INTERZONE 253 JUL-AUG 2014

by Andy Cox

  Alex Stapleton’s documentary Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel features many of the same names as Easy Riders, Raging Bulls but rather than describing a period of boom and bust in which some directors were indulged at the cost of what turned out to be much less creative freedom for everyone else, Stapledon presents the ’50s and ’60s as the opening steps of a long triumphant march towards the era of the blockbuster that began with Jaws and Star Wars. The interesting thing about this film is that despite being an inexperienced director, Stapledon managed to secure interviews with a large chunk of Hollywood royalty who all turned out to praise the vision and independent spirit of the man who made terrible films like Battle Beyond the Stars and Frankenstein Unbound.

  Much like Heinlein, Corman has become so closely associated with a particular moment in cultural history that it is almost impossible to pass judgement on the man’s work without also seeming to pass judgement on that moment in cultural history. Sure… Corman is an important historical figure whose strategy of targeting younger audiences with genre material laid the foundations of contemporary Hollywood, but the real reason Hollywood royalty lined up to praise Roger Corman is that he represents a spirit of independence and experimentation that is entirely at odds with the reality of today’s Hollywood machine. The re-invention of Corman as the Man Who Built Hollywood suggests that Hollywood baby boomers are trying to write their own epitaph and ensure that their generation is remembered for its experimentation and individuality rather than its complete capitulation to the forces of big business.

  J.G. Ballard’s short work ‘Why I Want To Fuck Ronald Reagan’ makes the point that Ronald Reagan the person was an entirely different entity to Ronald Reagan the political figure and media construct. Similarly, the ideas and principles represented by the likes of Robert A. Heinlein and Roger Corman bear only a passing relation to the real people buried beneath the weight of those names. We fight over these names because of what they represent. We fight over these names because we want recognition for our values and concerns.

  Some right-wing American fans want Heinlein to remain visible because they think that science fiction should continue to embody a blend of iconoclasm, rugged individualism and patriarchal power worship that is common to both Heinlein’s writing and the contemporary American right. Some progressive fans accept that Heinlein had a huge impact upon the development of science fiction but want to re-invent him as a progressive or even quasi-feminist figure because re-inventing Heinlein to fit your values is a means of ensuring that your values will be as much a part of the history of science fiction as Heinlein himself. Despite sharing the desire to emphasise science fiction’s history as a political literature, such revisionism strikes me as wrong-headed; why go to the trouble of papering over the cracks when we could instead re-plaster the ceiling? We do the future no favours by seeking to deceive the present about the past.

  LASER FODDER

  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.

  Made in 1986, Leos Carax’s supposedly futuristic drama Mauvais Sang (‘bad blood’) is re-titled THE NIGHT IS YOUNG for DVD (23 June, above). It stars Juliette Binoche and Denis Lavant as Anna and Alex, another of this art-house director’s doomed couples. The setting is a Parisian future like something from Godard’s dystopian Alphaville, so don’t expect any similarities to Hollywood sci-fi. A cardsharp and ventriloquist, Alex has just broken up with his girlfriend Lise (Julie Delpy), but she pursues him while he is recruited for a heist by a shambolic pair of crooks who apparently need Alex’s skills to steal the cure for new disease STBO, a bizarrely moralistic retrovirus that only kills people who have sex without love. Prep for the job involves a parachute practice jump in training for an escape from France. Halley’s Comet reportedly causes a snowstorm after a heatwave, but weather conditions have little impact upon the vague plot, and it (the comet) is only mentioned in the movie as a rarity, something therefore ominous that brings its own cosmic fate, like alien gravity that somehow pulls characters from their chosen paths.

