Cinema
Cocoon (PG', Odeon Leicester Square)
The oldest tradition
Peter Ackroyd
It sounds as if it ought to be a warm and comforting film, and in the event it does not disappoint even the most infantile expectations: ocean, buried city, heavenly lights, sunsets, even dolphins. It is very mystical or at least misty — the distinction is not easy to make, however, since most science-fiction films such as this act as a substitute for orthodox religious faith by adapting its vocabulary and borrowing its effects.
The plot is charming: certain well- mannered aliens have arrived from a dis- tant planet (the name of which sounded like 'Gonorrhoea') in order to reclaim from the sea the cocoons of their comrades abandoned 'thousands of years' before. They store their precious cargo in a swim- ming pool next to an old people's home, and it is not long before the members of that senile fraternity discover that the water of the pool has what Americans call `healthful' properties: cancers disappear, age vanishes and potency is restored. It is a `Fountain of Youth' around which the old come to dance in attendance.
There is in fact something of a cult for the old in America, at least in the cinema — I suspect that this is primarily because `senior citizens' are about to enter their second childhood, and innocence (to mis- quote Oscar Wilde) is that country's oldest tradition. Ever since stars like Katharine Hepburn and Henry Fonda decided to turn approaching senility into a joke (the dread- ful On Golden Pond was a harbinger of this fashion), the market for lovable old cod- gers has definitely expanded until, in this film, the screen is filled with them.
But Cocoon is by no means a threnody to old age: it opens with a perky little telescope, definitely erect at the sight of the feminine Moon, and thus makes the point very early on that it is concerned with the restoration of potency. There are sexual jokes and innuendoes throughout appropriate enough in this context, how- ever, since science fantasy is often a way of evading the concept of death and perpetual lustfulness is a more interesting way of doing so than simply by displaying the usual panoply of immortal technology.
Cocoon is not at all like the general run of science-fiction films in other respects, also, and this primarily because it manages to be consistently funny — in fact much more so than such ostensible recent 'com- edies' as Brewster's Millions and Desper- ately Seeking Susan. (`I'd just like to get to know you as a human being' is the male cliché addressed to a lovely young woman, who in fact turns out to be an inhabitant of the planet Gonorrhoea.) There is a certain kind of American comedy which is both whimsical and charming, and a film which has performers like Don Arneche and Maureen Stapleton has already gone half way in that direction. This is the human face of science fiction, in other words: in any case, everyone is tired of special effects which, as they become less special, grow less than effective.
The theme of immortality is of course as old as mortality itself, but it is handled very well here: the spectacle of youth and age is touchingly conveyed (although, from the huge screen of the Odeon Leicester Square, 'touching' seems hardly the word: perhaps slapping?) and, in addition, the prevailing comedy of the film lends a certain enchantment to what might other- wise be run-of-the-mill mystery. Cocoon has in fact something for everyone: the blank fantasists can drool over the idea of alien life-forms (there is also a very colour- ful spaceship at the end), while the more human elements of the audience will enjoy the comedy of the old parties attempting to regain their lost youthfulness. (Some peo- ple might be slightly disturbed, however, by the notion that old age can be made bearable only by alien intervention.) There is also an appropriate note of pathos, when one elderly man refuses to join his twilight colleagues in their pursuit of immortality — he finds something natural, after all, in that concept of death which is so stre- nuously denied by everyone else. It is altogether an admirable film, a perfect cinematic fantasy which allows you to commute between the popcorn and the handkerchief without the slightest strain.
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