Pressure longs for expertise, but puts too much faith in the myth of the Great White Man
20 September 2026
Constrained in dimly lit war rooms, and dwarfed by the grand stonework of the Allied forces’ English headquarters, chief meteorologist James Stagg rarely steps outside to experience the weather. Five days before General Eisenhower plans to launch the D-day campaign on 5 June 1944, Stagg is seconded to the base to ensure that commanders are working with precise forecasts that will affect troops’ ability to invade Nazi-occupied France by sea and air. As the action unfolds, he battles military leaders, and an American meteorologist using outdated methods, to convince everyone that an incoming Atlantic storm will threaten the lives of thousands of men.
Pressure is a film about trust in expertise, and what happens when powerful people are faced with facts that they don’t want to hear. Its story makes for a well-crafted and compelling film. Collaboration between director Anthony Maras, cinematographer Jamie Ramsay, and sound designer Duncan Campbell is evidenced in the rhythmic choreography of low-angled cameras and tension-building sonic elements that both expand and collapse the sense of space. Humour is deployed at key moments, particularly thanks to Damien Lewis’s deliciously pantomime performance as Field Marshal Montgomery. Volker Bertelmann’s string-centric arrangements bring gravitas and fragility through the score.
Pressure is a film about trust in expertise, and what happens when powerful people are faced with facts that they don’t want to hear. Its story makes for a well-crafted and compelling film. Collaboration between director Anthony Maras, cinematographer Jamie Ramsay, and sound designer Duncan Campbell is evidenced in the rhythmic choreography of low-angled cameras and tension-building sonic elements that both expand and collapse the sense of space. Humour is deployed at key moments, particularly thanks to Damien Lewis’s deliciously pantomime performance as Field Marshal Montgomery. Volker Bertelmann’s string-centric arrangements bring gravitas and fragility through the score.
Andrew Scott as Stagg contains his feelings while taking a critical telephone call. StudioCanal, 2026.
Eye of the storm
Protagonist Stagg is at the eye of the film’s storm, and he is a man with many fronts. He is husband to Liz (Tamsin Topolski), who is pregnant with the couple’s first child; with his keen eye for detail he knows just how to prepare her boiled egg in the morning. As Dr James Stagg, he is what Prime Minister Winston Churchill calls a ‘genius’ meteorologist who gets misty eyed when talking about his passion for analysing weather patterns. He is also chief meteorological officer, who bears responsibility for providing life-and-death forecasts. Finally he serves as Group Captain Stagg, a lay-member of the Royal Air Force who must act in the interests of the nation’s war against Germany.
Under many competing pressures, Stagg is in conflict with almost everyone he encounters—including himself. In an understated yet commanding performance by Andrew Scott, Stagg conveys disdain for the institutions of war. His tightly wound energy creates its own weather system as he moves through the oppressive wood-panelled rooms of the headquarters. His stillness, for example, is remarkable amid the raucous dynamism of dancing weathermen or cavorting soldiers. On a telephone call, he holds all of his feelings in (Scott’s use of silence is perfection). Then, he tears along the corridors with his sleeves rolled up, and his fury breaks over the heads of the military’s top-ranking men. That he is changeable, running from calm poise to temper, makes him fallible as both a human and a scientist.
Relationships between Stagg and the mostly white, powerful men that he works with—there is no colour-blind casting in Pressure—are at the eye of the film. It’s effectively a claustrophobic workplace drama, replete with tensions between Britain and America at the macro scale, and clashes of personality at the micro. American Captain Irving Krick (Chris Messina), for instance, relies on historical weather patterns to predict future one. He tells stories about how he advised David O’Selznick on Gone with the Wind, and was responsible for providing accurate forecasts to the military in Casablanca (another filmic nod that makes Crick seem Hollywood through and through). In stark contrast, the Scottish Stagg insists on reading up-to-the-minute data from international weather stations.
Protagonist Stagg is at the eye of the film’s storm, and he is a man with many fronts. He is husband to Liz (Tamsin Topolski), who is pregnant with the couple’s first child; with his keen eye for detail he knows just how to prepare her boiled egg in the morning. As Dr James Stagg, he is what Prime Minister Winston Churchill calls a ‘genius’ meteorologist who gets misty eyed when talking about his passion for analysing weather patterns. He is also chief meteorological officer, who bears responsibility for providing life-and-death forecasts. Finally he serves as Group Captain Stagg, a lay-member of the Royal Air Force who must act in the interests of the nation’s war against Germany.
Under many competing pressures, Stagg is in conflict with almost everyone he encounters—including himself. In an understated yet commanding performance by Andrew Scott, Stagg conveys disdain for the institutions of war. His tightly wound energy creates its own weather system as he moves through the oppressive wood-panelled rooms of the headquarters. His stillness, for example, is remarkable amid the raucous dynamism of dancing weathermen or cavorting soldiers. On a telephone call, he holds all of his feelings in (Scott’s use of silence is perfection). Then, he tears along the corridors with his sleeves rolled up, and his fury breaks over the heads of the military’s top-ranking men. That he is changeable, running from calm poise to temper, makes him fallible as both a human and a scientist.
