Heaven against Hitler

US General Dwight D. Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser) commands the amphibious and airborne invasion of the story

There is no shortage of films about the Second World War. Nevertheless, the new production “Pressure” by Australian director Anthony Maras shows that even the much-filmed D-Day still offers perspectives that have rarely been seen in the cinema.

The war on the beaches of Normandy was shown in “The Longest Day” (1962), which staged the landing of the Western Allies as a large-scale panorama; Stuart Cooper's "Overlord" (1975) created images from the perspective of ordinary soldiers and conveyed their self-reflection. In “Saving Private Ryan,” Steven Spielberg ultimately placed the physical experience of landing and the brutal, disorienting combat events at the center of an unforgettable production. The days immediately before the decision at the headquarters in Portsmouth, southern England, were the subject of the little-noticed film “Ike: Countdown to D-Day” (2004) with Tom Selleck in the role of General Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The paratroopers need moonlight when they are dropped, and the landing troops need low water at dawn so that the German beach obstacles can be seen. The sea shouldn't be too rough and the cloud cover shouldn't be too thick for the bombers.

In »Pressure«, Australian director Anthony Maras is also interested in the 72 hours before the invasion by US troops - and in men whose most important weapons are neither tanks nor machine guns, but weather balloons, maps and high-resolution data. The film still begins with people dying on the battlefield: a young soldier is floating in blood-red water. The camera slowly pulls back and reveals the aftermath of “Exercise Tiger,” the D-Day dress rehearsal off the coast of Devon in which German speedboats surprised a US training unit in April 1944. More than 700 soldiers died in the maneuver, which was designed as a combat exercise.

This catastrophe also hangs over General Eisenhower and his later calculations with regard to the Allied landing in Normandy in the film “Pressure”. Eisenhower is all too painfully aware of what a miscalculation can mean.

The bloody beginning of the film is followed by a pretty harsh cut. The meteorologist James Stagg (Andrew Scott) says goodbye to his heavily pregnant wife Liz (Tamsin Topolski) over breakfast in London, reservedly tender, almost a little awkward. Winston Churchill recommended him to Eisenhower as the best scientist in his field. Now Stagg is expected at the Allied headquarters near Portsmouth, where the largest invasion in history is being prepared at a huge map table in the command center.

His American colleague and film opponent Irving Krick (Chris Messina) is already there. He provided Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser) with accurate forecasts in North Africa, among other places, and likes to tell anecdotes about his time as a weather consultant in Hollywood. He predicted suitable weather conditions for the famous fire scene in “Gone with the Wind,” during which entire sets were set on fire.

Krick works with an analogue method. He looks for comparable locations in old weather maps and tries to derive the expected weather from them. Stagg notes wryly that North Africa's stable weather may be a little more predictable than that over the English Channel. The Brit also works with measurements from weather ships and stations in the North Atlantic and tracks the low pressure areas that are moving towards Europe. Two storms worry the weatherman.

When John F. Kennedy asked the outgoing President Eisenhower in 1961 why the invasion was successful, he is said to have replied that they had better meteorologists than the Germans.

Eisenhower, portrayed with great emotional force by Brandon Fraser, wants an immediate answer to his question about the weather conditions. Stagg can honestly only give him probabilities; Any statement beyond 24 hours is essentially a long-term prognosis, he said. Given the weather outside, it is difficult for the generals in the room to imagine that the situation could completely change in a matter of hours. In these atmospherically dense and extremely exciting scenes, director Maras shows the conflicts and limits of science when it comes to political and military decisions.

Because a military operation depends on this weather forecast, the requirements of which could not be more complicated. The paratroopers need moonlight when they are dropped, and the landing troops need low water at dawn so that the German beach obstacles can be seen. The sea shouldn't be too rough and the cloud cover shouldn't be too thick for the bombers. If the opportune moment is missed, a similar opportunity will only arise again around two weeks later. However, an invading army of more than 150,000 men cannot be hidden on the English coast for any length of time without German reconnaissance forces noticing.

Stagg is also under enormous personal pressure. His heavily pregnant wife is exposed to German air raids in London. When he receives devastating news at headquarters, the camera stays on his face. He briefly struggles for composure, suppresses his feelings and forces himself to continue working. Andrew Scott plays this moment impressively, with almost no visible movement. His performance could well be taken into account in the upcoming film awards season. Finally, Eisenhower — famously — postponed the invasion planned for June 5 by 24 hours. Stagg and British meteorologists are expecting a brief improvement in the weather on June 6 - just enough to make landing.

When John F. Kennedy asked the outgoing President Eisenhower in 1961 why the invasion was successful, he is said to have replied that they had better meteorologists than the Germans. The film quotes this sentence and thus sets an example in times of growing hostility to science.

Anthony Maras, who filmed the terrorist attack on the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel with “Hotel Mumbai” (2018), has adapted his stage play, which premiered in 2014, for the cinema together with the playwright David Haig. The origins of “Pressure” in the theater are clearly noticeable. The film largely takes place in the headquarters rooms, where meteorologists and military officials argue about weather maps and forecasts. In between, Maras mounts images of the soldiers preparing for the landing, colored historical material and footage of weather observations on the English coast. In particular, the weather balloons, whose ascent the camera repeatedly follows, make it clear how dependent the entire operation is on sensitive information that is collected somewhere out over the Atlantic. When the landing finally begins, the film stays with the men at headquarters, who can only wait for reports from Omaha Beach.

Jamie D. Ramsay's camera is conspicuously reserved in the headquarters. The images are dark and muted in color, the camera mostly remains still in the conversation scenes. Only with the images of the war does she become more mobile and nervous. The score by Volker Bertelmann (“Nothing New in the West”) also evokes a feeling of passing time. Between the driving rhythms you can always hear the sounds of bells and clockwork. The closer the date gets, the more the film takes on the beat of a countdown.

The derisive term “Dad History Movie” has recently become commonplace for films like “Pressure”: historical cinema with well-known actors, decisions of historical significance and a lot of dialogue, tension that arises less from action than from negotiations, strategies and political conflicts. James Vanderbilt's "Nuremberg" with Russell Crowe as Herrmann Göring was a recent example of this. “Pressure” also unmistakably belongs to this category. And in the best sense. The self-imposed restrictions, especially those of the concentrated chamber drama, allow »Pressure« to find its ideal cinematic form.

Andrew Scott stands out from the cast; he plays Stagg as a reserved, sometimes harsh scientist who, even under increasing pressure, does not allow himself to be pressured into making judgments that his data do not support. In the few personal moments, his facial expressions reveal how much effort this control takes. Brendan Fraser draws Eisenhower in an unusually soft and thoughtful manner. The more than 700 dead of Exercise Tiger haunt him, and the character leaves no doubt about the toll he takes on the responsibility for the impending invasion. Kerry Condon, last seen in “F1,” plays Eisenhower’s aide Kay Summersby with subtle restraint. Unfortunately, all too often their job is to moderate the egos of the men around them. One would have liked her to have a lot more screen time.

The real quality of this very old-fashioned film: It deals with characteristics that the cinema otherwise doesn't necessarily find spectacular images for. Of integrity, a sense of duty and the ability to admit the limits of one's own knowledge. Maras succeeds in doing this - the staging is sometimes a bit sedate and seemingly yesterday - without any pathos or heroisation of his historical role models.

Pressure (GB/F 2026), screenplay: David Haig, Anthony Maras, Jeremy Brock. Director: Anthony Maras. Cast: Andrew Scott, Brendan Fraser, Kerry Condon, Damian Lewis, Chris Messina. Start: September 17th