There are
two strands to dystopian SF films. Those in which the future is a nightmare for
all but a ruling elite, and those in which life is at least reasonable, until
one beings to think… The first great dystopian SF film,
Metropolis
(1927), is very much in the former category. Made by Fritz Lang in Germany,
Metropolis' vision of a world in which technocrats rule from vast skyscrapers
while the workers toil anonymously below ground, surrounded and overwhelmed by
great machines, arose out of the turmoil of post First World War society. A
generation of Germany's youth had been decimated, leaving a profoundly scarred
nation to rebuild under the punitive terms of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles.
The result was a country in economic crisis, many of the survivors physically
and/or psychologically damaged. It was the climate, which gave rise to the
ultimate dystopia, the Third Reich; the images, which haunt us still, of
emaciated slave labourers are chillingly anticipated by the lines of workers
shuffling to the great inferno of Metropolis. Although an expensive commercial
failure at the time of release, and technically primitive by today's standards,
Metropolis' depiction of the nightmare city of the future foreshadowed the
worlds of
Blade Runner
(1982),
Batman
(1989),
Judge Dredd
(1995) and
Dark City
(1997).
No-one considered making a film showing life under a
victorious totalitarian regime while America and her allies were busy fighting
the Nazis
The dystopian film did not find its way to Hollywood until long after
the Second World War. No-one considered making a film showing life under a
victorious totalitarian regime while America and her allies were busy fighting
the Nazis. When America developed its own streak of dystopia during the
McCarthy era (1948-1960) it would have been taken as dangerously unpatriotic to
depict such a scenario unfolding in the US, especially as the McCarthy
investigations struck right into the heart of Hollywood. Even so, away from the
screen Ray Bradbury published Fahrenheit 451
while
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
(1955), adapted from a novel by
Jack Finney, depicted through SF allegory a small American town being reduced
to dystopian alien conformity. This enormously resonant tale was remade in
1978 and 1993.
In Britain the BBC brought 1984
to the small screen in
1954. A powerful version starring Peter Cushing as Winston Smith, with a
screenplay by
Quatermass
creator Nigel Kneale. A Hollywood version starring Edmund O'Brien followed in
1956, directed by Michael Anderson, who would later make Logan's
Run
(1976), the film was lavish but less intense than the BBC
adaptation. The film is notable for having different endings in the UK and US.
The American version stayed close to the book, while the BBC had Winston and
his lover Julia (Jan Sterling) unbowed by Big Brother, dying together in a hail
of gunfire. A new version, made in 1984 was--despite fine performances from
John Hurt, Suzanna Hamilton and Richard Burton--simply too prosaic. Terry
Giliam's
Brazil (1985),
starring Jonathan Pryce, Robert De Niro, Ian Holm and Bob Hoskins, captured the
insane spirit of Orwell's nightmare in a far more cinematic way.
Having
made his reputation with Jules et Jim
(1961), the French New
Wave director, François Truffaut, turned to the dystopian science fiction
of Fahrenheit 451
(1966) for what proved to be his only English
language film behind the camera. Fahrenheit 451
's future is not
as harsh as that of 1984
, although in both, access to knowledge
is tightly circumscribed and the hero begins as one of the controllers. Winston
Smith works at the Ministry of Truth, rewriting stories in old editions of
The Times
to conform with current party policy, while Guy Montag
(Oscar Werner) is a fireman whose job it is to burn books (Fahrenheit 451 is
the temperature at which paper burns). In each story the protagonist begins his
journey into rebellion when he meets an attractive, politically conscious woman
with whom he falls in love. From We
, to George Lucas' THX
1138
(1970) to
Rollerball
(1975), Logan's Run
, Blade Runner
and
Brazil
, it's a woman and the power of love and/or sex which
leads the male protagonist to question and eventually revolt. The theologically
minded might trace this back to the Garden of Eden. In Fahrenheit
451
it's Julie Christie, playing the dual roles of Linda, Montag's
tranquillised, interactive TV-addicted wife, and Clarrise, who introduces him
to the joy of text. With striking production design and a fine Bernard Herrmann
score, Fahrenheit 451
offers a surprisingly magical realist
conclusion, which in contrast to Orwell offers hope for the future through the
power of reading.
It's a woman and the power of love and/or sex
which leads the male protagonist to question and eventually revolt. The
theologically minded might trace this back to the Garden of
Eden
The fingerprints of Zamyatin are all over George Lucas' debut feature,
THX 1138
, a serious, sober, rather ponderous science fiction
movie worlds away from Star Wars (1977). The tag line has a familiar dystopian
ring, "Visit the future where love is the ultimate crime". As in
We
, Lucas' characters have numbers for names; the title is the
name of the hero played by Robert Duvall, while Maggie McOmie is LUH 3417, the
lover who encourages him to stop taking his tranquillisers. There's nothing new
to the story, though the widescreen format--so often used to give a sense of
openness and space--is subverted to show there is nowhere to run, while the
clinical whiteness of the sets becomes something oppressive rather than clean
and wholesome.
While
Kubrick's
2001: A Space
Odyssey revealed little of what life on earth might be like, the
follow-up painted a near future Britain declining into urban youth violence,
crumbling sink estates and authoritarian right-wing rule.
A Clockwork
Orange (1971) foreshadowing punk and the Thatcher revolution
were startling prescience. Malcolm McDowell leads a teen gang into "a bit of
the old ultra-violence" and the State responds with experimental aversion
therapy, i.e., brainwashing. The ending suggests Kubrick chose violent free
will as the lesser of two evils, which was ironic given he quickly banned the
film following threats to his family. Anthony Burgess, the author of the
original
novel, felt Kubrick betrayed
the book by working from an American edition, which omitted the last chapter,
but whichever ending one chooses, the outlook is bleak.
