Filmmakers’ “Theories” – Peter Watkins

Peter Watkins is an English filmmaker who is known for making documentary films that depict dystopian futures that reflect issues in modern day society. His most famous work reflects his style perfectly, The War Game, 1965, which depicts how the English government had prepared for a nuclear explosion in England.

“Watkins established his reputation with two docu-dramas from the 1960s, *Culloden* and *The War Game*. Both document events from the past using actors and reconstruction. In asking questions of conventional documentary, Watkins reflects his deep concern with mainstream media, which he has called the ‘monoform’.”

Watkins’ objectives:

Watkins usually depicts such grim and pessimistic views of the future of society to reflect issues prevalent in modern day society. His films are typically violent and explicit in their depiction of chaos and brutality to emphasise the danger of society reaching such a point. They also remain somewhat rooted in reality, featuring real countries and theorising how current governments may handle certain situations, typically to push anti-war slogans, as seen in The War Game. He does this by focusing on the real human suffering that would be caused by warfare and the indirect consequences of warfare, as is clear in punishment Park, 1971.

Watkins’ style:

Watkins does not focus on particular characters. Rather, groups in society affected by warfare. This shows how everyone would be affected by war, inducing fear in the audience, to an extent, to emphasise the brutality of war, and what it could lead to. Of course, he mostly doesn’t cover real disasters, but fictional ones that represent certain atrocities or crimes that happened in real history. Watkins’ depiction of nightmarish future scenarios are typically direct mirroring of real tragedies, e.g the Hiroshima nuclear explosion in The War Game, which further pushes the point that just because the tragedy didn’t happen to you, it can. His style is not fear mongering, but rather accurately depicting what society would look like, should another significant war break out.