Even readers not particularly well versed in science fiction know Philip K. Dick as the author of the stories that would become such cinematic visions of a troubled future as Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, and A Scanner Darkly. Dick’s fans know him better through his 44 novels, 121 short stories, and other writings not quite categorizable as one thing or the other. All came as the products of a creatively hyperactive mind, and one subject to more than its fair share of disturbances from amphetamines, hallucinogens, unconventional beliefs, and what those who write about Dick’s work tend to call paranoia (either justified or unjustified, depending on whom you ask). But Dick, who passed in 1982, channeled this constant churn of visions, theories, convictions, and fears into books like The Man in the High Castle, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Ubik, and VALIS, some of the most unusual works of literature ever to carry the label of science fiction — works that, indeed, transcend the whole genre.
But what must it have felt like to live with the guy? The Penultimate Truth About Philip K. Dick (named after his 1964 novel of humanity tricked into living in underground warrens) seeks out the writer’s friends, colleagues, collaborators, stepdaughter, therapist, and wives (three of them, anyway), assembling a portrait of the man who could create so many textual worlds at once so off-kilter and so tapped into our real worries and obsessions. Each of these interviewees regards differently Dick’s dedication to the pursuits of both literary achievement and psychonautical adventure, his complicated conception of the true nature of reality, his at times unpredictable behavior, and his penchant for encounters with the divine. Director Emeliano Larre and writer Patricio Vega’s 2007 documentary reveals one of the most fascinating personalities in late 20th-century letters, though, as any professor of literature will tell you, we ultimately have to return to the work itself. Fortunately, Dick’s personality ensured that we have a great deal of it, all of it unsettling but greatly entertaining. Readers taken note. You can Download 14 Great Sci-Fi Stories by Philip K. Dick as Free Audio Books and Free eBooks.
The 1983 sci-fi thriller “Brainstorm” stars Christopher Walken and Natalie Wood. This forward-thinking science fiction romp presents virtual reality (VR) in its early stages and evolution. Although the Douglas Trumbull-directed film isn’t perfect, it’s a neat look at VR with superb acting, a magnificent score, and excellent effects.
A scientific group led by Michael Brace (Walken) and his estranged wife Karen (Natalie Wood), along with Michael’s colleague Lillian (Louise Fletcher) invents the computer and brain interfacing device. Their creation not only allows for virtual reality experiences but allows feelings and sensations to be recorded on tape. In this way, others may experience those as well.
After their initial success, CEO Alex Terson (Cliff Robertson) instructs Brace et al to offer a demo of their device with the intent to secure financial backing. It’s during this exhibition that the group realizes the true power of their device: its ability to record human emotions. Michael uses the device to record memories with emotions, and thereby influence the real world. But whereas Michael employs this as the utility to reconnect with his estranged wife, previous colleague Landan Marks (Donald Hotton) aspires to use it for military applications.
When Lillian suffers a heart attack, she puts on the headset and records her death. Michael later discovers her recorded memories. Eventually, Michael realizes the insidious intent to use his creation for warfare when he uncovers “Project Brainstorm.” As such, Michael and Karen team up to thwart efforts to use their technology to perpetuate the military industrial complex.
“Brainstorm” offers an intriguing and groundbreaking look at VR. There’s an exploration of not only virtual reality experiences but the effects on the user. This manifests in the ability to record emotions as well as memories. I like the way “Brainstorm” touches on humanity’s influence of tech, and the means through which tech shapes humanity. Moreover, “Brainstorm” presents an accurate portrayal of tech advancement. Early in the film, Terson instructs his team to make a smaller version of their helmet. Similarly, a trend in real-world technology is constant innovation in creating smaller devices.
I quite enjoy the helmet design and the effects are top-notch. The 1983 movie has aged pretty well with its fish-eye lens shots and well-crafted animation sequences.Trumbull worked on effects for films such as “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Silent Running,” and “Blade Runner.” It’s evident that Trumbull understood the genre and he infuses mesmerizing special effects, particularly at the end.
Cinematography is fantastic. The film is set in North Carolina and uses several NC scenes as prominent backdrops. Notably, the Wright Brothers National Memorial plays an important role. Plus, there’s a neat shot of Duke Chapel. Locations even appear futuristic. The Burroughs Wellcome building offers its then high-tech looks as the main office for Michael, Karen, and Lillian. A gorgeous Chapel Hill, NC home with its parallelogram angles and solar panels was used as well.
Acting is phenomenal. Walken lends an inspired performance, and Natalie Wood is captivating in her final cinematic appearance. But it’s Louise Fletcher as Lillian who completely steals the show with a tour de force acting job.
