Pressure tells the lesser-known story of the weather forecasters who chose the date of D-Day.Alex Bailey/Supplied
Pressure
Directed by Anthony Maras
Written by David Haig and Anthony Maras
Starring Andrew Scott, Brendan Fraser and Kerry Condon
Classification PG; 100 minutes
Opens in theatres May 29
Critic’s Pick
Arguably no other moment in history has been as memorialized in cinema than D-Day. From the 1962 epic The Longest Day that captured the scale of the attack to the visceral opening sequence in Saving Private Ryan, Hollywood has had a particular fascination with the invasion that would secure victory for the Allies, and subsequently, end the bloodiest war in history.
One wartime story, though, has evaded the filmic treatment, and arguably, its significance to the end result stands side by side with the tactical manoeuvres it enabled.
In Pressure, director Anthony Maras takes audiences into an unlikely war room where meteorologists paper the walls with maps and charts plotting weather patterns for northern Europe. Group Captain James Stagg (Andrew Scott) has left the side of his pregnant wife to assist the Allies in forecasting the weather to assess the feasibility of landing on the beaches of Normandy on June 5, 1944.
General Dwight D. Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser) already has his preferred meteorologist, Irving Krick (Chris Messina), in the room, but off the back of an endorsement from none other than British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Eisenhower appears willing to accept Stagg’s expertise as Chief Meteorological Officer.
Brendan Fraser portrays General Dwight D. Eisenhower, American history’s most venerable wartime figures.Courtesy of Focus Features/StudioCanal/Supplied
The casting of Scott, Fraser and Messina suits the dynamics and tensions of the film, creating a perfect storm for ego and consequence. The imposing yet kindhearted stature of Fraser affords his portrayal of one of American history’s most venerable wartime figures the necessary gravity to underscore the weight of the decisions Eisenhower was called upon to make. Likewise, Scott’s ability to characterize Stagg with restraint lends his moments of uncompromising insistence that much more authority.
Messina’s Krick, though, proves to be the most fascinating. Krick – an American meteorologist whose claim to fame up until the war was correctly forecasting the weather in Los Angeles that allowed for the famous burning of Atlanta sequence in Gone with the Wind to be filmed – believed in an analogue technique. This method looked for patterns in historical data to determine what would happen in the future, an approach Stagg disregarded as luck and ineffective in an area with weather as unstable as Normandy.
As history dictates, the originally proposed date for D-Day was eventually called off when Eisenhower accepted Stagg’s conclusion that a massive storm was approaching the French shores, in spite of Krick’s contention that history dictated otherwise. Stagg proved to be correct with forcible winds whipping the air and torrential downpours negating visibility to a mere few feet. Undoubtedly, Stagg, and Eisenhower’s siding with the group captain, saved thousands of lives and arguably the entire war in the process.
Andrew Scott plays Captain James Stagg and Kerry Condon plays Captain Kay Summersby.Alex Bailey/Supplied
Up until the moment Krick is proven wrong in his assertions, Maras upholds a dashing appearance for Messina. Never a hair out of place, he has a blindingly white winning smile and an impeccably pressed uniform that stand in stark contrast to Stagg’s worn and worried appearance. Historical accounts of Krick describe him as akin to a smooth-talking salesman, someone who would eagerly regale a dinner party with stories of David O. Selznick, Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh, and someone who lacks the ability to be wrong.
It’s hard not to project modern politics and sentiments onto Pressure, especially as it pertains to what Krick embodies: the arrogance of American exceptionalism. Krick’s abject disregard for Stagg derived not from science or logic, but a lack of hubris. Scott and Messina bring nuance and weight to this relationship in equal measures, dancing around the other while the fate of the world hangs in the balance.
In real life, Krick published an accounting of the lead up to D-Day in a 1956 issue of Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, taking credit for foreseeing the “possible” weather that would win the war, a position echoed by multiple publications thereafter. It wasn’t until Stagg published his book Forecast for Overlord in 1971 that the efforts of the British team came to light.
With Pressure, Maras aids in this correction of historical record to an extent. Oddly, the film leaves out any mention of a Norwegian meteorologist, Sverre Petterssen, who worked alongside Stagg and identified the jet stream that would create a brief reprieve in the weather system on June 6, just enough time to land an attack.
Notwithstanding this lapse, Pressure serves as a reminder of the many stories and individuals whose expertise and fortitude created the world we enjoy today. It also gives voice to the slim margins by which the war was decided.
Perhaps the greatest act of service Pressure lends audiences, though, is the reflection of what all the sacrifices, violence and destruction was for. By bookending the film with Stagg’s impending fatherhood, Maras hands off the story of Operation Overlord, and all its reverberations to history, over to the next generation with the hope that they live in a world that finally finds peace.