective misfire, and distracts from the stark reality of the fascinating, singular incident which could have changed life on the planet.
what (not) to doc 