Relationships between Stagg and the mostly white, powerful men that he works with—there is no colour-blind casting in Pressure—are at the eye of the film. It’s effectively a claustrophobic workplace drama, replete with tensions between Britain and America at the macro scale, and clashes of personality at the micro. American Captain Irving Krick (Chris Messina), for instance, relies on historical weather patterns to predict future one. He tells stories about how he advised David O’Selznick on Gone with the Wind, and was responsible for providing accurate forecasts to the military in Casablanca (another filmic nod that makes Crick seem Hollywood through and through). In stark contrast, the Scottish Stagg insists on reading up-to-the-minute data from international weather stations.
One of the weather maps used by the Allies to plan D-day operations (Operation Overlord) in 1944. Met Office National Meteorological Archive.
High winds
During a roundtable discussion at a BAFTA screening in London, Maras confirmed that his interest in filming Pressure (adapted from a stage play by David Haig) began amid Australia’s Covid-19 lockdowns and ‘extreme weather’ events, such as bush fires. He became invested, he said, in thinking about expertise and how it affects decision-making at high levels. His interest is evident in the dramatic irony at play in the struggle between Krick and Stagg. Our contemporary knowledge of human-caused global heating means that we believe Stagg’s assessment that old patterns are not going to keep playing out the same. We are not as likely as Eisenhower to need convincing that ‘the jet steam… is real!’, and we have a vested interest in Stagg overcoming leaders’ scepticism.[1] For with fires, floods, and storms caused by our industrial activities continuing to devastate human and non-human eco-systems around the world, Eisenhower and his cronies become stand-ins for the state and corporate rulers who many of us once hoped would heed advice like Stagg’s, and act upon it accordingly.
In keeping with Maras’s self-professed sympathy for Stagg, and demonstrating an implicitly pro-climate science ideology, Pressure champions evidenced-informed decision-making. Hence, there are cutaway sequences showing people’s activities at meteorological stations across Europe and North America, where they record conditions in snow, at sea, and in storms. White pressure-gauging balloons soar up into blue skies and emerge above enormous cumulus cloud formations. Data in the film is physical, material, and, while open to interpretation, enables the military to make plans based on full and accurate knowledge.
The film’s own claims to historical accuracy are bolstered by the production team’s publicly discussed consultations with the Stagg family, and insertion of archival D-day footage in original sequences depicting troops landing on Normandy’s shore. Maras says that the decision to incorporate archival material was ostensibly a money-saving one. However, its inclusion also suggests that Pressure has a documentary lineage. Cinematographer Jamie Ramsay described how he determined angles for new shots that would be consistent with older ones, and Maras (the editor) slightly degraded digital footage in shots positioned either side of archival ones to create a seamless blend. Thus in telling Stagg’s story—his perspective and contributions are privileged over those of other characters--Pressure appears to have visual continuity with public information films from the war.
During a roundtable discussion at a BAFTA screening in London, Maras confirmed that his interest in filming Pressure (adapted from a stage play by David Haig) began amid Australia’s Covid-19 lockdowns and ‘extreme weather’ events, such as bush fires. He became invested, he said, in thinking about expertise and how it affects decision-making at high levels. His interest is evident in the dramatic irony at play in the struggle between Krick and Stagg. Our contemporary knowledge of human-caused global heating means that we believe Stagg’s assessment that old patterns are not going to keep playing out the same. We are not as likely as Eisenhower to need convincing that ‘the jet steam… is real!’, and we have a vested interest in Stagg overcoming leaders’ scepticism.[1] For with fires, floods, and storms caused by our industrial activities continuing to devastate human and non-human eco-systems around the world, Eisenhower and his cronies become stand-ins for the state and corporate rulers who many of us once hoped would heed advice like Stagg’s, and act upon it accordingly.
In keeping with Maras’s self-professed sympathy for Stagg, and demonstrating an implicitly pro-climate science ideology, Pressure champions evidenced-informed decision-making. Hence, there are cutaway sequences showing people’s activities at meteorological stations across Europe and North America, where they record conditions in snow, at sea, and in storms. White pressure-gauging balloons soar up into blue skies and emerge above enormous cumulus cloud formations. Data in the film is physical, material, and, while open to interpretation, enables the military to make plans based on full and accurate knowledge.
The film’s own claims to historical accuracy are bolstered by the production team’s publicly discussed consultations with the Stagg family, and insertion of archival D-day footage in original sequences depicting troops landing on Normandy’s shore. Maras says that the decision to incorporate archival material was ostensibly a money-saving one. However, its inclusion also suggests that Pressure has a documentary lineage. Cinematographer Jamie Ramsay described how he determined angles for new shots that would be consistent with older ones, and Maras (the editor) slightly degraded digital footage in shots positioned either side of archival ones to create a seamless blend. Thus in telling Stagg’s story—his perspective and contributions are privileged over those of other characters--Pressure appears to have visual continuity with public information films from the war.
Stagg and Kay both take different attitudes to their dealings with Eisenhower. StudioCanal, 2026.
