I've seen this before, but it's on iPlayer at the moment and well worth a rewatch. Why? Because it's scored by the mighty Mogwai. Think Koyaanisqatsi with a more documentary style tone and you're on the right lines. It's a real mood piece, captivating to watch. The music pulls you in as one half of the narrative, alongside a mash up of old and new stock, photos, colour, black and white, newsreel, film clips, some with snippets of audio, others with bits of text. The thread is simple and clear, the story of the bomb and nuclear power. It's very top line, but covers the basics well and is startlingly dramatic. It's listed as a documentary, but it's got its finger firmly on the art house trigger. This is where Mogwai's music helps. If you know this band, you might expect a full on ear bleeding post rock bombastic display of raucous power. Especially with the terrifying scenes of annihilation. There's a beautiful subtlety though, delicate piano and percussion, emotive strings and space to allow the images to breathe. The message is clear. Nuclear weapons are a bad idea, but there's hope for humanity. It casts the story arc pretty wide, the physics, testing, preparation and survival, anti-war demos, the Cuban middle crisis, power stations and accidents, scientific advancements, CERN and Hiroshima. The music though is the backbone giving it its solid structure, allowing time to play out longer emotive montages, that would otherwise require some kind of no doubt dry voiceover. There's no such thing here though thankfully, just a well crafted edit of poignant imagery with killer sounds. You can listen to the soundtrack on its own and it's fantastic, but accompanying the film it really is stirring stuff. It doesn't dig too deep. If you want a bit more back story on the bomb, I'd recommend the BBC Podcast 'The Bomb', a deep dive that remains accessible. This though is worth an hour of your time and make sure your speakers are set to radiate.

Atomic: Living in Dread and Promise is a film commissioned by the wonderful TV channel BBC4 as part of a series of television programmes designed to mark the 70th anniversary of the dropping of the Hiroshima atomic bomb. It was directed by Mark Cousins, who most British film fans of a certain age will remember as the final host of the cult movie series Moviedrome. It seems that latterly he has been an actual film-maker himself. With this he has taken a very famous historical subject and made a film about it which doesn't simply inform the viewer of facts in the way of a traditional documentary. Cousins has instead made a documentary/art film hybrid. He has constructed it by solely using previously released material - including old newsreels, information films, b-movies and documentaries – and edited them together in a not entirely linear manner. There is a basic trajectory to it but it jumps around and images are juxtaposed in often unexpected ways. Underpinning it all is an original score from the post-rock band Mogwai, which hits a suitable tone to compliment the imagery.

We have images of nuclear explosions, victims of the Japanese attacks and protesters, as well as some later material considering the positive aspects of the nuclear industry. So this is far from a one dimensional view on a topic that is far more complex than is sometimes portrayed. It's good on Cousins that he has taken this more measured, less obvious approach. The film itself is quite beautifully constructed and the imagery is often incredible, nuclear explosions after all are simultaneously terrifying, yet mesmerising visually. I wouldn't necessarily say it gets a clear message across but I wouldn't say it's really that kind of a film. It more taps into several things by way of cinematic techniques. The form of the film itself is an end within itself here. Because it has been entirely constructed from archive material, this feels more like an exercise in editing than actual direction. For the most part I thought it was a nicely original bit of experimental and bold TV and BBC4 has to be congratulated for commissioning something this left-field.