Film Variation
Research indicates that genre filmmaking is influenced immensely by numerous economic and cultural differences that exist in various countries. According to ROGGERS, the global film market is dominated by 34 filmmaking countries that produce at least 25 films each year. American films dominate the market, taking almost all slots of the top ten films. The extent to which films dominate the market is largely influenced by the level of investment as well the extent to which their countries of production limit national film cultural policies. Level of investment relies heavily on the economic drivers of the country. Conversely, national cultural policies that support the film industry in the form of quotas, tariffs, tax credits and subsidies play a great role in how films are dispensed (Desser, 2003). In this case, variations are easily fashioned in films of the same genre from time to time. The paper examines three popular films in the science fiction genre, seeking to determine whether there is significant variation among them.
Man Facing South East (1986), Dark City (1998), Moon (2009)
In the Film, Man Facing South East is based on a new patient in a mental hospital who claims to come from the space, an extraterrestrial. The patient appears in the mental ward and claims to have come to the earth from another planet to study human behavior. The alien exhibits calm behavior but criticizes the human race for its harsh treatment against each other. On the other hand, the assigned doctor exhibits unhappiness and is greatly affected by the alien’s insight. However, he is still expected to treat the alien as a normal patient, following the institutional procedures (Bustamante, 2014).
The Dark City film is based on a man that struggles with his past memories that include a life partner he remembers nothing about and a dreadful world that he doesn’t understand. John awakens in a weird hotel only to realize he lost his memory and is being wanted for committing brutal murders. As he tries to tries to put his life together, he comes across an evil underworld controlled by some beings referred to as “The Strangers”. These beings can put any person to sleep and do whatever they want to the city. John now has to devise ways to stop “The Strangers” before they destroy him (Ryon, 2001).
Lastly, the Moon an astronaut has an extraordinary personal encounter towards the end of his three year contract in the moon, where he works alongside GERTY, his computer, to send information back to earth regarding the earth’s power problems. Sam Bell is the only employee based in the moon station in the entire duration. His main priority is to harvest and send back supplies of Helium-3 to the Earth. Notably, the astronaut does not have a direct communication link between the moon work station and the Earth workstation. Bell only interacts with GERTY, an intelligent computer that takes care of his daily needs. With this minimal human interaction and indirect communication, the astronaut feels the three year duration is quite long to be isolated in the lunar station. Hallucinations start to catch up with him towards the end of the stay, estranged with memories and desire to be with his wife and their little daughter. During the last two week’s stretch, he encounters an accident at one of the Helium-3 harvesters which renders him unconscious and a huge conspiracy story emerges (Wiegel, 2012).
Variations
Although the three films are of the same genre, science=fiction, significant variations can be easily identified. The films have a ten year production gap that aids in making sound comparisons amongst the three films. The Man Facing the South East was written and directed by an Argentinian director in 1986. The Dark City was written and directed by an Australian director in 1998. The Moon was written and directed by a British director in 2009. Therefore, these films represent three distinct country backgrounds and span for a period of over twenty years. In this case, the three pieces present a classical illustration of the evolution of content in genre films.
The content of the Man Facing South East film centres on a notion that can be referred to as “millennial unreality”. The main character is exhibited to dwell in multiple subjective realities. The narrative questions consensus reality as well as suggests that it is not always what one thinks it is. The plot keeps redefining what the main character think is real and who he is. The film is shot in Borda mental asylum and presents a romanticized illustration of patients with mental issues, in their absurd madness, recognizes an alien as sort of a magical messiah. In fact, the patients are inspired by the alien that they burst into an extemporaneous musical riot-parade when the alien conducts the “Ode to Joy” (Aldridge, 2014).
Some critics have described the content of the film as shallow in glossy. This could be attributed to the fact that the film is to some extent dark and low-budget and is inundated by the traumatic experience of the recently ended military rule in Argentina. Important consideration the film’s content alludes to the Argentinean “collective unconscious” and cultural specifies. One of the examples include showing the Argentinian flag in a part of the film where the institute’s director laments that it was a good thing that the alien hadn’t provoked a headline about an outrageous being that orders a military attack. The film’s content also portrays a classical hologram idea. The Man Facing South-East became a shock hit in Argentina after being successful in other countries (Bustamante, 2014).
The Dark City film to some extent borrows from the Man Facing South East. However, the content of the film has a more postmodern worldview. The piece entails a dying alien’s race, the Strangers that come to the blue planet, the earth and captures human beings to examine what fosters human survivor. In this case, contrary to the Man Facing South East, it’s the “aliens” that are destroying the human race. This coincides with the current notion that aliens are a threat to the human race. The Strangers studies the human race by constructing a 1940s-style city and mould their human beings by implanting different sorts of memories and insights into their brains. These Strangers change the city inhabitant’s memories each midnight to see how human beings react in different conditions with different memories (Blackmore, 2004).
