There is a sense of horror that comes from being left alone. When I was in the first grade there was a fire drill near the end of the day. Our fire alarm sound exactly to same in my mind as the bell for the end of school. The bell sounded and I began gathering my things. I put on my backpack and looked up. I saw my peers gathering at the back of the room and heading out the back door. I thought that it was odd, but I knew what I was doing even if they were crazy. I walked down the hall toward the front of the school and noticed that there was no one in the hall with me. This I marked as being even more odd than that which my peers were doing when they were exiting the back of the room. When I walked out the front door all of the busses were there but no students were anywhere to be seen, instead all of the drivers were standing in the doorways of their respective busses. They looked at me strangely. The world changed. I realized that I was alone and no one was there with me. I ran back into the school and I saw my principal. I ran to him, wrapped my arms around his legs and buried my sobs in his ample belly. He patted me on the head and escorted me back to my class. The students we back in their seats and my teachers smiled at me. “Did you think it was the end of school?” No, I thought it was the end of the world.
I felt much the same way as I watched the BBC production Threads. There is something to being left behind. When we live while others die, we feel a sense of loneliness and guilt. This is often rendered horror or terror. In Threads this is played to dramatic effect. While the film seems to focus on many different people, Two families plus the leaders of the town in which they all live, it ends on one. The relationships of the families are rich and unique and the end is empty as our survivor is alone. This is the horror of survival.
Immediately after the bombing of the town, we see many of these people struggling to survive. Ruth and her family hole up in their basement trying to subsist on what they have stored. Jimmy is assumed dead as he was outside when the bombs struck. His parents are trying to survive in the lean-to that they have constructed in their flat. His mother is severely burned on one side of her body and suffering greatly. As they try to find water and food they have a sense of hopelessness. It is clear that they do not know why they are bothering to try to live. Eventually she dies and he goes out in search of food and water. Ruth leaves the shelter of her basement in search of Jimmy. She does not find him and upon returning to her house hears the buzzing of flies in the basement and concludes that her family is dead.
From here the film focuses on Ruth. We see others briefly but they soon succumb. It is clear that the only reason Ruth has for survival is for her baby. Society has collapsed and their only purpose is to go on living. They farm, but struggle to make it last. We see Ruth stealing and working the black market for food. Eventually the baby comes. But it is not a moment of joy. It is a time filled with terror and loneliness. She delivers alone and holds her baby as she sobs. They are not sobs of joy, but of sorrow. She cries because life goes on, not because it ends.
She eats rats. she labors in the fields. she steals, but it is all for naught. Eventually she collapses in the field. Her daughter seems unsure of what to think of her mother’s imminent death. She only can say few words. Notably she calls her Ruth, not Mum, and tells her that it is time to work. Their language has degraded to mere practicality. Ruth reaches up and grabs her daughter’s hand. A sign of affection. A sign that her daughter does not understand. She dies and her daughter rummages her bedclothes for necessities and moves on.
So Ruth survived the holocaust, but for what? She was alone and though her daughter was with her, survival held no joy, no relationship. Her daughter lives on and subsists without culture or family. She makes ‘friends’ who help her steal but one is killed (whose death is hardly regarded) and then she is raped by her other ‘friend’. She is left alone. She lives and then feels the pains of labor. She goes to the hospital and says, “Babby. Coming.” She is rejected. She is expected to deliver alone, even as her mother did. This is a horrible prospect for her. She does deliver in the hospital, but the silence accompanying the child's birth belies the truth of still-birth. The child is wrapped and handed to her. She looks on the child in horror and the shot freezes and ends.
This final shot portrays the horror of survival. She lives but she is ultimately left alone. There is no child to carry on. But is that even to be desired? Humanity lives, but all is lost. TO what end do they survive? For what purpose is it to live, when all hope for meaningful relationship is lost. The humans are together, but they are alone. The nuclear holocaust destroys individual live and the life of society. Without society, we are all alone. The film portrays this as the final horror of survival and they are right. Without love, what does it mean to live?
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