The Idealist
It is incumbent upon a democratic government to be open and honest with the people whom it governs, at least in so much as that does not compromise national security, but where is that line drawn, and as time moves on at what point after the fact does that omission or deliberate deception move from being a necessary evil to something which is a matter of legitimate public debate?
It was on the afternoon of Sunday 21st January 1968 that an American B-52G Stratofortress flying from Plattsburgh Air Force Base suffered an onboard emergency, forcing the crew to bail out over Thule Air Base in Greenland, then a territory of Denmark, the plane crashing shortly after twelve kilometres west with the conventional explosives and the fuel igniting but the failsafe measures meaning that the primary payload of four thermonuclear bombs fortunately did not detonate.
Directed by Christina Rosendahl and based on the book Thulesagen – løgnens univers (The Thule Case – The Universe of Lies) by Danish journalist Poul Brink, The Idealist (Idealisten) is a dramatisation of the ten year investigation by Brink (Peter Plaugborg) which began with the discovery of a cluster of cancer cases in the workers who undertook the cleanup at Thule, belying the official statement at the time that no radioactive material had escaped and there was no risk of contamination.
Pushing through levels of official denial to a coverup of more than twenty years, beyond this is the revelation which underpinned the accident, Brink’s discovery that in 1957 the serving prime minster Hans Christian Hansen had in fact signed a treaty with America to allow “ammunition of a special nature” to be held in Greenland despite having personally campaigned and won on the platform that Denmark remain free of nuclear weapons.
Brink a rising star moving from local radio to national television, despite positioning him as “the idealist” who wishes to hold his government accountable the film questions his motivations beyond his stated goal of seeking medical support and recompense for those whose health has been compromised yet never asks why the government did not step up more readily if it wished to maintain the pretence, obviating the need for Brink to continue the investigation, the film feeling like it is an unhelpfully abbreviated overview told from a single point of view rather than a balanced representation of events.
While this might approach might allow the film some dramatic licence had it been structured as a thriller, while Brink does become increasingly wary, making sure those around him know where he is going and who he is meeting, built around in dusty basements where forgotten documents lurk and archive footage of contemporary interviews, newsreels and protests it plays more like a dull docudrama where editors argue over policy and legal exposure, The Idealist ultimately a far less interesting film than it should be considering the explosive subject matter.
The Idealist will be available on Arrow from Friday 25th August
