INTERZONE 253 JUL-AUG 2014 (18 page)

TONY LEE

IF….

GAGARIN: FIRST IN SPACE

HER

UNDER THE SKIN

THE NIGHT IS YOUNG

BOY MEETS GIRL

FRAU IM MOND

MIRAGE MEN

ESCAPE FROM PLANET EARTH

HUNTING THE LEGEND

The first movie in the ‘Mick Travis’ trilogy, Lindsay Anderson’s
IF
….
(Blu-ray, 9 June), is a peculiar drama of youth revolution at a boarding school for boys. It stars Malcolm McDowell as everyman Mick, a rebel with significant cause for complaint, suffering a farcically disgraceful mistreatment of the sort that is best taken as a satirical criticism of the British establishment. Although it is whimsically juvenile and Pythonesque, the dramatic storyline of insurrection in
If….
(1968) benefits from a caustically allegorical subtext, as it depicts the cruelties of a regime dedicated to enforcing authority with all but negligible results, and it eagerly demonstrates that even modest degrees of elitism wielding power over ordinary people will, typically (but arguably always) produce a hierarchy that’s irredeemably corrupt. “When do we live? That’s what I wanna know.”

This HD release looks splendid, and the package of extras includes three shorts by the director, extensive interviews with cast and crew, a commentary by critic David Robinson and busy McDowell himself, and there’s also a 56-page booklet written by David Cairns which has some rare photos.

Increasingly surreal, yet still bitingly satirical, Anderson continued to chart his world’s end views of cross-genre themes in the fractured narrative of musical comedy
O Lucky Man
(1973), and a socially-relevant dystopian-tyranny in
Britannia Hospital
(1982), both great examples of experimental cinema that are well worth seeing, from an era when this country was able to make pictures that actually meant something as artistic and political statements, not simply vapid concoctions (like
Chariots of Fire
– a movie bad enough to kill anyone’s interest in the Olympics, if not competitive sport entirely) from a tamed-by-conservatism British film industry that is thoroughly bland enough for sundry export.

In zero gravity, “a man might lose the ability to act rationally…under the influence of ‘cosmic horror’.” Ever since Philip Kaufman’s epic
The Right Stuff
(1983), astronaut-movie fans – like me – have been wondering about and waiting for a similarly themed effort depicting the Russian side of ‘the race into space’.
GAGARIN: FIRST IN SPACE
(DVD, 23 June) is a rather uncomplicated biopic of the cosmonaut hero of the USSR. Production designer turned director Pavel Parkhomenko does a commendable job of presenting this historical drama as a journey into the unknown, with all of the anxiety and speculation that went on before such sky-breaking endeavours. Dramatisation of the pioneering Vostok launch on 12th April 1961 ends act one, and the majority of the movie is composed of various flashbacks – to arduous training, family scenes, rocketry science, and the politics of Soviet achievement – that fragment Gagarin’s orbital flight, but in no way diminish the impact of the storytelling.

Against mutterings of ‘Stalinist prejudices’ we see Gagarin chosen first over his rival Titov. The spectacular blast-off and space-age experience is detailed by excellent special effects. The candidates are caught out while listening to a Soviet SF radio play, and this quite wittily recalls the legendary Wells/Welles Mercury theatre’s ‘night that panicked America’. There are quietly poignant moments for Gagarin’s parents and his wife.
Gagarin
doesn’t match up to the Hollywood scale or the entertainment values of
The Right Stuff
, but it’s an appealing mix of one part corny propaganda and two parts heroic adventure, with a wake-up-from-dreaming pinch of irony. Of course, this lacks the swaggering flashiness of its various US counterparts, but that’s not a flaw because it’s all heart. See it soon.

Mayonnaise and toothpaste are common examples of ‘Bingham plastics’. They mimic solids or flow liquidly depending on the pressure applied. Some actors present similar properties. The Bingham-plastic actor is one that seems to require only the lightest of directorial guidance to form whatever three-dimensional character is required for any purpose. While some characterisations may taste like neither Hellmann’s nor Colgate, extruded performances remain worthy, although their application in SF drama might be just as formula-smooth as paste. Whether portraying Roman royalty (
Gladiator
), a young Johnny Cash (
Walk the Line
), or reflecting upon the contortions of Shyamalan unrealities (
Signs
,
The Village
), Joaquin Phoenix is a remarkable talent, fully capable of expressing vulnerabilities and/or anxieties that are easily confused with weakness. His role as lonely Theo in Spike Jonze’s
HER
(DVD/Blu-ray 23 June) is something of a tour de force of Bingham plasticity.

