Logan's Run

Logan’s Run 

Michael Anderson

1977, USA

Screenlay: David Zelag Goodman based on the novel by William F Nolan & George Clayton Johnson

 

One of those future utopias/dystopias that I grew up with, in the same pack as ‘Westworld’, ‘Silent Running’, ‘Planet of the Apes’. Those films that are sci-fi smart pulp, but ‘Logan’s Run’ is inferior to those.

The dialogue strikes as the kind of future-speak that adults write for kids. Only Jenny Agutter has an innate naturalness that cuts through: Michael York as Logan 5 (yes: numbers as surnames) is probably apt in his certain sincere blandness actually: people’s banality would be intentional in this society. It’s the 23^rd century where civilisation survives in a dome and live for leisure and pleasure; they wear colour-coded clothing according to age and enjoy “the carousel”, where people who reach thirty are “renewed”; a super-computer seems to be in charge. An A.I. is using a Big Lie to maintain population control. It’s that well-known receipt for the undoing of humanity: technology and hedonism. The more sordid side of this life of indulgence was mostly cut to reduce the film’s rating and the most we are left with is a sex club where nudes move in slow motion and try to grope you.

Logan is a Sandman, who hunts and kills those running from “carousel”: seems like not everyone believes in renewal. Logan is introduced to discontent when he meets Jessica (Agutter), and then when he retrieves an Ankh from a runner’s corpse, the computer instructs him to “run”, to find “Sanctuary” – the place runners are trying to escape to – and destroy it.  (The poster seems to imply that Logan goes a-running with Farah Fawcett-Majors, who graces proceeding with feather hear and come-ons.)

After an encounter with a psychotic robot that makes it clear that previous runners probably never got out – which is grim – Logan and Jessica get outside and meet an old man. It is when they meet Peter Ustinov that the stiffness of their dialogue makes more sense as the product of their limited culture. Ustinov’s mumbling spontaneous charm contrasts and adds texture and context: the banality of the characters makes sense when juxtaposed with warmth and improvisation.

But this texture is squandered when Logan and Jessica go back to the dome to share the truth with others, but they don’t actually have any plan for this apart from shouting it to an amused, uninterested mob and being caught by Sandmen. Luckily, the truth overloads the computer, it does a “Does Not Compute!” and a simple gunfight brings the whole city to exploding. If it wasn’t so hard to thwart this civilisation after all, you might think the insurgents might have accomplished something by now as complacency isn’t absolute. Surely the computer would have encountered an Ankh before (runners have them and certainly would have been found earlier when the corpses are frisked)? This would then make more sense as another attempt by it to destroy “Sanctuary”. And why does the Doc risk everything clumsily when trying to kill Logan; can’t rig an “accident”? etc.

So perhaps internal logic isn’t ‘Logan's Run’s’ strong suit and plot holes are everywhere, but there’s lots to enjoy in the future city model-work and sets, as well the overall camp of the costumes and flashing lights and mad robots, etc. You can just feel the intelligence of a novel's ideas being siphoned off for movie platitudes (it would be 'Logan's Run's peer 'Star Wars' to show film makers that you needn't hint at smart, just Faith and spectacle to make it work). Michael Anderson’s direction is a little stiff, but it’s episodic enough that it’s never boring. There’s enough that audience imagination can paper over the cracks and there is always the hint of a better film that keeps the interest. Not so smart, but entertaining.

Black Panther

Ryan Cooglar, USA, 2018 

A lot was riding on this because, you know, An African Superhero and so on and because of its potential contribution to representation. Trying to discuss this film upon its release without this point would be to undervalue its relevance. And although fan boys were eager, the superhero genre had become rote for a wider audience. And then, of course, it was a massive success because it was good. The genre had been broadening itself on the fringes and then into the mainstream by showing that it could incorporate a scruffy attitude and be funny with ‘The Guardians of the Galaxy’, and that it could be 18 rated and also funny with ‘Deadpool’. The funny certainly made ‘Spiderman: Homecoming’ a delight and improved ‘Thor: Ragnorok’. Oh, these superhero films always had amusing moments, but there was certainly an air of calculation about them: a one-liner here and there. The strident sincerity of Nolan’s ‘Batman’ – or even ‘Chronicle’, ‘Unbreakable’, ‘Defendor’ – was no longer the only approach in town and things were now stretching out (and didn’t have to go to the camp of Schumacher’s ‘Batman & Robin’ either). And the genre had been pushing at the edges of representation all over; maybe playing it too safe at times, but it seemed to be trying. ‘Black Panther’ came to show how taking-this-silliness-seriously with effortless humour could be at its most organic. It successfully keeps both the po-faced seriousness and excitement constantly in play so that it proves fun but not frivolous, earnest but not preachy. 

