Two nuclear physicists – American Dr. Sherwood and Russian Dr. Makarov – rethink the further directions of their respective projects. Dr. Makarov tries to promote a peaceful use of nuclear power and establish an international project for developing a nuclear-powered water desalination technology, while Dr. Sherwood, the father of the American A-bomb, is asked to develop an even more powerful nuclear device. Sherwood's new boss is a recently naturalized American and a former Nazi war criminal. Sherwood knows that his boss will not take "no" for an answer and decides to commit suicide by exposing himself to a deadly dose of radiation. Sherwood uses his slow death as the material for his medical research because he is not only a physicist but also a medical doctor.[...]
Source: rusfilm.pitt.edu
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Two nuclear physicists – American Dr. Sherwood and Russian Dr. Makarov – rethink the further directions of their respective projects. Dr. Makarov tries to promote a peaceful use of nuclear power and establish an international project for developing a nuclear-powered water desalination technology, while Dr. Sherwood, the father of the American A-bomb, is asked to develop an even more powerful nuclear device. Sherwood's new boss is a recently naturalized American and a former Nazi war criminal. Sherwood knows that his boss will not take "no" for an answer and decides to commit suicide by exposing himself to a deadly dose of radiation. Sherwood uses his slow death as the material for his medical research because he is not only a physicist but also a medical doctor.
Dr. Sherwood is originally from a small island in the Pacific not far from an American nuclear testing site. His entire family gradually dies out because of the exposure to nuclear fallout products, or as the locals call them the "silver ash." Finally when his little nephew, Johnny, gets sick, he asks Makarov to fly him to the Soviet Union and fight the disease that cannot be cured in the West.
Both Dr. Sherwood and Dr. Makarov have surrogate families. Dr. Sherwood's double is U.S. Air Force pilot major Grisly, who dropped the atomic bomb nicknamed "Little Boy" on Hiroshima. Grisly goes insane from guilt and ends up in an insane asylum. Sherwood's brain child is his bomb: the "Little Boy." By the logic of the film, the doctor's surrogate family exterminates his biological one.
Makarov's surrogate son and disciple is a Czech physicist, Vatslav Kupka, (Vingranovs'kii), who is the only hope of humanity. He works on peaceful applications of nuclear power and even makes love to Sherwood's daughter. While on screen, Kupka combines cerebral power with fertility; on the soundtrack, Vingranovs'kii's own poetry creates a verbal equivalent of biological life in the film. Most importantly, in the film the Soviet family is heterogeneous, that is, both Makarov and Kupka possess individualized ethnic identities (Russian and Czech respectively), while the American family gravitates toward erasing any individuality.
The filmmaker is Alexander Dovzhenko's student and the metaphoric style of the film continues the teacher's tradition of a poetic, pantheistic cinema. In the film the ocean of despair divides two shores, the Cold War opponents, and this ocean's desalination becomes a metaphor for bringing reason and hope to the humanity on the brink of nuclear disaster.
Source: rusfilm-old.pitt.edu