Patterns repeat
But while the use of archive footage registers as a documentary element, the film is troubled by a propagandistic register. As they revealed at the BAFTA screening, co-writers Maras and Haig present a vulnerable Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser) who is respected by them for his capacity to listen to, and be persuaded by, Stagg’s unwelcome evidence. Consequently, as troops prepare to launch the campaign during a forecasted gap in the storm on 6 June, Eisenhower gives a stirring speech that taps into narratives about the need for bravery and personal sacrifice (the men’s, not his own) on behalf of nation states. The deaths of thousands of men slaughtered on French beaches by enemy fire before the Allies could secure the coast are visually represented, but barely commented on by commanders. The film’s postscript celebrates that Eisenhower (who went on to become a US president) acknowledged the role that experts played in his wartime strategising. The result is that Pressure depicts the Second World War as a more rational time than our own, when more intelligent men made better decisions on our behalf. At best, this is a questionable line of argument.
Moreover, Pressure’s near-exclusive focus on just a handful of the people who contributed to the D-Day forecasts—the meteorological squadron who collected Atlantic weather data (BBC, 2019), and Maureen Sweeney, the Irish woman who first registered the incoming storm (BBC, 2023) are left out—reinforces outdated notions of expertise. There are just two women in the film, in the form of Stagg’s mostly absent wife, and Kerry Condon’s beleaguered Kay, who is the assistant and romantic partner of Eisenhower. Condon does a lot with her performance in a script that gives her little besides supporting the men around her. While her advice is sound and sometimes taken, the character props up gender stereotypes about women having emotional, rather than intellectual, expertise. The whiteness and maleness of the production team is also notable (for example, in directing, producing editing, writing, cinematography, score), although that in part is owing to Maras’s status as director-producer-editor-writer.
I wonder what tweaks, nuances, and variations the film might have benefitted from had the production team been able to offer expertise from more varied perspectives. We might have ended up with a much bolder story about the making of expertise (who gets access to education? Who gets hired and believed, and why?). Or one that interrogated the ethics of systems that exploit scientific findings for political gain. What we get is a solid war-film-cum-biopic that believes in meteorology. In our current political climate, it could have done so much more than indulge in nostalgia for a historical moment of benign academic power that never was.
NOTES
[1] The term ‘jet stream’ was relatively new at the time, having been coined by a German meteorologist in 1939 following a discovery by a Japanese scientist in the 1920s (Wikipedia, 2026, and Smithsonian, 2018). Data recorded on flights between the US and UK during the Second World War provided important evidence of the jet streams in the northern hemisphere (BBC, 2006).
But while the use of archive footage registers as a documentary element, the film is troubled by a propagandistic register. As they revealed at the BAFTA screening, co-writers Maras and Haig present a vulnerable Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser) who is respected by them for his capacity to listen to, and be persuaded by, Stagg’s unwelcome evidence. Consequently, as troops prepare to launch the campaign during a forecasted gap in the storm on 6 June, Eisenhower gives a stirring speech that taps into narratives about the need for bravery and personal sacrifice (the men’s, not his own) on behalf of nation states. The deaths of thousands of men slaughtered on French beaches by enemy fire before the Allies could secure the coast are visually represented, but barely commented on by commanders. The film’s postscript celebrates that Eisenhower (who went on to become a US president) acknowledged the role that experts played in his wartime strategising. The result is that Pressure depicts the Second World War as a more rational time than our own, when more intelligent men made better decisions on our behalf. At best, this is a questionable line of argument.
Moreover, Pressure’s near-exclusive focus on just a handful of the people who contributed to the D-Day forecasts—the meteorological squadron who collected Atlantic weather data (BBC, 2019), and Maureen Sweeney, the Irish woman who first registered the incoming storm (BBC, 2023) are left out—reinforces outdated notions of expertise. There are just two women in the film, in the form of Stagg’s mostly absent wife, and Kerry Condon’s beleaguered Kay, who is the assistant and romantic partner of Eisenhower. Condon does a lot with her performance in a script that gives her little besides supporting the men around her. While her advice is sound and sometimes taken, the character props up gender stereotypes about women having emotional, rather than intellectual, expertise. The whiteness and maleness of the production team is also notable (for example, in directing, producing editing, writing, cinematography, score), although that in part is owing to Maras’s status as director-producer-editor-writer.
I wonder what tweaks, nuances, and variations the film might have benefitted from had the production team been able to offer expertise from more varied perspectives. We might have ended up with a much bolder story about the making of expertise (who gets access to education? Who gets hired and believed, and why?). Or one that interrogated the ethics of systems that exploit scientific findings for political gain. What we get is a solid war-film-cum-biopic that believes in meteorology. In our current political climate, it could have done so much more than indulge in nostalgia for a historical moment of benign academic power that never was.
NOTES
[1] The term ‘jet stream’ was relatively new at the time, having been coined by a German meteorologist in 1939 following a discovery by a Japanese scientist in the 1920s (Wikipedia, 2026, and Smithsonian, 2018). Data recorded on flights between the US and UK during the Second World War provided important evidence of the jet streams in the northern hemisphere (BBC, 2006).