Cinema Futura (edited by Mark Morris)

by Steven Erikson

  On August 22nd 1924, in Courthouse Place, Chicago, the defence lawyer Clarence Darrow conducted his closing address in the Leopold and Loeb murder trial. It lasted for a tenacious twelve hours, during which time Darrow suggested the defendants’ crimes were effectively pre-determined: a natural and inescapable consequence of the society around them, their upbringing – even the lives of their parents before them. ‘Nothing in this world,’ Darrow argued, ‘happens without a cause.’ His clients had already pleaded guilty, and Darrow was simply trying to save them from execution. He succeeded.

  In addition to legal panache, it’s an argument with considerable weight and consequences. If we live in a deterministic universe then any crimes we commit are unavoidable. A man might stab his adulterous wife and her lover with a pair of scissors, for example, because of his anger and humiliation, because the scissors were to hand, because he forgot his glasses and returned home unexpectedly… and so on. Each cause leads inevitably to its effect, as surely as a ball rolling off a table will fall to the floor. If that’s true (and there are many reasons to think it is), where does it leave free will? And how do we make sense of notions of guilt and innocence and justice?

  Leaving such questions aside for the moment, I have to admit: I’m a simple man. Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report might deal with these heady issues, but it actually won me over a few minutes in, as Chief John Anderton (Tom Cruise) begins manipulating video footage of a murder: swishing, swiping and turning images on a glass screen using light-sensitive gloves. Set to orchestral music (Schubert’s symphony number eight in B Minor – fittingly, to soundtrack the prevention of a crime, the ‘unfinished’ symphony), it’s a wonderful futuristic scene. The imagined technology is beautifully realised and jaw-dropping to watch in action.

  It’s also strangely believable, which shouldn’t be surprising. To create his vision of Washington D.C. in 2054, Spielberg assembled a think-tank of experts to extrapolate from the present. As a result, everything in the film, from the targeted billboard advertising and electronic newspapers to the ‘sick-stick’ police baton (a memorable contribution from Generation X author Douglas Coupland), feels like a natural extension of the modern society. In fact, with the eight years since its release having seen – amongst other developments – the rise of multi-touch screen tablets, smartphones and e-readers, we’ve already reached the point where certain parts of Minority Report no longer seem like science fiction at all.

  The murderer Anderton is investigating – Howard Marks, who forgets his spectacles and catches his wife cheating – has not yet committed the crime. Instead, the footage is a pre-vision, generated by the three human pre-cogs held within the Pre-Crime unit. Howard Marks is captured, scissors raised, and locked away in a state of suspended animation. There hasn’t been a murder, we learn, in six years.

  Anderton, whose son was abducted (and presumably murdered) before the unit was established, has total faith in the system, and no qualms about imprisoning people who haven’t committed a crime yet. When questioned about the possibility of false positives by Danny Witwer (Colin Farrell), a sceptical outsider from the Department of Justice, Anderton rolls a ball off the desk, arguing that Witwer’s subsequent catch does not change the fact it was going to fall. Only when a pre-vision reveals he will murder a stranger called Leo Crow is Anderton forced to question the reality of Pre-Crime and go on the run from his colleagues.

  It’s easy to relate one aspect of the story – the imprisonment of ‘innocent’ people to prevent them committing crimes; the captivity of the pre-cogs themselves – to the present day, where balancing security and privacy causes passionate discussion on all sides, and acceptable levels of surveillance are hotly-debated. The film places heavy emphasis on sight, from the visions of the pre-cogs to the identity scans that cause Anderton to replace his own eyeballs. But Minority Report’s most intriguing philosophical concern is not with ethics so much as those questions of determinism and free will. The latter has its place in the ‘minority reports’ of the title: when the pre-cogs disagree, a different future is available. In desperation, Anderton kidnaps Agatha (Samantha Morton) and attempts to find his own. He doesn’t have one. Instead, driven to find Leo Crow, he’s caught in one of the most baffling possibilities of a deterministic system – an event that’s caused by its own prediction – and faces one of its central questions: if you know your future, is it possible to change it?