It would be remiss to discuss “Brainstorm” without touching on its superb score. Renowned composer James Horner provides the musical backing which is replete with the timpani Horner became best known for. Horner’s “Brainstorm” soundtrack features elements from his “Wolfen” score. Later, in the 1986 sci-fi hit “Aliens,” Horner continued this trend. But it’s a formula that works.
Unfortunately, “Brainstorm” doesn’t quite end as well as it starts. The finale is admittedly a muddled moment which will leave you wondering “what?” as the credits roll. Michael plays back Lillian’s tape and watches the afterlife playing out, even glimpsing hell for a moment. Departed souls in the form of bioluminescent butterflies flow peacefully into heaven. Though the effects hold up fine, this sequence falls flat in lacking the poetry of similar scenes like the end of “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
Still, it’s tough to hold the abrupt and admittedly cheesy, ending against the movie. Wood’s tragic and mysterious death led production to halt. Eventually, Trumbull rewrote the script and used Wood’s younger sister as a stand-in for her remaining shots.
I especially enjoy how “Brainstorm” probes the relationship between tech and humanity, presenting complex concepts like computer-brain transference. “Brainstorm” may not carry the legacy of sci-fi flicks like “Blade Runner,” “Alien,” and “The Matrix.” However, its stellar cinematography, acting, score, and effects plus forward-thinking portrayal of tech make this 1983 movie a smart, lasting thriller.
In his book Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, essayist Chuck Klosterman wrote an essay defending the 2001 Cameron Crowe film Vanilla Sky from its reputation as a creative failure. Specifically, he honed in on critic Owen Gleiberman’s D+ review in Entertainment Weekly that accused the film of being little more than “a cracked hall of mirrors taped together by a What is reality? cryogenics plot.” Nonplussed, Klosterman pointed out that all the best films of this era—from The Matrix and Fight Club to eXistenZ and Mulholland Drive asked that same question about the nature of our reality. Klosterman argued that it was “the only relevant question for contemporary filmmakers.”
I bring this up to defend Downsizing, which is not a great film but deserves kudos for doing what Vanilla Sky did in the early ‘00s. Downsizing asks the only relevant question for filmmakers of its era: What should we do now that the world is ending? It asks this question all the way through, although its beginnings—the first third, basically—feels more like a broad comedy, which may have thrown some viewers. The film’s shifts in tone reminds me a bit of Zero Effect, one of my all-time favorites, which also presented itself as a wacky comedy before slowly transforming into something more profound. I have a theory that people—maybe critics in particular—don’t like movies that sell themselves as one thing and then become something else. It makes them feel manipulated or something.
I was up for it with Downsizing because if you look closely, it’s about the end of the world from the beginning. The film stars Matt Damon as Paul Safranek, an occupational therapist struggling to get his head above financial water. He and his wife (Kristen Wiig) accept a radical new solution: they will shrink themselves and head off to live in Leisureland, a community for the small where their scant savings will allow them to live like millionaires for the rest of their lives.
It turns out to be a real bait-and-switch, for Paul and for us. His wife leaves him just before the procedure, leaving Paul small and alone. After fighting depression for a year or so, he eventually gets caught up in the life of Ngoc Lan Tran (Hong Chau), a Vietnamese dissident who was a brief cause celebre after shrinking herself to escape political persecution and is now cleaning tiny houses for a living in Leisureland.
Despite the economic framing, Downsizing is pretty goofy up until this point, with a lot of sight gags built around objects that are not the size we’re used to seeing them. Still, there are hints of the thoughtfulness to come. The shrinking process is initially sold as a way to cut down on human consumption and save humanity from the ravages of climate change, but director Alexander Payne slips in some well-meaning commentary on how environmentalism is co-opted. Most people shrink themselves out of self-interest, using their duty to the planet as cover. When Paul reconnects with an old friend who has gotten small and asks him if it feels good to save the environment, the friend replies, “Downsizing is about saving yourself.”
It’s a neat summary of the problems of the film, which is ostensibly about saving the planet but is ultimately more committed to the journey of its average, White middle-class protagonist. When Paul meets Ngoc Lan, he discovers the dark underbelly of Leisureland: the projects on the wrong side of the tracks (okay, in this case, a tunnel), where she and an entire class of unseen, underrepresented workers live. Paul is horrified by their living conditions, and finds himself compelled to help her feed, bandage, and generally care for them out of the goodness of his heart. When he learns of an opportunity to visit the original small colony in Norway—and be included in their plan to start a new colony underground while waiting out the impacts of climate change—he must decide between being part of the privileged future or staying behind to help those afflicted in the present.
I’ve noticed that most people who have seen Downsizing seem to get fed upin this final third. Paul and Ngoc Lan travel to Norway with his debauched neighbors (a perfectly cast Christoph Waltz and Udo Kier), where the film completes its transition from broad comedy to meditation on the morality of Armageddon. Paul justifies his choice to be part of the future in selfish terms: ”Why didn’t I become a doctor? Why did I downsize? Why did my wife abandon me? So I could wind up here at exactly the time to go into that tunnel! I finally have the chance to do something that matters.” In the end—SPOILER ALERT—he stays on the surface, marries Ngoc Lan, and spends his downsized downtime helping the indigent.