  Seemingly intended to evoke Hitchcock style capers and European underworld mystery, Carax’s movie has an absurdly leisurely build-up to its main action sequence – which is, of course, anticlimactic. Even the characters are ciphers and just a delivery system for long rambling conversations. It’s a movie composed of pleasant curiosities and infrequently ecstatic movement (on the soundtrack, Bowie’s ‘Modern Love’ song is there to provide a street-prowling Alex with a tiredly laughable freak-out moment), and it’s a movie about smoking. Yes, if you want to act for Carax, you’ve got to smoke. The habit is evidently not an addiction, though. Clearly, this smoking malarkey is the cool essence of urban noir. It sets the players and this scenario apart from any reality. Binoche and Lavant were better than this – in both their characters and performances – in Carax’s beguiling tragedy The Lovers on the Bridge (1991).

  Carax’s first movie, BOY MEETS GIRL, is available too (DVD, 23 June), and there’s a Blu-ray boxset of that with TNIY, plus the director’s more recent surrealist anthology-movie Holy Motors (Black Static #33) due out 27 October.

  After Metropolis, director Fritz Lang filmed another of his wife Thea von Harbou’s SF novels. Made in 1929, silent classic FRAU IM MOND (aka The Woman in the Moon, Dual Format, 25 August) became one of the premier genre dramas of its Weimar era.

  In the mission’s overlong preamble, establishing characters and motives (that include gold prospecting) of the crew, the story notes sacrifices of the space pioneers killed on earlier flights. Although, from today’s perspective, the spaceship’s interior/set design seem to owe rather more to Verne than Clarke, the picture’s visionary miniatures and camera effects offer some impressive approximations of NASA’s massive V.A.B. and Apollo’s launch-pad, as realised forty years later, and so this vintage sci-fi is convincing as a demo of the practical details required for a moon-shot, multi-stage rocket and all.

  The stowaway boy wallows in his adventure, while the supposed adults fail to acknowledge that it’s a bit late for arguments over ambition and jeopardy when they are looking down upon the lunar dark side. It all gets silly when there is atmosphere beyond the landing site, where the nutty professor uses a dowsing rod to find water, but this melodrama fulfils most of the SF criteria for a horribly dated interplanetary romance. While the men-folk bicker and fight, revealing their fathomless hubris, the lone heroine puts her desert-hiking boots on and tackles the scientific job of filming the moonscape, such as it is. Obviously, this fantasy Moon is not the airless satellite we all know about now, but Frau im Mond boasts an effective moral dilemma for its final chapter, and it took screen sci-fi a couple of steps closer to reality simply by not having anything like the Selenite aliens of Wells’ turn-of-the-century book The First Men in the Moon (filmed in 1964, with Harryhausen’s animation), or the unfeasible space-cannon of Verne’s novel From the Earth to the Moon (filmed in 1958).

  Eureka’s masters of cinema edition for Lang’s last silent movie includes the 15-minute German documentary featurette The First Scientific Science-Fiction Film. It’s a great hi-def restoration and a fine Blu-ray to suit many cinema purists, students and scholars, but I just can’t help thinking that a colourised version, with subtitles instead of intertitle cards, would be a welcome project and a much better commercial venture for today’s media products.

  FARTING EXCUSES: ALSO RECEIVED

  MIR
AGE MEN (DVD, 30 June, above) delves into the twilight zones of US government disinformation conspiracies and military-industrial propaganda that might well have helped create the 20th century’s biggest and dumbest religious cult, UFOlogy – or not.

  Led by the Shat, humans are cosmic baddies in kids cartoon ESCAPE FROM PLANET EARTH (Blu-ray/DVD, 14 July). Smurfs in Area 51…? Mac and Me for ADHD sprogs? Since such genre spoofs as Planet 51, I have realised that I’m far too old for this shite.

  HUNTING THE LEGEND (DVD, 21 July, above) is a documentaroid encounter with Bigfoot. Where do they find such crazy folks spreading hoaxes? Honestly, nothing really beats The Six Million Dollar Man’s alien-robot myth from the mid-1970s. That was genius!

  LATE ARRIVALS

  HELIX: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON (DVD, 30 June). Thriller about a team of scientists from the Centre for Disease Control who travel to a high-tech research facility in the Arctic to investigate a possible disease outbreak.