"It's the year 2022... People are still the same. They'll do anything to
get what they need. And they need
Soylent Green.".
So proclaimed the poster for Charlton Heston's return to science fiction.
Heston played Robert Thorn, a detective in overcrowded New York investigating a
murder. This leads him to befriend Sol Roth, an old man played by Edward G
Robinson in his last film. The film builds to a horrifying climax as Roth makes
his final journey to an official euthanasia centre and Thorn discovers that the
miracle foodstuff of the age, Soylent Green, is not soya beans or plankton but
recycled human remains. The idea is as logically flawed as the machine dystopia
of
The Matrix
(1999) farming humans for energy, but acts as a strong symbol
for a dehumanised society literally consuming itself. What seemed outrageous in
1971 is no longer so entirely implausible in the context of a non-fiction work
such as Eric Schlosser's
Fast Food Nation
(2002).
"What is
good for United Artists is not necessarily good for Norman Jewison" read a sign
on the director of
Rollerball's
office wall during the production of the 1975 film. The sign captured the irony
and tension of a major corporation funding a creative filmmaker to make a movie
with a potent anti-corporate message. From the detached directorial style, to
the clean, minimal design and use of classical music to the thematic concerns,
Rollerball
unfolds like the greatest film Stanley Kubrick never
made--the conclusion of a dystopian trilogy begun by 2001: A Space
Odyssey
and A Clockwork Orange
. Jonathan E (James Caan)
is driven to questioning the corporate world for which he is the star player in
the brutal game of rollerball, by his enduring love for the wife who left him
for a company executive. With the suppression of books, the film pays homage to
Fahrenheit 451
while a scene with the troublesome computer,
Zero, is acknowledged by Jewison as a direct reference to 2001
's
HAL. The film was ahead of its time in postulating a future capitalist--rather
than state--dystopia. Rollerball
was also one of the first
movies to demonstrate a strong environmental awareness, tying images of the
natural world to notions of freedom, individuality and love; one very powerful
sequence inter-cuts representatives of the six corporations revelling in the
destruction of six trees, while John Houseman delivers a speech to Caan as to
why he must conform. By the apocalyptic finale Jonathan E might as well be Alex
from A Clockwork Orange
--Jewison frames Caan backlit in the
tunnel mouth leading to the arena in a shot echoing the famous image of Alex
and his droogs in a subway--all grown-up and kicking back against the system
where it really hurts.
Rollerball
was one of the
first movies to demonstrate a strong environmental awareness, tying images of
the natural world to notions of freedom, individuality and
love
Logan's Run
was a long-delayed project originally
planned as a George Pal (1960's
The Time
Machine) film, but eventually realised by Michael Anderson,
starring Michael York, Jenny Agutter and Peter Ustinov. While far from
rigorously logical itself,
Logan's Run is
that Hollywood rarity, a film which makes more sense than the book it's based
upon; in this case a very silly, but vigorous pulp page turner by William F
Nolan and George Clayton Johnson. Logan's world is one of those dystopias where
everyone is actually doing just fine, the citizen's of the 23rd century domed
city living a life of hedonistic luxurious indulgence--with just one catch.
Because of a shortage of space and resources, no-one is allowed to live beyond
their 30th birthday. The choice is to accept death, and the bogus promise of
renewal in a fabricated religion, or run. Logan and his particular woman,
Jessica, run. What they discover is not so much anti-dystopian as a reminder
that sometimes-political systems outlive their usefulness. Not a film to take
too seriously, Logan's Run
is still a stylishly enjoyable
big-budget 70s comic book adventure.
Blade Runner is
an adaptation of Philip K Dick's novel
Do Androids Dream of Electric
Sheep, and brings to the screen for the first time Dick's
conviction that our nightmare future would be a world of unaccountable
corporations rather than big governments. It's down to Rick Deckard, (Harrison
Ford) to clean up the LA of 2019 after six of the Tyrell Corporation's latest
generation of "Replicants", led by Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) have come to earth
seeking their maker. Harking back to Metropolis
, the corporate
powers occupy the upper reaches of gargantuan towers while street level is a
squalid cyberpunk killing ground. Visionary in its look and detail, Ridley
Scott's 1982 interpretation of the 21st century looks more accurate with each
passing year. The same sort of dystopian corporate cyberpunk ethos would
influence Paul Verhoven's
Robocop (1987)
and his Philip K Dick film,
Total Recall
(1990), based on the short story
We Can Remember It For You
Wholesale.
Gattaca (1997)
paints a near future space programme in the colours of 1950s IBM-style
conformity. The somewhat obviously named Vincent Freeman (Ethan Hawk) dreams
only of going into space, but in a world of compulsory genetic testing simply
doesn't make the grade. Andrew Niccol--who also wrote the thematically similar
The Truman
Show (1998)--shows little of the world beyond that of its
privatised, corporate space programme, but raises the dystopian stakes to
depict a society in which even if the individual is willing to conform, they
may be betrayed by their own DNA. Freeman's quest to beat the system is
encapsulated in the tagline, "There Is No Gene For The Human Spirit".
Gattaca
is an elegant, thought-provoking film. In an
increasingly a-political popular culture it suggests, as have virtually all
dystopian films of the last two decades, that big business and Big Brother will
become our close relations.
Amazon Home
