Control

Year releasted: 1987

by Nathan Rabin
May 22nd, 2002

Though its costly arms race threatened to send humanity to the brink of extinction, the Cold War never escalated into a proper nuclear skirmish. Bomb-shelter owners therefore never had an opportunity to issue a hardy "I told you so" to the rest of humanity. But what if a nuclear accident occurred while prescient bomb-shelter enthusiasts were performing a test run? That's the premise behind Control, a look at the pains and pleasures of living and loving inside a state-of-the-art shelter. An international co-production, Control follows the interlocking destinies of 15 men, women, and children who are assigned to test the feasibility of a European bomb shelter, and who find out what happens when strangers stop being polite and start getting real. Control's human guinea pigs include grizzled American reporter Ben Gazzara, pacifist single mother Kate Nelligan, and a chipper magician who is delighted to find a literally captive audience for his wide array of card tricks and colorful feats of sleight-of-hand. Of course, no microcosm of society would be complete without vapid pretty people, so the group includes an insufferable French actress-model, who believed volunteering for the experiment would jump-start her career, and a randy, sunglasses-sporting painter inspired by Patrick Nagel. Early life in the shelter proves big on long-winded discussions of the morality of nuclear weapons, but also proves conducive to red-hot sex, as the actress and painter turn their surroundings into a sizzling, nuclear-strength shelter of love. Lovemaking soon gives way to horror, however, after the inhabitants learn via a television newscast that a wayward nuclear missile is set to destroy much of Europe. Before you can say Lord Of The Flies, the gang splits into warring, heavily armed factions and begins debating whether to let others into the shelter. Eventually, they learn that bomb-shelter mastermind Burt Lancaster has fabricated the entire "nuclear accident" to illustrate the shortcomings of shelters. As the relieved, shell-shocked shelter rats leave their temporary home, reporters swarm over them, eerily presaging an age in which the psychoses and dysfunction of strangers forced to live together is considered profitable mass entertainment, not a ghoulish sociological experiment.