I have no issue with the film’s transformation, and I admire its willingness to ask, as Klosterman puts it, the only relevant question of our time. It reminds me of the best moment in the political career of Andrew Yang, who, when asked at a Democratic presidential debate for his approach to climate change, gave a startlingly clear-eyed answer. Other candidates talked about the need to listen to climate scientists, transitioning to green energy, and, if they were feeling bold that day, a carbon tax. Yang looked right at the camera, and said something like (I’m paraphrasing), “I would allocate $40 billion to move every American family to high ground.” His honesty hit me like a load of bricks, and for a minute there, I thought we finally had a politician who would tell the truth. The bloom came off his rose pretty soon after that, but at least he didn’t deny reality, and neither does Downsizing. It should be commended for that.
It just chooses a poor lens through which to explore the issue. The film’s problems run along two intertwining tracks: creative and political. First, there’s something unseemly about Payne exploring these themes through a middle-class White protagonist. Watching Downsizing, you can’t help but wish Ngoc Lan were the main character, and Paul was just a sweet White guy she picked up along the way. Hong Chau gives a miraculous performance as the resolute activist. Yes, she uses a comically exaggerated Vietnamese accent that threatens to offend sensitive viewers, but her increasingly soulful performance overwhelms the stereotype. Was all this on purpose—the offense and the redemption? I tend to think so. Payne is telling this story for privileged White viewers, and he hopes that her transformation from, um, housecleaner into fully-formed human being will transform them into caring about those they would otherwise ignore.
Maybe it will, but I can’t help but feel he’d have a better shot at doing that if his main character weren’t the most boring person on the planet. I get the appeal of an Everyman in this type of story, but Paul Safranek does not need to be this bland. His backstory is compelling enough: He was going to be a doctor, but his mom got sick, so he moved back to his hometown to take care of her and became an occupational therapist instead. His mom died, and he married a seemingly sweet lady who inexplicably left him in the lurch. This series of events would produce an interesting person, or at least a recognizable personality, certainly more than the human blob that Payne, his co-writer Jim Taylor, and Matt Damon come up with here. On the page, Paul is torn between altruism and self-interest, but that conflict never comes to life on the screen. There’s no self-deprecation, black humor, frustration, or anger. It’s a bland performance by an actor who is capable of much more.
Downsizing still gets points for trying. Damon could have given a better performance, but the broader problem of centering a boring White man in this story was not really fixable. An FX-driven moral parable about the end of humanity would never be made without a movie star at its center, and certainly not for its reported $68 million budget—it’s kind of a miracle it got made even with one. And outside of Denzel Washington and Will Smith, there were no non-White movie stars at this time who guaranteed a certain box-office haul. Put simply, it always had to be Damon or someone like him, which means that Downsizing probably did the best it could under the circumstances. If you want to make a movie that reckons seriously with Armageddon, you’re gonna have to work with the devil to do it.
Stumbling into something new while seeking out material for this site is always an exciting experience—and nothing demands my attention like the phrase “weird Yugoslav-Czechoslovak Science Fiction movie from the early eighties.” Visitors From the Arkana Galaxy (sometimes referred to by the more nondescript title Visitors from the Galaxy) is definitely a weird one, and has only found wide distribution in English-speaking countries in the last year thanks to Deaf Crocodile Films—its combination of unvarnished eighties European settings and borderline surrealist storytelling makes for the kind of cult-ready object that modern boutique film distributors regularly gift to us. Shifting between exaggerated reality and extreme fantasy, Visitors has something of a satirical edge, and combined with its bizarre visuals, you can really tell that director Dušan Vukotić comes from an animation background (the movie was partially produced by prominent Croatian animation studio Zagreb Film.) To further invite attention—my attention in particular—there is a prominent monster element that was designed and partially animated by stop motion animation master Jan Svankmajer before he gave us such classics as Alice and Little Otik.
