Reviews

Wonderful.

I haven't read any Rotten Tomatoes reviews on this movie, I only saw it recently broadcast on TV. This movie is not the Matrix! Interestingly the old movie "Tron" was shown on TV just a few days before, and this is perhaps appropriate.

If you've played "The Sims" then this movie might make you think again. What if the game you were playing was with real people? Who are the real people? This is a layer cake of a movie. The imagery in this movie is stunning, with the 1930s LA a visual feast. Loved the sepia tinting of these sequences, passed off in the movie as a software fault that needed work.

The plot is straightforward for the first 2/3rds of the movie, but then it accelerates and goes into left-field. I thought the ending was acceptable: indeed I thought the colours in the ending suggested that that this was another level to the virtual reality, which left a pleasant taste as it were in my intellectual mouth.

Best visual effect? The Edge of The World.

Quantum Leap!

OK s-meister, you've chosen to study Drama, Film and Television as your minor, and your first course will be Film Studies. Turn up at your lecturer's room on Monday and watch your first film, which will be...Alphaville.

For a guy raised on mainstream Hollywood movies this was a baptism of fire! It's in black and white. No problem. It's SF with no hardware. Uh, huh. It starts some guy you've never heard of. It starts with a long tracking shot along a corridor, with a strange, guttural voice talking in French. Let me out!

This is a film full of ideas, typically French, and wonderfully challenging. The voice of Alpha 60? I believe the extraordinary deep voice was that of a person who'd had a laryngectomy. If you had to speak by burping (see Jack Hawkins) you'd sound like that. The swimming pool executions? Watch carefully, first comes a shot, then the swimmers go in and their arms rise and fall as they knife the victim. Marks out of 10? Busby Berkely was never like this.

If you want to see something extraordinary, see this instead of a Hollywood movie. If you can stick with it, you'll begin to experience "la poésie".

Warning, Will Robinson! This comment DOES contain spoilers.

This is a story about underwater aliens. Wrong. This is a story about love, faith and humanity.

I enjoyed this movie simply as an SF story first time around, but that was before I got married and had kids. The version I saw was the theatrical release, and it has to be said that the ending in that version looks incredibly contrived. As an aside the climax of the TR is reminiscent of 2001 in some ways, in that a lone figure is removed from their familiar world and placed in almost an alternative reality. That Brinkman is saved because he has a wife seems bizarre at first, but bear with me.

I read the novelisation of this story too at the time of it's release, and I've just read the script (google for it) , so I can now fill in the blanks that were created by the editing for time.

The Brigmans are separated when we first meet them, yet Bud still wears his ring, and indeed it saves his fingers from being crushed. When they are trapped together on the submersible with only one dive suit it's Lindsey who has faith in Bud, and volunteers to "die" in order to be saved. And when Bud brings her back to life, ignoring his colleagues' pleas to give up, it's he who in effect rekindles the marriage.

If you've only seen the theatrical release then this part of the movie alone is worth the viewing, but the fact that Bud literally steps off then into the abyss, leaving even the little pocket of humanity on Deepcore behind, is a heart-stopping moment. Cameron captures this perfectly with the camera shot from the side.

Contrast this plummet into the deep with Coffey's. What message do we take from this? If you are alone, you die alone. Bud dives into the Abyss alone, yet connected symbolically (and electronically) with his wife. When we realise he can't return, we're there with him and her, and at that moment he IS married.

EDIT: There's another element to this story that I've only just realised. Remember how the way Bud can plummet into the abyss to defuse the nuke is by using the liquid breathing system? How Monk the Navy SEAL says "We all breathe liquid for nine months, Bud. Your body will remember."? Bud is taken into the 'mothership' through what I've just realised is a symbolic birth canal. When he pops the seals on his suit and coughs up all the breather fluid, he is effectively being reborn. The final symbolic element is the actual form of the 'mothership'. Take away the spires and what do you have? A placenta. Check Wikipedia if you don't believe me. I knew I recognised that from somewhere.

It amounts to quite brilliant use of a number of elements to symbolise the need for us to be "reborn" in order to survive. This is a visual feast of symbolism that repays further viewing. I can understand critics feeling that they're being preached at, but this is a director using the tools at his command to tell a story. If you don't like the story you can still admire the skill of the storyteller.

If you don't "get" this movie then never mind. If you do get it, welcome to the human race.