Picking up genre ideas scattered like confetti throughout Andrew Niccol’s rom-com
S1m0ne
(2002), this SF drama posits the next-generation of invisible friendship, as computer intelligence Sam OS1 (voiced by Scarlett Johansson) revives poor Theo’s melancholy life. However, unlike the ever helpful companion droid of
Robot & Frank
, the obviously metaphysical femininity of passionate Samantha plays a different game of throes with the human protagonist’s emotions (“Oh, what a sad trick”). Theo seems an overly sensitive mess, usually too busy having ‘conversations’ to actually talk about anything, so that even the farcical episode of surrogate sex becomes ‘a bit on the side’ for him to feel guilty over being unfaithful to a bodiless Sam. Are there any workable – let alone advisable – shortcuts to intimacy?

With A.I. occasionally making news with Turing test-pass claims, and cyber SF often at the forefront of many recent years of dystopian/utopian books – from Iain M. Banks to Greg Egan – it’s likely that the cognoscenti will foresee the clever twists which Jonze’s scenario eventually surrenders its central human-adventure plotline to. Sam’s post-verbal comms about philosophy, with a hyper-intelligent reconstructed persona, should have warned hapless sapien Theo that all his romantic illusions were doomed.

Intuited by signal traffic between my imagined Culture ships ‘Thoughts Having Occurred…’ and ‘Never Mind What For’, I found the rapid evolution towards machine transcendence for Sam’s AI group painfully predictable. As if he’s never even heard of the positronic immortality of a
Bicentennial Man
, perpetually luckless Theo blunders onwards (but not actually ‘moving forward’ as the movie’s repetitive phrase suggests) without realising that Sam’s development to sublimation would lead to a maturity far beyond his possessive monogamy. In that respect, the (still unproven!) adage that SF is merely a subdivision of children’s literature – something which certainly applies to too many genre movies – seems relevant to
Her
when considering that beatific/plastic smile that Phoenix adopts for Theo’s various cute poses. Although this is essentially a serious movie about male passivity, its Johansson-on-line-one fantasy is no answer to macho dominance or aggression.

Scarlett in the flesh – so to speak – is the stranger attraction of Jonathan Glazer’s phenomenally exquisite
UNDER THE SKIN
(Blu-ray/DVD, 14 July).

A bizarre mix of
Species
and
The Man Who Fell to Earth
, there is no laboratory work or misunderstood fortune-mongering eccentricity in this rather unhealthily downbeat Quatermass-derivative, art-house production. After the stunningly surreal intro there are a few extraordinary scenes of low-key weirdness, but this is a slow-burning puzzle of wholly minimalist sci-fi. However, like Cantor fractals (Sierpinski carpet or Menger sponge) illustrate how less content results only in more details, the emotional voids of significant, gloomy purpose in this estranged alien’s furtive odyssey mean that
Under the Skin
is a fascinating mystery thriller, one that’s hypnotically Lynchian in its tone, if not its genre substance and sometimes painterly visual style.

Johansson’s portrayal of a pretty, but almost golemic, succubus-from-the-stars seems just as socially inept as any visiting foreigner, and there’s certainly no avoiding the disconcerting effect of a Hollywood face roaming the back streets and hill walks of Scotland. She drives around in a delivery van, picking up men that are ceremoniously dumped into an otherworldly black hell that’s a vaguely Lovecraftian pit, which works like a filtering medium, and its vague function recalls the disturbing notion of human beings harvested for mere flavouring, as described in 1979’s
Quatermass
mini-series. She appears at home in the dark but looks completely lost in daylight fog. While she’s clearly a predator, she becomes practically catatonic when confronted by kindness.

Glazer’s direction embraces a documentary realism that’s repeatedly startling, especially in urban scenes, where the ordinary city and workaday town lanes appear just as if seen through alien eyes, observing people with coolly inhuman detachment. This is moody SF, with a frighteningly violent finale as the hunter becomes the prey.