Opening with a blur of space age imagery and an enrapturing wash of seventies Sci-Fi synth by Tomislav Simović, the kind of music that embodies the style’s simultaneously unnerving and soothing qualities, the dreamy sensory experience shifts to the earthbound, where we meet aspiring Sci-Fi writer Robert Novak (Žarko Potočnjak), who can evidently only begin to craft his literary opus by putting on a space helmet and speaking passages into his voice recorder. In what turns out to be a story about the struggle of seeking one’s artistic dreams, Robert’s writing is interrupted by his neighbours—which includes a fellow artist, the aspiring journalistic photographer Toni (Ljubiša Samardžić), and his mother—and his girlfriend Biba (Lucié Žulova), who thinks he’s spending too much time with his fictional characters and not enough with the real people in his vicinity. There’s a bit of nuance to this depiction of an artist’s life: Robert’s need for escape is established not just through the people hectoring him while he writes (although he’s clearly also suffering from writer’s block as well), but from the scenes where we see his unfulfilling job at the front desk of a hotel, badgered by his boss and swarmed by the tourists that flock to his city. At the same time, Biba does have a point about his growing disconnect, and she is also shown to have her own issues (living in an apartment with her own set of annoying neighbours and an overprotective older sister), providing enough depth of detail to prevent her from just being a hectoring girlfriend. I do think she is allowed some hectoring, though, when his android creations from the planet Tugador in the Arkana galaxy—Andra (Ksenija Prohaska) and the child-like Ulu (Jasminka Alic) and Targo (Rene Bitorajac)—appear in the real world and, among other things, briefly transform her into a small cube.
Robert’s creations first contact him through his recorder, bringing him to a small island off the coast near his hotel job to find them. That first encounter is so disturbing to him that afterwards he visits a psychiatrist, and in conversation reveals that he possibly possesses the mental power of tellurgy, creating physical objects with his mind. This explanation ends up being as weird as the aliens: Robert tells a story of how, as an infant, he materialized working breasts on his single father in order to be fed. That establishes the way in which the aliens could become real, and soon Robert returns to the island with Biba just to have proof that he is not going insane, and both witness Andra experimenting on the island’s lone security guard by removing his heart, followed by all the business with the cube.
You can probably tell that there would need to be a very careful handling of tone to keep this series of baffling events from going off the rails, and to its benefit, Visitors finds that balance, mostly by varying the comedy. Sometimes, the humour comes from normal people somewhat realistically reacting to unbelievable events, while other times both the “normal” people and the Sci-Fi elements are equally absurd. The latter is frequently deployed with every human character other than Robert and Biba, who are regularly portrayed as cartoonish buffoons who react to the alien presence with numerous bizarre assumptions—for example, when all the tourists at the hotel decide to track down the extraterrestrial trio on the island, one woman convinces the rest that only way to show the aliens that they “have nothing to hide” is to take off their clothes, leading to moments of very European comedy where it’s just a crowd of stark naked people walking around a cave.
For the most part, Andra just wants to hang around with Robert in order to learn about human emotions—eventually she shows up in his apartment and begins vacuuming the floor with her arm (one of the more whimsical moments of Svankmajer stop motion)—and that inevitably causes problems for Biba, especially after she walks in on them touching each other, making the background erupt into orgasmic green static. From the beginning, it’s not hard to figure out why Robert thought up Andra in the first place, and any concern he has with his creations mucking up his real life is pretty quickly put aside when the benefits make themselves clear. Robert and Biba fight over this, but neither is truly made out to be totally in the wrong.
If anyone comes close to being an antagonist in this story, it’s Targo, an aryan-looking little cretin who apparently took exception to Robert’s decision earlier in the movie to remove him from his novel and replace him with a monster named Mumu, at the behest of his book seller friend who tells him that readers want scary stuff (the author they keep bringing up as a point of comparison has the amusing name “Hover Decklerd”, who I don’t think is real?) So, for the rest of the movie, when he isn’t chasing after people in his spherical blue space vehicle, Targo is finding opportunities to summon his monstrous replacement to terrorize people—it starts out in the form of a small toy, because Robert had the idea that the monster should be “some insane toy” (an idea dismissed by his friend for being too cutesy I guess), and then grows into a person wearing perhaps the most indescribable monster costume you’ll likely see. It is abstract art come to life, like a fusion of HR Giger and the expressionist movie posters from Europe that you see posted online from time to time, unique and disgusting in such a way that the fact that it’s an old school person in a monster costume simply doesn’t register. While this obviously means that Mumu is not purely a creature of Svankmajer’s nightmarish animation like Little Otik, he does provide suitably horrific flourishes for certain shots, like a pair of eyeballs that pop out of its pectorals. For something that is obviously not a big budget affair, its combination of somewhat tongue-in-cheek cheesy Sci-Fi visual effects and genuinely imaginative ones matches the tone of the movie, and can even be held up as something that feels genuinely otherworldly at times.
