Yesterday's Movies

Before watching the movie:

I have seen a portion of this movie before. I think it was accidentally recorded off the air as the lead in to what was actually supposed to be on the tape. I try not to directly spoil the movies I review here so I will not describe the turn of the very very last scene that I saw, but it was so disturbing, especially without context, that I vividly remember it  even now, decades later. Any readers who have seen this movie will understand what I’m referring to. The little I’ve learned since has only reaffirmed my understanding of it as a very melancholy, very 70s movie.

However, my striking personal memory only made me more determined after starting this blog that it had to be one to review here eventually. I came to that ending without context and it was distressing but also very confusing, and much like the less spoiler-averse people in my life, even knowing where it ends, I want to see how it gets there.

After watching the movie:

In a worryingly near future, the American Airlines space freighter Valley Forge is part of a convoy carrying geodesic greenhouse pods that contain the remnants of the last forests of Earth, an ark fleet sent to the far side of Saturn’s orbit in the hope of preserving these natural habitat specimens until the over-industrialized planet can be cleaned up enough to reintroduce them to the mismanaged world. The crew consists of four humans and three duck-walking worker drones. Of the human crew, three are bored and resentful of their post, eager to go home and never see another plant again, while Freeman Lowell, the botanist/ecologist/medic spends his days communing with the ecosystems in his care and can’t wait for the day they are told that reforestation can begin, and he can’t think of anyone more qualified to lead that project than himself. But when the crew is summoned to a major fleet announcement, Lowell is horrified to hear that the whole thing has been called off, the freighters are under orders to jettison and detonate their terrarium pods with nuclear charges, and return to commercial service. Refusing to go along with the destruction of the last scraps of Earth’s natural ecosystems, Lowell kills one crewmate to stop him from planting the bomb in his favorite forest and traps the other two in another dome and triggers their bomb, hijacking the Valley Forge into deep space while faking a technical mishap so the rest of the convoy will assume him stranded and leave him for dead. Having forsaken everything human to protect his forest, Lowell’s only companions are the two surviving reprogrammed drones Huey and Dewey, which assist him with tending to the plants and animals. But as the weeks roll on, Lowell begins to notice that the forest is dying and he can’t figure out why.

This is possibly the most openly environmentalist sci-fi movie ever made. I’m not sure it went far enough with its messages while at the same time it felt like it was laying them on too thick. Lowell has an argument with his crewmates about natural vs. processed food and natural vs. industrialized living, and while I’m much more on his side than on theirs, he still comes off as the irrational one. I could get more on board with his murder of his shipmates to save the living cargo if he had at least made more of an effort to save the other 5 out of 6 pods, rather than using the penultimate pod as a trap to blow them up and only save the one he has the most connection to. It’s all much more spur of the moment than it seemed to be leading up to the detonation sequence, but if I’m supposed to support saving the forest, I should probably get the impression that Lowell is actually right when he Speaks For The Trees. Maybe the point is what good came out of his psychotic break, but it just doesn’t come off as that deep. Also there’s an undercurrent that seems satirical with the fleet name theming and the heavy logo placement of corporate brands, but it feels much less thought out than the main plot about a man cutting himself off from everything he knows for the sake of his principles.

This is throughout every bit as depressed as the finale. It seems like the point of every scene after Lowell takes the ship is “and isn’t it sad?” Melancholy can be beautiful to work with (and often is here), but the drones are the closest thing to spots of relief from it and their personality development is mostly about them being attached to each other and mourning the loss of the third one or being worried for each other. They’re cute in an awkward and painfully 70s way. Lowell treats them like his children but can just as easily treat them as casually as a can opener when it’s convenient, and for all the movie wants me to identify with them, it’s easy to read some of his scenes with them as intended to make me pity him for projecting humanity on them as a substitute for real compassion.

As much as the mood is depressing for most of it, knowing where Lowell ends up made me worried it was going to end in the most cynical, pessimistic way, that in the end nothing mattered and Lowell only prolonged the inevitable. But where I was confused originally, by the time I got to the end I realized the most bizarre part that I’d forgotten was the hope the story ends with. All along nothing’s worked out for Lowell, but he did make a difference, and that is the light that makes the bleak 90 minutes up to that point bearable.

This movie presents a lot of ideas but it feels like they’re all either underbaked or undercut or both. If I read the intent correctly, I appreciate what it wanted to do, but its delivery makes me second guess everything I think the intent is. The only things I can say for sure it succeeded at was being visually and tonally striking, and a strange mix of charming and haunting.