By Ben Hooper.
‘I gazed a gazely stare at all the millions here…’
A man sits in a shabby Moscow apartment, with nought but a beer and a smoker’s cough for company. ‘He’s old, aggressive and angry,’ says his young interpreter, ‘He’s a cunt.’ He’s also not averse to telling a documentary crew to get the fuck out of his house. Yet on one fateful night in 1983, this man’s actions alone saved billions of lives. This ‘angry cunt’ might just be the most important person in the history of mankind.
Stanislav Petrov, the titular man, was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Russian nuclear command during the Cold War. And when one night their satellite system detected multiple missile launches from the US, it was his call whether to chalk it up to computer error, or execute a full nuclear retaliation; a decision that could spark an apocalyptic World War III.
This docu-drama fuses dramatic reconstructions of that terrible night (heart-stopping) and moments from his personal life (heart-breaking) with documentary footage of his recent trip to the USA. He’s there to personally receive an award from the UN, and is taking the opportunity to meet his own hero – Kevin Costner (he’s not so impressed with meeting Matt Damon, seeing as he’s never heard of him).
Petrov is a fascinating character, and the surrounding subject of mutually-assured destruction is horrifically engaging. The film is structured to provoke maximum emotional impact; a hugely poignant scene sees Petrov and his interpreter visit a US nuclear missile silo with an American tour guide – an unsettling watch that reflects the awe and the absurdity, the terror and the tragedy of mutually-assured destruction.
The film isn’t perfect. While it’s nice to see Petrov’s joy at meeting his Hollywood hero, the awkward scenes with an inarticulate Costner are incongruous in tone and interrupt the narrative flow.
In a similar way to Michael Grigsby’s poetic Vietnam veteran documentary We Went to War, The Man Who Saved the World paints a portrait of a man burdened by the weight of the world, who has to carry a responsibility that no person should, as well as navigate a tragic personal life. It’s a little-known and emotionally engaging story, eloquently told – a must see.
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