The monster makes only fleeting appearances throughout the movie, giving us a chance to look at its bizarre design but never long enough to see it actually do anything, but it gets to be front-and-centre in the climax, where Targo’s machinations lead it to break into a wedding party in Biba’s apartment. This is a very long sequence of escalating destruction and borderline horror moments that are intentionally undercut with gags—a man has his head torn off, and another’s head is flattened into a rubber dummy, but both treat it more like an inconvenience. The implication throughout this extended monster rampage sequence is that Mumu is not actually violent in nature—at first, it seems more interested in using its fleshy proboscis to sniff flowers—and that is probably the way Robert himself imagined it. However, as it is attacked by the terrified onlookers, it either defensively or even accidentally maims and kills them in response, the result of its strange alien anatomy (it burns down a room with flamethrower breath just so it can dislodge a fork in its throat.) The guests at the party argue over whether to shoot the creature or try to make peaceful contact with it, neither approach getting them anywhere—in attempting to make friendly gesture, the psychiatrist from earlier in the movie has his hand chomped off by a toothy stomach-mouth in a moment that presages a certain famous horror effect in John Carpenter’s The Thing, released not long after this. The whole sequence, while offering the exact kind of violence and thrills that Robert was encouraged to put into his novel, is actually more a comedy of errors.
The shifting, borderline contradictory nature of those moments brings us back to the way this movie handles Robert’s creativity. What little we hear of his novel seems mightily cliched—aliens coming to Earth to learn deeper truths from our primitive civilization (that beings like Targo view with disdain) is certainly not award-winning material, and even the idea that a man disappointed by life would imagine a beautiful robot woman that dutifully loves him shows Robert to be pretty basic. But even though he willingly tries to change his story to match the tastes of mainstream readers, there’s a naive purity to his imagination, a desire to explore a universe full of interesting and well-meaning beings. In his vision of reality, it makes sense that the monster would not be as nasty as it appears, and that there would be hyper-convenient time-rewinding power that allows them to undo all the horrific damage his tellurgy might have accidentally caused. Robert is someone who uses his imagination to make something that is nicer than what he has, and it’s no surprise that the movie ends with him going back to the Arkana galaxy with his alien creations—giving halfhearted promises to Biba that he might come back at some point—finally finding a place where he can live out the fantasies he’s been crafting. Abandoning everything and everyone to live out his fantasy is not a choice that necessarily reflects well on him, but in that way it accurately reflects both the positive and negative aspects of spending so much time in your own head.
“Dark Star” is one of the damnedest science fiction movies I’ve ever seen, a berserk combination of space opera, intelligent bombs, and beach balls from other worlds. It has a checkered history. It began as a student project by John Carpenter (later to direct “Halloween“) and Dan O’Bannon (later to write “Alien“), and grew over a period of time and expanding budgets into a full-length film.
It was finished some four years ago, before “Star Wars,” and might have had a big success as a cult film if its original distributor hadn’t been so chicken-hearted that he dumped it in a string of Southern California drive-ins and then pulled it out of commercial release. As it is, “Dark Star” has found audiences on the campus and revival circuits, has been a hit here at Facets Multimedia, and, at last, is having its first commercial run at the Three Penny Cinema.
It was finished some four years ago, before “Star Wars,” and might have had a big success as a cult film if its original distributor hadn’t been so chicken-hearted that he dumped it in a string of Southern California drive-ins and then pulled it out of commercial release. As it is, “Dark Star” has found audiences on the campus and revival circuits, has been a hit here at Facets Multimedia, and, at last, is having its first commercial run at the Three Penny Cinema.
The movie’s best sequence centers around the care and feeding of the pet alien they’ve taken on board (a sequence that O’Bannon may have drawn on for the original screenplay of “Alien”). The “Dark Star’s” onboard alien looks like a plastic beach ball with claws, and has a nasty way of sneaking out of sight; a crew member chases it into an elevator shaft and gets himself into a very tight spot. (The elevator sequence looks suspiciously as if it were filmed on the floor of a horizontal hallway photographed to look like a vertical shaft.)
Otherwise, life just sorta drifts past, until a chain of accidents leads to a situation where a bomb does not detach from the ship as planned, and will explode in 24 minutes, blowing the “Dark Star” to smithereens. The bomb cannot be disarmed because, intelligent little devil that it is, it’s convinced that it has a mission to self-destruct.
The movie’s best sequence centers around the care and feeding of the pet alien they’ve taken on board (a sequence that O’Bannon may have drawn on for the original screenplay of “Alien”). The “Dark Star’s” onboard alien looks like a plastic beach ball with claws, and has a nasty way of sneaking out of sight; a crew member chases it into an elevator shaft and gets himself into a very tight spot. (The elevator sequence looks suspiciously as if it were filmed on the floor of a horizontal hallway photographed to look like a vertical shaft.)
Otherwise, life just sorta drifts past, until a chain of accidents leads to a situation where a bomb does not detach from the ship as planned, and will explode in 24 minutes, blowing the “Dark Star” to smithereens. The bomb cannot be disarmed because, intelligent little devil that it is, it’s convinced that it has a mission to self-destruct.
