Four SF films

Predestination  (2014)

The Edge of Tomorrow  (2014)

Solaris  (1972)

The Zero Theorem   (2013)


Predestination
 
I watched Predestination last night. It's, of course, Heinlein's "All You Zombies" embedded within a time-traveling anti-terrorist organization which is attempting to prevent the Fizzle Bomber from blowing up a goodly part of NYC.  As far as I can remember, Robert A. Heinlein's core story was treated accurately.  I enjoyed the film, once I accepted the premise that the expanded version was necessary for making the film.   After all, who would want to watch a film solely based on RAH's short story?  The only weakness I found was in the role of "the unmarried mother."   That character just didn't come across as convincing to me.  Perhaps Sarah Snook, who played "the unmarried mother," wasn't convinced either by the character.
I watched some of the special features, and one of the comments made by a producer? director? actor? was that this was an entirely unique concept in time-travel stories.  However I can think of at least two other stories which played with the same paradox, and there probably are others.

A time-traveler goes into the future and finds a world destroyed, probably by war.  He finds the remains of a building and inside is a display case with a knife in perfect condition inside  it.  He brings the knife back to his time.  The knife is analyzed and even a small sliver is taken from it.  The material is unlike anything the scientists have seen before.  Eventually they lose interest in the knife and it is placed in a small display case near the entrance of the research institute.  The story is "As Never Was" and was written by P. Schuyer  Miller.  A similar incident is found in Ford Madox Ford's novel, Ladies Whose Bright Eyes.

I would rate the film as at least a 4 on a 5 point scale.



The Edge of Tomorrow  aka Live Die Repeat

Tom Cruise plays  the role of  a smarmy self-involved PR person in the military in the midst of an alien invasion.  It's a role perfectly suited to him.  He irritates a general and ends up busted in rank and headed for the front lines, more specifically an invasion of Europe from England, a futuristic replay of WWII's Normandy invasion, with far more disastrous results.  The humans are wiped out.  Through a rather unbelievable set of circumstances,  Cage,  Cruise's character, is time-warped back to the time when he is forcibly united with the squad that he will join in its ill-fated invasion.  Again, he is killed and so on.  Each time he presumably learns a bit more and survives a bit longer.  

The star of the show is actually the battle suit--see Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers.  The special features or bonus features focuses solely on the battle suit and on the creation of the aliens.  What we see of Cruise involves the heroic struggles he makes in learning to manipulate the suit.  Nothing was mentioned about anything else in the film: plot, setting, characterization. It was all suit, suit, suit.  

The reason is simple: there really isn't much in the way of plot, setting, characterization.  If the action scenes were removed, only about 2-3 minutes would remain of the total running time of 113 minutes.
If you want action, this is your film.

I'd give it 3.5/5.0 for the action scenes which were technically highly effective and kept one from thinking about the implausibility of the plot, what there was of it.




Solaris
The film is based on Stanislaw Lem's novel of the same name and is directed by Andrei Tarkovsky.
It has his signature film elements--long and loving takes on nature and humans doing nothing or sleeping.  I would also be more likely to recognize  Donatas Banionis' (he plays the major character Kris Kelvin) profile than his face, as the camera spent some time focused on his ear (right one, I think)

It's my fault, probably,  that I didn't get Tarkovsky's message:  for example: the commentary regarding Kris, the psychologist, who supposedly functions solely by reason and with no emotions or feelings,  tells us that he has no love for nature.  Not knowing this, I thought the first few minutes of the film which portrays him wandering through the grounds where he lives suggested that he was enjoying his wanderings.  Later, when I found out he was leaving the planet, I thought he was soaking up memories of nature for the future when he would be surrounded by metal and plastic in the space ship and on the station around Solaris.  But, no, according to the commentary,  this part shows he is detached from nature, and that he does have only some minimal feelings is demonstrated when he washes his hands in the small lake.


Once aboard the space station in orbit around Solaris, he encounters the same sort of visitations that affect the other crew members.  His dead wife suddenly appears to him in a physical form and not just as an image or vision.  He now begins to understand the problems faced by the other researchers on the station.  Are these visitations an attempt by the inhabitants of the planet, or even the planet itself, to study the strange visitors in orbit or an attempt to communicate with them or both?  Or are the humans suffering from hallucinations which have little to do with the planet? The viewers are left to decide this for themselves.  The ending?-- well, the film just sort of stopped.  Perhaps someone reading this can leave a comment that will help me understand it. 


It's been long since I read Solaris, so I can't do any reasonable commentary on the faithfulness of the film to the novel, but I do remember being confused by the film in much the same way I was confused by the novel, which probably is as it should be.  How alien can a being or race be, if one is not confused or bewildered by at least some aspects?

Rating:  ??  This was my second viewing, and I suppose I will try again sometime down the road.