  As well as being a science-fiction film, Minority Report fits neatly into the crime genre. The film is noirish in several ways: the beautifully desaturated palette (almost monochromatic in places, although the pale colours pop from the screen); the fact that the pre-cogs, Agatha, Dashiell and Arthur, are named after crime writers. Anderton is a drug addict: a good man ruined by personal tragedy. In the darkest moment, he finds photographs of children, including his abducted son, in Crow’s hotel room, and is desperate to know what happened. ‘I put him in a barrel. I sunk him in the bay,’ Crow says. ‘He floated back up.’ It’s a moment of quiet and human horror: for the content, the realisation behind it, and the sudden violence that explodes in the room. And like many crime tales, there is a twist…

  If head-scratching eventually leads to head-shaking (what would the steps to set up Anderton realistically involve?) then, like I said, I’m a simple man, and the wonderfully-realised set-pieces stick in the mind as much as the issues raised tie it in knots. There are so many memorable scenes: a jet-pack confrontation in a rainy alley; a chase through a shopping complex where Agatha aids Anderton’s escape using balloons, umbrellas and precognition; a fight in a car factory; an overhead tracking shot as electronic spiders tap and skitter through a tenement block, scanning the eyes of the inhabitants. Best of all, for me, is the quieter scene between Anderton and his estranged wife, as Agatha reveals the alternative future that Anderton’s dead son might have had.

  And in an alternative universe, with Anderton having been genuinely undone by his own tragic flaw, Minority Report could have ended gracefully on that note. Instead, a conspiracy unravels, and the film concludes with a demonstration of free will that closes the Pre-Crime division forever. The pre-cogs are given their freedom and all the criminal convictions are overturned. It’s not the perfect ending in my eyes. But you get the feeling that Clarence Darrow, at least, would approve.

  CODE 46

  (Director: Michael Winterbottom; starring: Tim Robbins, Togo Igawa, Nabil Elouahabi, Samantha Morton - 2003)

  Garry Kilworth

  There are many fine aspects to this science fiction film and inevitably one or two flaws. The defects were not evident to me on the first viewing, but subsequent watchings revealed faults that could easily have been fixed during the filming. Sometimes discovering them is a fun exercise in itself and can add to the overall enjoyment.

  There is very little which is absolutely clear about the near-future society of Code 46, which I feel is to the movie’s credit. Just as the past is somewhat mysterious, what is to come should also be veiled.

  The storyline is Brief Encounter in a world not unlike Orwell’s 1984 in that society is divided into insiders and outsiders. Those within the system have ‘cover’, which seems to mean they are entitled to accommodation, health cover, work and to travel abroad. These insiders live in sanitised but glitzy cities. Outsiders, citizens without ‘cover’ seem to have little choice but to live beyond the pale of a city, either in or on the border of a wilderness. Outsiders get no benefits. Insiders are controlled by security: each citizen has a secret password (palabra), a fingerprint identity and sometimes a token or voucher (papel) which gives them their cover for a specific task or journey.

  William is an agent for an organisation called Sphinx, which may indeed be the government, who travels from Seattle to Shanghai to investigate fraudulent papeles. He has been given an ‘empathy virus’ to enable him to enter the minds of others providing they kick-start him with a small unknown fact about themselves. I like the idea of beneficial viruses. Today we culti
vate trees, such as the Tortured Hazel, that are given a virus to make their branches curl attractively. I would like a virus that would give me perfect pitch in music, or help me write brilliant poetry or make me play golf like Tiger Woods.

  In Shanghai William falls in love with Maria at first sight. No doubt the empathy virus has something to do with this sudden attraction. Titania, having been given a love potion in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, falls in love with an absurd half-man, half-beast. So with someone as beautiful as Maria it’s not surprising that William is struck by lightning and risks his marriage. Indeed he risks his reputation and career too, because Maria is the fraudster. Powerful things, love drugs, but a placebo would have done it for most men in his position. Instead of having her arrested he takes her out on the futuristic town and ends up making love to her. Casual sex in this society is not illegal but is fraught with danger, since there are countless unregistered clones around and you could be going to bed with a clone of a relative and violating Code 46 by producing incestuously-conceived offspring.