And so, in an incredible and hilarious scene, a crew member floats out into space, confronts the stubborn thinking bomb, and uses pure logic in an attempt to reason it out of exploding. The strategy: If the bomb can be convinced it has no evidence that the universe really exists, then how can its instructions be valid?
This is a fun movie, and a bright and intelligent one. It bears few signs of having been made on a low budget, and the special effects are reasonably slick. And it has a mercifully low-key comic approach; many satiric comedies by young filmmakers are frantic and overwrought, but this one is wry, laid back and fond of its situations. And on the same program is “Hardware Wars,” a short subject starring steam irons, pop-up toasters and other kitchen appliances in outer space.
There’s a new film by Miguel Llansó that is sheer originality and brilliance: Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway.
If you’ve already seen Llansó’s 2015 film Crumbs, you’ve experienced the cinemastery of which he and the teams he assembles are capable. If you’ve not yet seen Crumbs, well, then, this review holds two surprises for you.
The brilliance of Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway comes from its capacity to combine a radically eclectic selection of cultural aesthetics and tropes with a distinct vision and a theoretical political acumen. It’s a kind of pastiche with depth and texture. It’s cinema from an alternate universe in which David Lynch is an avid reader of Michel Foucault, Fredric Jameson, and Naomi Klein, and where Ethiopia holds a powerful place in the social imaginary.
I think it’s justifiable to claim that Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway is practically unparalleled in recent cinema for its capacity to synthesize total zaniness with provocations to analyze geopolitical histories, the present, and future. And I say provocations because the film leverages its zaniness to lead spectators into critical avenues concerning espionage, biopolitics, gender dynamics, and technocultures of economics and repressions, all without providing particular answers or positions on these. Like the characters caught up in the increasingly bizarre tangles of worlds in the film, spectators are barraged with mysteries that compel us to work on them yet promise to keep developing and eluding total comprehension and resolution.
This is critical surrealism; hyper-pragmatic absurdism.
The story centers chiefly on CIA Agent D.T. Gagano (Daniel Tadesse)–his mission, which evolves and glitches as the film proceeds, and his relationships. Early in the film Gagano and his colleague, Agent Palmer Eldritch (Augustín Mateo), are tasked with entering a VR world to terminate a computer virus called “Soviet Union.” The virus has been attacking the ad system of a major platform called “Psychobook” with diabolical results such as Chevrolet advertising videos being replaced by videos of Stalin playing chess. When the agents and others are inside the VR world, their avatars are depicted as people with black masks over their heads and ridiculous two-dimensional paper masks with eye-holes in the pupils, and their movements are an unsettling stutter-stop motion as if they’re clunky clockwork bodies.
Agent Gagano’s mask is the face of Richard Pryor, in what I like to imagine is an allusion to David Lynch’s Lost Highway, and in many ways the aesthetic sensibility of the VR world is on a par with Lynch’s Twin Peaks: The Return—but with a Stalin avatar that battles with a hammer in one hand and a sickle in the other. Adjacent to his mission, Gagano navigates his romantic life with Malin, a woman nearly twice his size who dreams of opening a world-class kickboxing academy even as she supports Gagano’s dreams of opening a pizzeria. By the way, there’s something wonderful and intriguing about Gagano’s pizza obsession. What would in most movies be a comedy shtick is, in the hands of Llansó’s direction, an element of political economic and historical critique as well as a detail that reverberates throughout the story arc, as in the key intervention of three kung-fu masters named Spaghetti, Ravioli, and Balthazar.
As the story moves forward, synced with an amazing jazz soundtrack, by the way, Gagano’s consciousness is apparently transferred to a portable tv set, and the figure of Jesus, who is also Roy Mascarone (Guillermo Llansó), reframes the whole mission by claiming that a mysterious green gooey substance known as “The Substance” is the real enemy of all people. It’s here to colonize all people of Earth. Finally, while there’s so much more to try and capture, I feel like I need to mention the persistent presence of the fascist leader, Batfro (Solomon Tashe), who dons a Batman costume that’s a near match to the one Adam West donned in the 1960s Batman tv series. I add this detail here because there’s a crucial juxtaposition late in the film between Jesus’s claim about The Substance and the inclusion in the mise-en-scene of a 1974 Batman-cast Public Service Announcement concerning gender and labor that sparks lines of interpreting Batfro and the film’s critique(s) as a whole.
At this point in time when it’s easy, almost overwhelmingly so, to feel suffocated by the predominance of reboots, extended franchises and universes, and vigorous attempts at post-ideological sanitation of political implications (Yes, I’m thinking of Stranger Things 3 here and its stunning capacity to swerve away from doing anything with its ready-made architecture of a 1980s shopping mall with a secret Soviet Union base in its basement), Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway is a testament to the resistance and resilience of avant-garde cinema. To the future of political acumen connected to a bonkers sense of humor.
