review for Disco and Atomic War on AllMovie

There's a notion widely held among students of popular culture that the Beatles had more to do with the fall of Communism than Ronald Reagan. Maybe the last great cold warrior was in the White House when the Soviet Union finally entered its terminal phase, but what really made the cold, gray surfaces of the Worker's Paradise unbearable to a new generation of Russians was the sound of the Fab Four, with their catchy melodies, swinging beat, and all those "yeah yeah yeahs" symbolizing the sunnier possibilities of life in the West. Filmmaker Jaak Kilmi would seem to agree with the spirit of that assertion, but he would clearly argue the details; in his documentary Disco and Atomic War, he reveals that the seeds of the fall of Communism were planted by the likes of Larry Hagman, David Hasselhoff, Mark Hamill, and Sylvia Kristel -- all through the facilities of Finnish television.

Kilmi was born in 1973 in Tallinn, the capitol of Soviet Estonia. Television arrived in Estonia in 1955, but the local broadcasting wasn't much to get excited about, consisting of news reports overloaded with propaganda and old Soviet movies. Things got interesting for Estonian TV fans when Finland began broadcasting in 1957. Finland is only a short ferry ride away from Estonia, and while Finland was close enough to Russia to have to deal with the whims of the Soviet leaders, the nation wasn't fully under their control, and American intelligence saw an opportunity to send a message to the Estonians (and by extension all the people of the U.S.S.R.) through the Magic Box. Americans secretly backed the Finnish television network and financed the construction of a large antenna that beamed Finnish programming into Estonia. Estonian television was in a different broadcast format than Finland's, but once folks learned they could watch programming from North America and Europe via Finnish broadcasts, a lively black market arose in bootleg converter boxes and makeshift antennas that allowed Estonians to see what they were missing.

Disco and Atomic War deals with the long battle between Finnish broadcasters and the Soviet and Estonian authorities searching for ways to stem the tide of Western programming, but it also offers a look into the many curious ways the programming from Finland impacted the lives of people in Tallinn, as seen through the eyes of Kilmi and others who lived there. When a family from a rural community pays a visit to Tallinn and is treated to an episode of Dallas, one youngster is so fascinated she persuades her cousin to write her with details on what happens each week, leading up to the cliffhanger of "Who shot J.R.?" Another kid discovers who has been clandestinely watching Knight Rider by observing which of his classmates are trying to talk to non-Soviet cars using their digital watches. When disco and later punk rock become a presence on Finnish television, suddenly Estonian fans are primed for a lively and rebellious form of music Soviet authorities aren't sure how to handle. And as the Soviet Union teeters on the brink of collapse, the Finns hit Estonia with a one-two punch: showing Star Wars to attract the kids, and then using sex to win the hearts and minds of their parents through a screening of Emmanuelle.

Jaak Kilmi is clearly a shrewd student of history, and Disco and Atomic War chronicles the push and pull between the Soviets and Finland with steely intelligence; along with Dallas and Batman, he points out the differences between the Estonian and Finnish television coverage of the Soviet crackdown in Prague in 1968, revealing yet another reason why Estonians valued their Finnish converter boxes. But humor is Kilmi's strong suit, and Disco and Atomic War works best when the filmmaker is wringing laughs from the absurdities of life under Communism and the ways resourceful folks in Tallinn struggled to get around them, as one guy discovers how to make TV antennas out of thermometers, kids earn pocket money by selling homemade Finnish television directories, and movie buffs enjoy bootleg VHS copies of American films, all dubbed into Russian by one underground voice-over artist known simply as "The Nasal Man." Life in Russia is also mined for all its ridiculousness, as authorities search for a way to add their own subtitles to Finnish broadcasts and struggle to convince Estonians that the plentiful steaks and roasts in Finnish supermarket ads are really made of plastic. And the steady stream of entrepreneurial and inventive Estonians demonstrates that while these folks may have been living under Communism, they understood the power of the marketplace quite well when it came to making and selling the gear that allowed them to watch the shows they wanted. Disco and Atomic War is a marvel of dry wit and playful satire, generating a great deal of laughter even as Kilmi makes his case with genuine conviction that the "soft power" of popular culture ultimately undermined the "hard power" of state and military force.