  There are two assumptions one has to make at this point. One, that clones in the near future do not resemble their host in appearance, and two, clones are not sterile, even if the environment is. Questions have to be asked such as why there is no programme of mandatory clone sterilisation or a obligatory registration of clones, but perhaps the future has a very liberal society and forcing anything is against the morals of that world. The determined film buff slides past these questions and slips into the world of tomorrow in order to enjoy the movie. A first viewing allows this without reservations. It is only on subsequent watchings that the critical eye takes over and discovers the hairline cracks.

  To its great credit this is clearly a low budget film with few changes to the scene outside our own front doors, but the atmosphere created is definitely othertimely. Much of the ‘Shanghai’ in the film I recognised as Hong Kong, where I used to live, especially scenes in the Bank of China, but Hong Kong has always had the neoteric touch. The photography of the city, along with the deserts and bleak border crossings, produces a wonderful futuristic feel. I love the camera work in this movie. It saves what could easily have been a complete dud and forced me to forgive and brush aside all its underlying faulty logic. This, coupled with an Esperanto-type language, mostly English, with some Spanish and smatterings of Arabic and Japanese, adds to the experience. You are in the future even though toothbrushes are still used and cars look the same. Boredom too, which as we all know will come with a stainless steel and glass future, is rife. Hence the brief encounter between William and Maria, though I have to say William appears just as joyless during and after the affair as he did before it. When Maria becomes pregnant, is charged with violating Code 46, and is given an abortion and a selective mind-wipe to erase the memory of the liaison, William is even more in the dumps. Again, we need to accept the improbable premise that contraceptives have been uninvented.

  There is a preternatural element to the plot. Maria has a recurring dream, always on her birthday, of being on a train. The train stops at one more station each birthday. When it reaches its destination there will be a man waiting there. Of course the man turns out to be William (who else?). I found this paranormal element superfluous and irritating, as I often do when dreams are supposed to be relevant to reality.

  Maria’s fake papeles result in the death of a man who goes to Delhi illegally only to die of an endemic disease to which the locals are immune. He bleeds to death through the pores of his skin and the subsequent pictures are suitably graphic. Maria and William then go on the run, to Jebel Ali, a city ‘outside’ the control of Sphinx, but have a road accident and William is taken back.

  William undergoes forced selective memory-wiping and remembers Maria no more. Maria stays in the desert with all her memories intact (which is strange since they have been wiped at least once before) and it is she who is telling the whole cautionary tale of the illicit affair which has ended in the revelation that she is a clone of William’s mother. Thus Oedipus escapes into oblivion while Jocasta wanders the wilderness communing with camels. The last shot we get of Maria is a romantic one: she is swathed in headscarves and a wind-lifted shift walking lonely desert places looking very beautiful.

  I loved the milieu, the desolation, the photography, the desperation of the characters, the weird bureaucracy and the mixture of languages, and can forgive the makers for all those unnecessary but inevitable imperfections we have come to expect from a difficult medium in which many separate egos are battling for attention.

  SERENITY

  (Director: Joss Whedon; starring: Nathan Fillion, Gina Torres, Alan Tudyk, Morena Baccarin - 2005)

  Anne Gay

  Serenity was an answer to a lot of people’s prayers, and not just St Augustine’s. Writer and director Joss Whedon was unwilling to let his SF/Western hybrid series Firefly remain unresolved after its premature cancellation by Fox TV in 2002. Passionate himself about the premise and the characters, Whedon didn’t want to let down the show’s army of fans either. The story arc was finally resolved in the cinematic release Serenity.