The film is a deeply weird, fun, and original contemporary addition to Chaplin’s City Lights and John Carpenter’s They Live. I can’t recommend strongly enough seeking out a screening near you or streaming it once it becomes available, and let Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway drive you beyond the current limits of your perspective on living on planet Earth today.
Originally released in 1986, Georgiy Daneliya’s Kin-dza-dza! is possibly the most underrated science fiction film of the past 50 years. A Soviet space odyssey across an alien landscape, it is packed with comic nuance and absurdist charm, yet it is rarely screened or even seen outside Russia. With 2016 marking its 30th anniversary, this deadpan oddity deserves a reappraisal for its wit, imagination and stunning design.
The story begins with Vladimir, a Moscow construction worker, popping out for some macaroni. He is stopped in the street by Gedevan, a young student who needs help with a seemingly insane man claiming to be on the wrong planet. The man needs Earth’s coordinates so he can use his teleportation device to go home. Impatiently humouring him, Vladimir presses a button on the device. Instantly, he and Gedevan are transported to the desert planet Pluke in the galaxy of Kin-dza-dza.
Before long, they meet Bi and Wef, two wandering performers whose speech is largely limited to the word ‘koo’ or its vulgar equivalent ‘kyu’. The Earthlings haggle over the terms of their rescue, though the performers are loath to give something for nothing. Just as the performers are about to leave, they notice that Vladimir has a box of matches – one of the most valuable commodities on Pluke. The four establish a shaky alliance and set in off in a ramshackle aircraft to find a way back to Earth. Vladimir and Gedevan discover that the entire planet operates on a ruthless economy of scavenger barter, and nothing is off limits to the market. The deserts were once seas, but the water was greedily converted into engine fuel. Of course, now the only way to collect drinking water is to extract it back from that fuel.
Kin-dza-dza!’s salvage punk aesthetic – which might best be described as Mad Max meets Monty Python by way of Tarkovsky – hints at this rich, tragic and very stupid history. A collapsed Ferris wheel provides a home for destitute desert dwellers. Graves are marked by balloons containing the deceased’s final breath. The colour of your trousers signifies social status, so they are powerful barter items.
The planet’s inhabitants are primitive in their hardheartedness, yet they also fiercely insist upon maintaining arbitrary social conventions. People are separated into two castes: “Chatlian” and “Patsak”. The subordinate Patsaks must wear bells on their noses and squat before Chatlians. The only way to determine if an individual is a Patsak or a Chatlian is to see if a purpose-built machine emits a green or orange light when pointed at them. The Earthling visitors decry this as racism of the most inane kind, but Plukanians fail to see the problem. When Bi asks with genuine puzzlement how people on Earth determine who is subservient to whom, Vladimir dryly responds, ‘Oh, just by eye.’ Hearing this, Wef dismisses Earthlings as savages. Advanced technology does not a civilised culture make.
What elevates Kin-dza-dza! beyond a simple procession of snipes is the careful attention paid to countless details within its alien world. Even Giya Kancheli’s comic score sounds like it’s from another world – an ungainly, melancholic dirge that conjures up the hopeless bafflement of absurdism. All of this rich world building puts the film into a literary branch of satirical sci-fi occupied by the likes of Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Adams, and even Franz Kafka. There is no convoluted plot, but instead a convoluted universe, and its incredulous victims ready to point out the farcicality therein. They find a planet that demands a mix of callous entrepreneurial savvy and fearful deference to the status quo familiar to any Earthling living in the 21st century.
Kin-dza-dza!’s sideways look at the barbarities of everyday oppression remains pertinent 30 years on. It’s a must-see for anyone interested in the cosmic potentials of science fiction.
The concept of time travel is always an interesting one when it’s transferred to screen, and the Japanese film industry has flirted with it just as much as any other. From modern day military units transported to feudal Japan in the likes of G.I. Samurai, to the quirkiness of Summer Time Machine Blues, to of course the countless romantic spins on the genre. What all of them have in common is characters travelling back to the past, whether it be days or decades, and their need to adjust to a different time period or right a wrong. Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes also uses time travel as its key theme, however it does so in an arguably more minutiae way than any of its predecessors (and perhaps anything that’ll come after it), dealing with a café owner who realises the monitor in his room is capable of showing 2 minutes into the future.
Played by Kazunari Tosa (Prisoners of the Ghostland, Misono Universe), his character lives in the apartment directly upstairs from the café he runs, and this realisation comes about when he returns home one night and the monitor flickers on, his own face staring back at him from behind the screen. His 2 minutes into the future self is back in the café downstairs, and after explaining the strange phenomenon to his current self, his current self heads back downstairs – completing the loop and setting things in motion. Soon the café’s barista, played by Riko Fujitani (Beautiful Dreamer, Asahinagu), gets in on the action, who proceeds to call up 3 of the cafes regulars to also come around and check it out as well. Before you know it, the group find themselves interacting between their current and 2 minutes into the future selves with all of the inconsequence you’d imagine 120 seconds can bring.