The Zero Theorem
Dir.  Terry Gilliam
   
In Henry James' short work, "The Beast in the Jungle," John Marcher has the strange fixation that something unusual, either good or bad, is going to happen to him.  So, he avoids getting too close to people and does not propose to a woman who would certainly accept him because he fears to subject others, including a wife, to his fate, whatever it may be.  At the end of the story he wonders if the marvelous thing that was supposed to happen to him had already happened, and he failed to recognize it when it did.

Qohen Leth, in a similar fashion, has isolated himself while he awaits a phone call.  Many years ago, he received a phone call from a stranger who asked if he wanted to learn the answer to the mystery of life and existence which would then make him a supremely happy person.  Before he could answer "yes," he was disconnected.  Since then he has thought about nothing except waiting for this phone call.  He is even afraid to leave the house for fear of missing the call.  Since he isn't rich, he has to go to work, but he hurries home immediately after work in order to be there when the phone rings.  He has also been haranguing Management, unsuccessfully so far, to allow him to work at home.


He is considered a computer genius whose job is "entity crunching," and exactly what that entails is beyond me.  He finally persuades Management to allow him to work at home, and it proves the point that getting what one wants is not always a good thing.  He has been assigned to work on the Zero Theorum, a task which has defeated many others before him, and the need for secrecy is likely what prompts Management to allow him to work at home.  The Zero Theorem is a mathematical formula which, when proven, will support the theory that the universe is meaningless.  The universe is an accident that will not happen again for there's no reason for it to happen again. Ironically, his home is a burned out cathedral. 


Aside from the plot, the costumes, setting, and special effects are part of the charm of the film.  The film was shot in Bucharest, Rumania, and Gilliam takes full advantage of the varied architecture of the city.   It supposedly takes place in London, but this is clearly not the London of today.

I found the costumes to be bizarre:  one of the scenes is a costume party, but I couldn't see much difference between what they were wearing at the party and the clothing worn by people on the street.  This effect was brought about by using clothing styles from the '40s, '50s, and '60s, but not made of the expected fabrics of cotton, wool, or silk or even polyester.  Instead (and this was forced to some extent by the film's low budget), the costumes were made from shower curtains and other items made of a shiny plastic material.  The exception was the main character, who work black and other dark colors, which clearly set him aside from the rest of the cast.


The story is the conflict that develops when he becomes distracted by a young woman which interferes with his devotion to his job and his constant preoccupation with The Phone Call.   She offers him a way out, an escape, but he can't let go of solving the problem of the Zero Theorem and of waiting for the phone to ring.  (One hint:  the film does not end when you might think it does.)


It's an interesting story with an intelligent plot and some serious questions that have been around since humans started wondering about when and where and how and why.  It's also a feast for the eyes with the bright colors, with a tinge of the steampunk universe hovering about.  
Rating:  4/5

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky: ROADSIDE PICNIC and STALKER

While Arkady and Boris Strugatsky have collaborated on a number of novels, Roadside Picnic is probably their best known work in the West. It was written in 1971 and published in 1972. It seems to have been first published in the US in 1978, for it was nominated for a John W. Campbell Award for the best SF novel of that year. It came in second place to one of Fred Pohl's best novels, Gateway, and ahead of Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly.

It was obviously a highly regarded novel at that time, and it still is, as it was just reprinted in 2007 as a SF Masterworks edition, which is the edition I have. It seems that 1978 was a banner year for SF since the top three finalists for the John W. Campbell Award have all been reprinted in the SF Masterworks Series: Gateway, Roadside Picnic, and A Scanner Darkly.

Andrei Tarkovsky became interested in the work and in 1979 directed a film based on the novel. It was first seen outside the Soviet Union in the Netherlands in 1980, and it appeared in the US in 1982. Tarkovsky won two awards for the film, one being an Ecumenical Jury Award (a special award) at the Cannes Film Festival in 1980.

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky are the credited screenwriters for the film, while Andrei Tarkovsky, the director, according to imdb.com, is listed as an uncredited screenwriter. After viewing the film, I suspect that Tarkovsky was a major influence, if not the most significant screenwriter of the three.

As I am usually biased against the film when I read the novel first, I saw the film and then reread the novel. I had read it several decades ago and had only the vaguest idea of what was in the novel.


The Novel: Roadside Picnic

The plot of the novel, Roadside Picnic, is relatively simple. Unknown aliens have visited a number of places in the Northern Hemisphere. Why they came and what they did is unknown. All that is known is that they came and the places they visited have been changed. They also left a number of artefacts behind them which provides the title for the novel. As one of the characters explains:

"Imagine a picnic... A picnic. Picture a forest, a country road, a meadow. A car drives off the country road into the meadow, a group of young people get out of the car carrying bottles, baskets of food, transistor radios, and cameras. They light fires, pitch tents, turn on the music. In the morning they leave. The animals, birds, and insects that watch in horror through the long night creep out from their hiding places. And what do they see? Gas and oil spilled on the grass. Old spark plugs and old filters strewn around. Rags, burnt out bulbs, and a monkey wrench left behind. Oil slicks on the pond. And of course, the usual mess--apple cores, candy wrappers, charred remains of the campfire, cans bottles, somebody's handkerchief, somebody's penknife, torn newspapers, coins, faded flowers picked in another meadow."