The Dark City film is more intricate. For instance, the Strangers hate light, they manage to inhibit the occurrence of a day. The inhabitants of the city never experienced a day entirely. The director deepens the quality of the content where he portrays John Murdoch as a superhuman that can battle and resist the will of the Strangers by staying awake and changing the nature of his surroundings (Proyas et al., 1998). The aspect of profound memory is very important in current times. The mental patient in the Man Facing South East finds himself in a sort of amnesia. However, in the Dark City, the main character resists implantation of the memories by the Strangers.
The Dark City’s filmic visuals are enhanced by a well-fashioned voiceover narration. The Man Facing South-East didn’t have a voiceover narration. The narration helps the audience understand how the city was constructed by the Strangers (Blackmore, 2004). The audience is able to understand that the Strangers built the city as way of studying human beings in a free environment, an environment the Strangers would adjust the way they would want through a process they would call “tuning”. The narration clearly informs the audience how Strangers tune the city while the humans sleep, and when they awaken, they do not notice any changes in the surroundings since they had too changed.
The Man Facing the South centers greatly on the alien. However, in the Dark City, the director shifts focus from the Strangers (aliens) to the setting of the film’s narrative. The audience is shifted to focus on the 1940s noir city environment, rather than focus on the aliens or a site contemporary to date of production of the film. The setting is staged in a way that the audience can be mesmerized by aspects such as the exterior and interior stage design, low-key lighting, low angle camera focus as well as stereotypical characters such as the femme fatale, the detective and the hero (Proyas et al., 1998). The director is keen to contrast these elements of stage design with those of the Strangers and their habitat. This was not seen in the Man Facing South East. Precisely, the Strangers, together with their dwelling places was staged, lit and shot in a horror style.
The content of the Moon is way more unconventional. The setting of the film Man facing South East is staged in a mental asylum while the setting of the Dark city is more radical as it is staged on a cityscape. However, the Moon goes further to stage the film outside the normal contemporary sites. The film has a moon set, comprising of an astronaut miner who is sent to extract moon gas to help avert the energy crisis on earth.
Two distinct aspects stand out in the Moon film and supersede the other two films; technology and clones. High level of technology plays a great role in the Moon’s content. The technology is displayed in two main attributes; the GERTY, and the idea of mining Helium-3. The helium isotopes are rare in the Earth’s crust. Researchers have tried to acquire some helium-3 for research through dismantling nuclear warheads. However, it is clear that it would be impossible to manufacture plentiful helium-3 to adequately solve the energy crisis on the planet. Conversely, helium-3 exists in abundance in the moon. The film clearly portrays how the helium can be extracted, redefined and transported to Earth through well-coordinated technological processes. The film depicts that the resource extraction is wholly managed and owned by a private company which points a larger conspiracy displayed by the other two films. The creativity of scrapping the surface of the moon and heating the lunar soil is far much intricate than that of the Dark City’s changing of the environment. The main computer, GERTY, keeps the workstation running and helps the astronaut throughout the film (Wiegel, 2012). The computer can even perform human functions such as heating up meals and cutting the astronaut’s hair.
The film depicts clones that exist seamlessly, and work uniformly. In this sense, the astronaut employer takes the astronaut’s genetic memories and information and creates clones that are stored in a secret spot (Springer, 2012). This form of creativity cannot be matched to the alien in the Man Facing South East that tries to study human behavior and the Strangers in the Dark City who only succeeds to implant memories to existing bodies of human beings.
In conclusion, although the three themes belong to the same film genre, significant variations emerge particularly with time and the country location of production. These variations are largely fueled by cultural and economic differences in the country of production. Notably, the Man Facing South East is an Argentinian film, the Dark City is an Australian film and the Moon is a British film. These three backgrounds contribute to international film variations that have been exemplified in the paper. A realization can be inferred that the content of the three movies advances with time. For instance, the 1986 film was staged in a mental asylum while the recent film was staged outside the Earth planet. Therefore, it can be concluded that the content of science-fiction films grows more sophisticated with time especially in the light of the ever-dynamic technology.
References
Aldridge, A. (2014). Man Facing Southeast: Would We Know Jesus If We Saw Him?. Verbum, 12(1), 32-33.
Blackmore, T. (2004). High on Technology, Low on Memory: Cultural Crisis in Dark City and The Matrix. Canadian Review of American Studies, 34(1), 13-54.
BUSTAMANTE VÉLEZ, L. U. C. Í. A. (2014). Textual analysis of the movie Man facing southeast. Cuadernos de Lingüística Hispánica, (23), 103-118.
Desser, D. (2003). Global noir: Genre film in the age of transnationalism. Film genre reader III, 516-536.
Proyas, A., Sewell, R., Hurt, W., Sutherland, K., Connelly, J., O’Brien, R., & Richardson, I. (1998). Dark city. Warner Home Video Germany.
Robinson, E. (2004). Man Facing South east. Conjunctions, (42), 141-144..
Ryon, J. (2001). Dark City. Jung and Film, 95
Springer, K. (2012). Hard Science Fiction in Film: Analyzing Duncan Jones’s Moon. Film Matters, 3(4), 38-42.
Wiegel, A. (2012). AI in Science-fiction: a comparison of Moon (2009) and 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).