The directorial debut of Junta Yamaguchi, the creative force behind the indie production is actually a theatre troupe called Europe Kikaku based out of Kyoto, of which Yamaguchi is a member, as are most of the other cast and crew. The fact that the majority of talent involved in Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes comes from a theatre background makes a lot of sense when you consider that 95% of the punchy 70-minute runtime plays out in a single location – the upstairs and downstairs in a low-rise building. The use of the confined environment enables the 2 minutes plot device to play out via a series of comedic interactions involving the cast talking to themselves through a monitor, a feat which Yamaguchi makes look easy, but had to have taken a substantial amount of precision timed planning behind the scenes.
The plot itself is inspired by scriptwriter Makoto Ueda’s (who also scripted the previously mentioned Summer Time Machine Blues) own self-directed and penned short from 2014, Howling, with the motivation being to stretch out the concept from the shorts 11-minute runtime to a feature length production. Admittedly, Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes’ origins do show through on occasion. There can be no denying that the concept is a one-trick pony, and Yamaguchi spends a little too much time with the cafe’s regulars fooling around and being shouty in a slightly aggravating way. The focus initially seems to be on how many comedic vignettes can be pulled off with the concept, not all of which necessarily work, when it would be far more engaging if there was an actual plot to anchor the gimmick off.
As a result, because of the scenes inconsequential nature, topped off with the fact that we have to watch many of them play out twice (current and future), there are moments that feel like padding. Thankfully Yamaguchi has a plot up his sleeve, and once it kicks in it delivers the required narrative thrust just in time, ensuring that the concept alone isn’t left to carry the entire production on its shoulders. Sure it’s nothing we haven’t seen countless times before – a stash of cash with unknown origins and the yakuza who are looking for it – but paired up with the time travel concept it provides a reason for the audience to get behind the characters, as well as some of the biggest laughs.
Yamaguchi goes for the double whammy on the gimmick front, opting for the one-take approach for the 70-minute duration, although he confessed in an interview that it is in fact made up of several 10-minute takes which have then been blended together in post. The authenticity behind the one-take isn’t the important part here though (as opposed to its importance in productions like One Shot and Crazy Samurai Musashi, where the performers endurance is an integral part of enjoying the single take), rather the flow it gives to the time loop allows both the characters and the audience to experience the 2-minute time travel in real time.
As much as the previously mentioned productions are defined by the performers sustained physicality during the continuous takes, here the admiration goes to how skilfully everyone involved has executed a narrative which essentially involves them talking to themselves for extended periods. I had to frequently remind myself while watching Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes that the actors are actually not talking to themselves in real time (it was done with recordings), and the complexity behind creating such a unique character dynamic must have been vast. It’s a testament to the passion of the cast and crew that onscreen not once does it come across as questionable or contrived, and the fact that the complexity only increases as the plot progresses but the illusion never wavers is an outstanding feat.
As the owner of the café Kazunari Tosa makes for a likable protagonist. His realisation that he has a monitor that can see into the future is one of understated (almost disinterested) bewilderment, and his lack of enthusiasm to utilise its potential makes him a relatable character for the audience. The short runtime doesn’t give much room for character development, but his change from a passive observer (in his own café no less!) into a somewhat man of action is a convincing one, spurred on by the chance of a date with the café owner next door, played by Aki Asakura (the most recognisable name in the cast, having featured in the likes of Whistleblower and 2017’s live action Fullmetal Alchemist).
Despite this though, there should be no doubt that the real star of the show in Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes is the filmmaking technique itself. Whereas just a few years ago saying a movie looked like it was shot on an iPhone would be considered an insult (see my review for 2018’s The Dark Soul), here the entire thing actually was shot on an iPhone, and it looks just fine. In Yamaguchi’s eagerness as a first time director he also took on the role of cinematographer (something which he openly states he likely won’t do again for his next production!), and his commitment to getting certain shots at certain angles can be seen in the behind-the-scenes footage as he scrambles on top of, over, and around tables and various other objects to maintain the integrity of his vision.
While Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes has had plenty of labels thrown at it already, from being a time travel movie for the Zoom generation, to One Cut of the Dead comparisons due to its micro budget and one-take approach, in the end both only tenuously relate to the end product that Yamaguchi has crafted. While far from perfect and at times a little too stretched for its own good, ultimately the way such a complex tale has been successfully pulled off from both a technical and story standpoint is difficult not to admire. The fact that some genuine laugh out loud moments are thrown in along the way make its shortcomings easy to overlook, and at just 70 minutes Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes self fulfils its title, not sticking around a minute longer than it needs to.
After the Crash 