  In brief, the crew of the starship Serenity drift along carrying dubious cargoes in a hand-to-mouth existence – until, desperate for cash, they take two passengers aboard. These are a brilliant young doctor, Simon Tam, and his unhinged sister of 17, River. Suddenly the mighty Alliance of Central Worlds is after Serenity, destroying anyone who might give the crew refuge. Desperate to protect themselves, the crew seek to uncover the secret locked in River’s troubled mind. On the trail they’re attacked by Alliance militia, cannibalistic Reavers and a polite but fanatical assassin. The only clue is the word Miranda, the name of a planet whose existence had been hidden by the government. After battles of increasing ferocity they land on its surface and discover a world of corpses. A holograph reveals that the Alliance had spread a mind-controlling drug, Pax, to suppress anti-government thought. It backfired. 99.9% of the population – 30 million souls – just lay down and died. Serenity indeed. The other 0.1% turned into the self-mutilating monsters called Reavers. This is the secret the assassin must preserve – and that our unlikely heroes must broadcast so the Alliance cannot repeat their hideous experiment. Can the crew battle the wily killer, his Alliance troops and the Reavers? Or will they perish in the attempt?

  Whedon’s tight plotting combines familiar tropes with new twists. Each of the protagonists is on an interior journey. Serenity’s captain, Mal Reynolds, starts, as Star Wars‘ Han Solo starts, as a defeated fighter against a tyrannical empire. Like Solo, Reynolds is disillusioned. He cares only about his ship and his crew, hiding in the lonely dark at the fringes of known space. Like Solo, he learns that his loyalty lies with humanity. Brilliantly played by Nathan Fillion, Reynolds’ brusque facade of self-interest unravels to display a warmth he finds embarrassing. He even begins to acknowledge his passion for the beautiful Inara (Morena Baccarin). Mercenary Jayne Cobb (Adam Baldwin) is too self-centered to care about romance, but he also is brought to make a stand for himself and his shipmates. Redemption indeed.

  Five other love-stories emerge, each balancing seemingly impossible obstacles against a trust that all will come out well so long as the right action is taken. Kaylee, the ship’s engineer played by the vibrant Jewel Staite, carries a torch for Simon Tam. Her plebeian attitudes fit ill with the doctor’s high-flown background and his obsession with protecting his sister. Only when it seems they are all at the point of death does the doctor (Sean Maher) display his reciprocal feelings, explaining that he couldn’t do so until he had solved River’s problems. Simon’s devotion to his sister eventually releases her from insanity. Shepherd Book (Ron Glass) knows from the inside the Alliance’s dirty world of espionage and death but, now a holy man, he acts always in good faith to build something wholesome for his flock. Second-in-command Zoe (the decorative Gina Torres) weighs duty to her captain and humanity’s interests against her love for her husband, pilot Wash (Alan Tudyk). Sometimes love wins. S
ometimes it doesn’t. But that won’t stop the megalithic government attempting to enforce its belief in its own perfection onto the unwilling. Or the need for individuals to make a stand for their beliefs. It’s the assassin who finally shows us that without belief we are nothing.

  This struggle has a parallel for the show’s creators. The untimely assassination of the TV series followed misfortunes: Firefly was not granted a consistent time-slot and Fox insisted that episode three be hammered into a pilot show, the intended opening being relegated to a later slot. Only eleven of the original fourteen episodes were broadcast. Yet Whedon had a secret weapon. The anti-Alliance militia who lost the Battle of Serenity were called Browncoats, and this was the name the show’s fans took on. Through massive support at conventions and on the internet, they gave Whedon & Co. enough of a profile that Universal Pictures stumped up $40 million (small potatoes in the film business) plus distribution and marketing. With Browncoats organising screenings of Serenity for the charity Equality Now, followed by the DVD release, Serenity turned a profit and became a major cult classic.

  The film’s original tag-line, ‘Can’t stop the signal,’ refers to the heroic broadcasting by Reynolds of the Alliance’s hideous secret. It also symbolises the triumph of Whedon, the cast and the fan-army of Browncoats. Similarly the waif-like telepath River Tam, victim of the Alliance’s torturous mind-control, is freed by discovering her nightmare visions come from government minds. The Alliance had wanted her as a weapon: she is – but for the rebels. Skilfully embodied by dancer Summer Glau, her unique style of fighting combines with her mind-reading to make her unstoppable.

  Through the parallel of the Old West to the frontiers of space, we are shown that, lo-tech or hi-tech, there will always be conflict between power and individuality. People are still people with the same attitudes, problems and good qualities, facing the same challenges.