Life (15.)
Directed by Daniel Espinosa.
Starring Ryan Reynolds, Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson, Hiroyuki Sanada, Olga Dihovichnaya, and Ariyon Bakare. 104 mins
Life is a film you might have decided was not worth risking your time and money on based on the bland ubiquity of its marketing campaign. The Mount Rushmore poster of the three lead actors, their faces framed by the slipped halo of the rim of their spacesuits, seemed to be an admission on the part of the distributors: this film has got stars but nothing much else other than some run-of-the-mill deadly alien let loose on a spaceship (actually space station) thrills and frights. Usually such a reading would be top of the class semiotics, but in this case I think a truer reading might be that the film company, Sony, didn't quite know what to make of it. Thus the blanket timidity of the marketing, and not screening it till the last minute.
The film starts with a contrived piece of tension in which the crew of the space station ISS have to try and manually retrieve an unmanned capsule returning from Mars with soil samples which has strayed from its planned trajectory. This doesn't have any real relevance to the plot but does mean the film can open with a ten minute, zero gravity, tracking shot (I'm sure that it isn't really a single shot but it has been well faked) through the space station, that ends with the point of the sequence, the capsule being caught by astronaut Ryan Reynolds on a spacewalk, being partially observed through a window.
The purpose of this heady opening is to mark out its territory and set up its characters, but also to buy some time. After the busy start, the film doesn't then have to rush through the part where the scientists discover that there is a single cell organism in the soil, and showing them all being thrilled at having discovered non terrestrial life. I doubt anyone is going to go in to this not knowing that it is scary film, but if you were to, you would be hoodwinked into thinking this was some kind of optimistic, philosophical sci-fi film for quite a while before its dark side is revealed.
Life has its flaws. The creature is a disappointment. It's both too, and not enough like Alien. It's not distinctive and its CGI rendering is less lifelike than the rest of the space ship environment. Compared to its environment, it looks fake. Towards the end there are a few narrative developments that aren't properly explained. Mostly though this is top notch sci-fi horror. The terrain looks familiar, like the other films in the genre, but though it may look like all the others, Life pulls plenty of surprises, and is often quite subtle in the way it defies your expectations. It is unexpectedly callous at times, jauntily heartless. Critics describing it as unoriginal and derivative, are missing a lot I think.
It really is a surprisingly dark, and twisted enterprise. The plot is all about keeping the organism quarantined, and stopping it getting to Earth: I'm guessing many reviewers will make something of it theme being about the imperative of protecting borders, but there are other ways in which the film taps into the pessimism of our age. Up above the surface of the Earth an international, highly educated, multicultural elite are about to have their dreams of harmonious integration shattered in a most abrupt and shocking way. The crew are so chuffed with their discovery of life, so hopeful about its potential. It's quite snide the way the film drags out their period of optimism: the crew of the Nostromo were never under any illusion about the Alien being benign. Gyllenhaal's character breaks the record for the longest time living consecutively in space, motivated by his army experiences in Syria and his dislike for human behavior. He wants to be above humanity, but by the end he is fighting for his territory, willing to kill to protect. Life is life, the film seems to be saying, ultimately just a grim struggle motivated by the desire to survive.
Directed by Daniel Espinosa.
Starring Ryan Reynolds, Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson, Hiroyuki Sanada, Olga Dihovichnaya, and Ariyon Bakare. 104 mins
Life is a film you might have decided was not worth risking your time and money on based on the bland ubiquity of its marketing campaign. The Mount Rushmore poster of the three lead actors, their faces framed by the slipped halo of the rim of their spacesuits, seemed to be an admission on the part of the distributors: this film has got stars but nothing much else other than some run-of-the-mill deadly alien let loose on a spaceship (actually space station) thrills and frights. Usually such a reading would be top of the class semiotics, but in this case I think a truer reading might be that the film company, Sony, didn't quite know what to make of it. Thus the blanket timidity of the marketing, and not screening it till the last minute.
The film starts with a contrived piece of tension in which the crew of the space station ISS have to try and manually retrieve an unmanned capsule returning from Mars with soil samples which has strayed from its planned trajectory. This doesn't have any real relevance to the plot but does mean the film can open with a ten minute, zero gravity, tracking shot (I'm sure that it isn't really a single shot but it has been well faked) through the space station, that ends with the point of the sequence, the capsule being caught by astronaut Ryan Reynolds on a spacewalk, being partially observed through a window.
The purpose of this heady opening is to mark out its territory and set up its characters, but also to buy some time. After the busy start, the film doesn't then have to rush through the part where the scientists discover that there is a single cell organism in the soil, and showing them all being thrilled at having discovered non terrestrial life. I doubt anyone is going to go in to this not knowing that it is scary film, but if you were to, you would be hoodwinked into thinking this was some kind of optimistic, philosophical sci-fi film for quite a while before its dark side is revealed.
Life has its flaws. The creature is a disappointment. It's both too, and not enough like Alien. It's not distinctive and its CGI rendering is less lifelike than the rest of the space ship environment. Compared to its environment, it looks fake. Towards the end there are a few narrative developments that aren't properly explained. Mostly though this is top notch sci-fi horror. The terrain looks familiar, like the other films in the genre, but though it may look like all the others, Life pulls plenty of surprises, and is often quite subtle in the way it defies your expectations. It is unexpectedly callous at times, jauntily heartless. Critics describing it as unoriginal and derivative, are missing a lot I think.
It really is a surprisingly dark, and twisted enterprise. The plot is all about keeping the organism quarantined, and stopping it getting to Earth: I'm guessing many reviewers will make something of it theme being about the imperative of protecting borders, but there are other ways in which the film taps into the pessimism of our age. Up above the surface of the Earth an international, highly educated, multicultural elite are about to have their dreams of harmonious integration shattered in a most abrupt and shocking way. The crew are so chuffed with their discovery of life, so hopeful about its potential. It's quite snide the way the film drags out their period of optimism: the crew of the Nostromo were never under any illusion about the Alien being benign. Gyllenhaal's character breaks the record for the longest time living consecutively in space, motivated by his army experiences in Syria and his dislike for human behavior. He wants to be above humanity, but by the end he is fighting for his territory, willing to kill to protect. Life is life, the film seems to be saying, ultimately just a grim struggle motivated by the desire to survive.