In other words, humans are as unable to understand what the aliens left behind as the inhabitants of the meadow are unable to understand the debris left by humans. And, some of that debris might be beneficial while other items might be most deadly.

The plot element of an alien visitation, and the Zone created by that visitation, was later taken up by M. John Harrison in his novel Nova Swings, published in 2006. It also received considerable recognition as it won the Arthur C. Clarke and the Philip K. Dick awards for best novel respectively in 2006 and 2007.

In Roadside Picnic, the governments has interdicted the area and banned all travel into and within the Zone, the area affected by the Visitation. Red Schuhart works for a government agency and guides scientists into the Zone, both for research and for the artefacts which are brought out for study in various laboratories. When he's on his own though, he is also a stalker, one of those who enter the Zone illegally. He guides clients who pay a considerable amount for his services. He also brings back artefacts which he sells to buyers, who understandably are eager to possess something from the Zone.



WARNING: SPOILER MATERIAL COMING UP


In the novel, Schuhart is eventually caught and spends several years in prison. He can't get his job back when he gets out. What happens is obvious. He becomes a stalker. Moreover, he is strongly attracted to the Zone, to the dangers he finds there and which he has successfully avoided so far. These are real dangers, inexplicable as they may be, and someone is injured or killed on all of the trips into the Zone that appear in the novel. In addition, the Zone has other effects as the children of the stalkers show a higher degree of mutation and birth defects than found in the general population. Schuhart's own daughter is nicknamed Monkey primarily because of her high activity level and for the fur that covers her body, and as she gets older, she seems less and less human.

The Artefact that all search for, whether they believe in it or not, is not the Golden Fleece, but the legendary Golden Ball. Supposedly those who find it can make a wish, and it will grant their deepest desire, which may or may not be known to those making the wish. Even here there is danger, for which of us can be sure that we know what we really want. The novel ends as Schuhart approaches the Golden Ball.


The Film: Stalker

The film begins roughly about 1/3 of the way into the novel, shortly after the Stalker (I could never catch whether he had a name in the film version and the cast of characters on imdb.com lists him simply as Stalker) has been released from prison and now is a full time stalker.

The setting is similar to the novel: an alien visitation has created the Zone which the government has cordoned off and forbidden to all unauthorized individuals. At the beginning of the film the Stalker meets his two clients who want him to guide them to the Golden Room (the equivalent of the Golden Ball in the novel) in which one is granted one's deepest desire. They encounter several threats which are never shown and in which the clients and the viewers have to take solely on faith in the Stalker's sanity.

In the novel, the Stalker approaches the Golden Ball thinking of "Happiness for All," while in the film, the Stalker and his clients debate the dangers of the granting people's deepest desires, including those of a very evil person. One of the Stalker's clients in the film is a scientist who has stolen a small nuclear device and intends to blow up the Golden Room, for it is too dangerous to be left for anyone to enter it and get one's deepest desire realized. The others persuade him to dismantle the bomb, and the three leave without having entered the room.

The only "special effect" in the film is Tarkovsky's decision to film the opening scenes, which are set outside the Zone, in sepia. I guess it's sepia as it looks to me like old photographs taken before color film was available. However, when they enter the Zone, Tarkovsky switches to color. It's a very intense color, but I'm not sure if that's just the effect of the first part being shot in brown and shades of brown. For the most part, the environment inside the Zone, mostly rural scenes, is far more pleasant than that outside the Zone, which appears to be a bombed-out area or one affected by urban decay. Tarkovsky then shoots the ending of the film, set outside the Zone, in color, though a washed-out color in comparison to the Zone. One is free to contemplate the significance of the color changes.

The pacing is slow. Be prepared to spend considerable time studying the character's profile, the short bristly hairs on the side of the character's head and unshaven chin. At another point, one gets slow pans of a pond with various submerged objects. Tarkovsky seems far more interested in a film that provides atmosphere and far less interested in telling a story.

Overall Reaction:

I recommend the novel for it has interesting characters, action, and an intriguing SF theme--our perception of truly alien artefacts. A great many SF works, prose fiction and films, assume that we would be able to understand and use alien items while this work suggests it might be more difficult than we assume and in some cases impossible.

I would recommend the film only to those who will not be turned off by the slow pacing of the film and the focus on settings and objects which seem designed more to provide an atmosphere than to move the plot forward. In addition, I would recommend that one does not come prepared to see a dramatized version of Roadside Picnic, except in only the broadest sense--that there is an alien zone and people enter it for various reasons.