Remember my good friend Dr Mike Goldsmith and my
interview with him about science and science writing (especially for
children?) See here.
We decided Enough With The Bone Crunching Doom - and I am starting a new
series of my friends, enthusing about films or TV, for whatever
reason. Here he is then, to open the new season (which shall hereafter,
in the same vein as my last season, have a stupid shortened name: BJ's
EWTBCD Season! - 'enough with the bone crunching doom', in case you got
lost there). Off we go, over to Dr Mike:
***
Being a bit of a scientist, I like SF films with a bit of
science in them. Not too much mind - Destination
Moon is soooo scientific and sooooo dull at the same time. WHICH DOES NOT
JUST GO TO SHOW THAT SCIENCE IS BORING, before anyone jumps in.
SF films need no science to be excellent, but good science
elements can add a special frisson for me. "Good Science" doesn't
have to mean "real science" though. One of my favourite SF films is Monolith Monsters, in which the titular
monsters are actually minerals, which, on exposure to water, grow, and then
collapse. They will absorb water from any nearby humans too, killing them
instantly if they are bit-part actors, more slowly if they are guest stars.
There really are materials which behave a bit like this, notably plutonium,
which absorbs oxygen, grows and splits. But that's not really relevant - the
clever thing about the film is that the whole drama is a logical development of
a plausible mineral which just has this one key characteristic. It isn't really
a monster at all, it doesn't want to take over the Earth, win a space-war, or
impregnate anyone. It just does what it normally does, and is highly dangerous
as a result. I also quite like Magnetic
Monster, which is sort of the same idea but with an ever-growing kind of
metal.
A completely different kind of film is Solaris, which I like, not because of the science on display, but
because of the scientists. Solaris is a planet with a living ocean which is in
some kind of mental contact with the scientists on a space station in orbit
around it. They do all their usual scientist things - send probes, take videos,
try experiments - but whatever they try, they can make no progress in understanding
Solaris (in Stanislaw Lem's book of the same name, on which the film is based,
this is even clearer; the ocean can control the orbit of the planet but no-one
can work out how). In the end... well, I'd best not say what the scientists do
in the end, but it's very human and not very scientific - but very
scientist-ific.
I much prefer that sort of realistic portrayal of scientists
to something like The Man in the White
Suit (about a scientist who invents a fabric that never gets dirty or wears
out. Cue panic amongst clothes manufacturers, soap makers, et al). In that the scientists
are just like they are supposed to be : out of touch, emotionally
unintelligent, unable to see where there science is taking them. Presumably to
add plausibility, Alec Guinness (he of the White Suit), is required to say
things like "I think I've succeeded in the copolymerization of amino acid
residues and carbohydrate molecules both containing ionic groups; it's really
perfectly simple: I believe I've got the right catalysis between the reactive
groups at the end of the carbohydrate combination, while the charges of the
ionic groups confer valuable elastic properties at high temperature and
pressure..." and so on.
A similar - though much
better - film is No Highway in the Sky,
based on Nevil Shute's No Highway (why
did they feel the need to add in the Sky
for the film version? I mean, when they made
a film out of The Third Man, they
didn't call it The Third Man Who is a Spy,
and they didn't make a film called Doctor
Doolittle Who Can Talk to Animals You Know, or Little American Women). Anyway,
it has an incredibly nerdy engineering genius played by James Stewart, who
knows all about metal fatigue and hence that a plane is going to crash. The
only person who believes him is Marlene Dietrich (who is playing Marlene
Dietrich. In the very few films I have seen with her in, she always seems to be
playing Marlene Dietrich. And very good at it she is too). It is a good film, I
reckon, but James Stewart is just so very emotionally dislocated he's quite
painful to watch, especially in the scenes with his daughter, for whom he is
incapable of showing his love. (But she knows anyway, luckily). I do like it,
and it does have science-as-hero, but honestly, we're not like that.
Yet a third kind of fun-for-me-with-a-scientific-hat-on film
is exemplified by Primer. A
low-budget cult movie about silicon valley students who inadvertently invent a
time machine while trying to make something else, it has attracted a huge
following within the Nerdsphere because what happens when the students start meeting
other versions of themselves is so mind-boggling complex you need a diagram to
understand it (such diagrams can readily be located on t'Internet by Googling).
But the film kind of haves its cake and eats it because it
only shows some of the simpler details of what goes on. Enough to make some
sense so it's watchable without a guide/Geekclopedia/aforementioned diagram,
but not so much sense as to imply there is no complexity lurking. It's a bit
like listening to the EXCELLENT "Bohemian Gravity" - I don't
understand the words but I sort of get the gist. (Please stop reading, and go
to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rjbtsX7twc
right now if you've not heard it.)
But I digress. And so do you ... another one I like is Children of the Damned, sequel to Village of ... well, you know. Everyone
has seen the latter (blond kids, scary eyes, mental blocks, scene in a pub, mind-control,
clipped accents and/or Received Pronunciation all round), but not so many the
former. I actually watched the former having read that, uniquely, it had a pair
of gay protagonists in a live-in relationship. Who were SCIENTISTS!!! How cool
is that? Impossibly cool, as it turns
out : As far as I can tell, there is no evidence whatsoever that they are gay
and some evidence that they are not, and their relationship is that of
colleagues. They don't seem to live together in any sense either.
(So much for that back-to-the-point-following-digression
paragraph, eh?). What I enjoyed about this film in particular (other than
waiting for the big reveal of our heroes' true natures and the startling nature
of their in-your-face,-1950s-filmgoers relationship of course) was that the
kids spend ages building a machine, right under the noses of the humans, that
turns out to be an ... ah ... the spoilers issue again. But it's a clever way
of underlining just how Neanderthal modern humans would seem to a highly
advanced species.
In many films, science is there as window dressing (Blade Runner), or to act as a plot
device in just the way a magic spell might (The
Time Machine). In both cases, brilliant films can result. But there are
also films in which scientific concepts seemingly underpin the narrative but
which are in fact fatally compromised. One example is the original version of The Day The Earth Stood Still. Fantastic
music, menacing robot, spacecraft interior, cool alien language, I grant you,
but the several wonderful concepts on offer are thoroughly shot in the foot by
the demands of conventional movie-making. In the story on which the film is
based, "Farewell to the Master", by Harry Bates, the robot is in
charge and the humanoid alien, Klaatu, is its servant. In the film, roles are
reversed. Which is unfortunate since Klaatu makes a complete mess of his
mission. Though well aware of humanity's trigger-happy nature (that being the
whole basis of his mission), he first gets himself shot, then displays
near-miraculous powers of technological control - but claims to be quite unable
to communicate his big message to the world's leaders unless they are all
gathered in one place. Really? He can identify, locate, isolate, and maintain the
power supplies to every hospital and airborne plane in the world, but he can't
set up a teleconference? He also dies and brings himself back to life - only to
hastily point out that he can't do this for long, because resurrection is God's
province. Finally, a big gathering is arranged and he gives his message, which
is that we should be less warlike, and then jets off back into space (and
presumably dies). He really might as well have just written his message on the
Sun and/or Moon and saved everyone a lot of bother.
I have run out of kinds of films with science in now, so
I'll stop. If you liked "Bohemian Gravity", check out
"Massless" and "Rolling in the Higgs".
***
Wait and see what's next!
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