Cinema
Pop science
Ted Whitehead
Warlords of Atlantis (Warner West End) 2001: A Space Odyssey (ABC, Shaftesbury Avenue) Two films this week illustrate the absurdity of the debate that still astonishingly goes on over whether sci-fi can be taken seriously.. The first is a piece of commercial hokum that saves its skin (just about) by not taking itself seriously, the second emerges as a masterpiece by taking itself not only seriously but with a literally cosmic solemnity.
Warlords of Atlantis (A) concerns a Victorian expedition to find the legendary city beneath the sea, and has a lovely moment near the beginning when Peter Gilmore and Doug McClure are dropping in a diving bell and are attacked by an enormous serpent, which pokes its hungry head into the cabin and snaps around after its dinner; the men frantically beat down the invader, and as it sinks into the depths, Gilmore stares after it and says, in tones purpled with horror and incredulity: 'He's got my pencil!' The plot is of the simple circular type: the members of the expedition risk their lives finding Atlantis and then risk their lives again getting the hell out of it.
The film exploits a number of today's pop science fantasies, e.g. that the Atlanteans arrived from another planet in an asteroid, that their technology enabled them to survive in underwater cities, and that they have guided the course of human evolution from prehistoric ignorance toward scientific sophistication so that man will eventually build the spaceships they need to escape from this wretched little planet of ours. Here they are Martians living in the Bermuda Triangle and picking off passing sailors (including the crew of the Marie Celeste) for conversion into a sub-aquan force of gilled helots. Luckily, when the morality of all this is raised, there is a
grizzled captain on hand to demand that they 'cut the philosophy' and get on with the essential business, which is to do with a leggy Atlantean matron (Cyd Charisse), an Imperator (Daniel Massey in a white gown), a beautiful slave (Lea Brodie), and all sorts of bug-eyed and whiskered monsters, plus flying piranha fish and mutant millipedes. I mustn't forget, too, peppery old Dad (Donald Bisset) and spirited young Sandy (Ashley Knight) — the film has been most carefully cast and produced to give the family an undemanding night out. The inevitable paperback-of-the-film lacks the redeeming tongue-in-cheek tone, for which due credit should go, I suppose, to Kevin Connor's direction.
From the opposite end of the sci-fi galaxy comes 2001: A Space Odyssey (U), a film which shocked audiences ten years ago by jettisoning plot and conventional narrative — devices which would in practice be incompatible with the visionary immensity of the theme. Kubrick has the audacity to challenge our perceptions not just of cinematic convention but of existence itself. Whither Man? The initial sequence set in the palaeolithic age ends with a truly sublime cut, from the ape accidentally discovering the use of a bone as a weapon — or tool — to the vast spaceship floating in cosmic space. The theme of 'weapon or tool' is repeated as the computer HAL, developed by man to serve him, claims independent existence and turns on its masters. Tidy perceptions of time and space disintegrate as the sole surviving astronaut is drawn into the orbit of Jupiter and we hqrtle through a tunnel of rushing colours and lights. Then comes the final meditation on life and death as the astronaut ages and the huge embryo child appears.
It's a glacial vision of man's hopeless struggle — for survival in the face of death, for order in the face of chaos. Such stylish, unrelenting pessimism is a real shot in the arm.
Previous page