In its approach to representation, ‘Black Panther’s treatment of gender is also so casual and balanced – perhaps radically so – that it surely bests the much heralded but somewhat pedestrian ‘Wonder Woman’ on this issue (there’s Danai Gurira, Lupita Nyong’o and Angela Basset just for starters). Here, there is no doubt that women are, intellectually and physically, equal if not superior. They always seem to have the wit and the playfulness that gives them the upper hand. Ryan Cooglar says,

I really wanted to have women who speak to the themes of the film, who personally had their own arcs in the film, and who really speak to the fact that a society – an African society or any society – doesn’t function without women carrying tremendous weight. T’Challa is a great king, but he can’t be that without women in his life. So that was kind of my perspective.^

And this attention to both gender and race only serves to make ‘Black Panther’ full of winning inclusivity that goes to making it a fuller meal than perhaps these films sometimes offer. Well, more than just popcorn.

There’s also a noteworthy similarity between ‘Black Panther’ and ‘Wonder Woman’ in that the heroes in both films are ostensibly killers. With Wonder Woman, there is no doubt: not only does she kill but she kills the wrong guy and this doesn’t lead to much reflection on the film’s part, surely leaving a problematic lacuna. But when Black Panther (Chadwisk Boseman) seemingly defeats Killmonger (Michael B Jordan) and lets him die, it feeds into themes that have been running throughout the film: Killmonger chooses to die, citing it as the same choice that his ancestors made when they jumped off of ships to their deaths instead of accepting slavery. This provides a counterpoint to the constant refrain to ancestry that permeates Wakanda’s culture, a refrain which is positive but narrow. So when T’challa defeats Killmonger, he gives his nemesis the respect of choice: they could heal him in an instant, but T’challa is not unsympathic to Killmonger’s motivation and lets him choose his fate.

I have heard a criticism that this is the first superhero based in black culture but that the fact that it is based in tribes and trial-by-combat is negative and stereotypical; but I have read a lot of comments to the contrary, that many appreciate the representation of a variety of different African cultures.* Indeed, Wakanda as a utopian vision is also quite radical when dystopias are so in vogue, and can seen as a riposte to the limitations of constant doom-mongering.  Further one of T’challa’s arcs is that he comes to reject the ancestors as faulty, his own father as hypocritical, and that this leaving the past behind allows his forward-thinking. If Vibrabium is a symbol of the strength of black culture, when T’Challa smirks at the end when questioned as to what Wakanda can offer, it is surely an analogy for the feeling that that culture – which is of course many cultures – must be feeling as if they know and have something superior that white culture can only guess at. They don’t want the doom-mongering.

There are diversions into James Bond territory and Andy Serkis provides a more obvious scenery-chomping bad guy, leaving Killmonger to be more complex, and all of this is very entertaining. But the real achievement is that, like ‘Get Out’, ‘Black Panther’ is part of movement showing genre films can also address the American race issue with the language of entertainment and amusement, not just and only with neo-realist seriousness – unless you are averse and prejudiced against such things, of course. Indeed, in the screening I intended, a decidedly mixed audience laughed mostly at jokes rooted very much in the black perspective (the line about another white boy to fix and a character being called a colonialist; indeed, Martin Freeman is the token white). It feels full-blooded in detail even though it adheres to the familiar super-hero genre structure and strictures. The greater accent on greater diversity and representation reaps rewards – both culturally and economically – and continues to touch on certain areas of drama and humour previously not-so drawn upon, especially in the mainstream. 

In Ta-Nahisi Coates’ ‘Black Panther' Comic (issue #170, April 2018), the character Tetu gives a speech criticising the binary way of seeing matters when a circular vision is more beneficial and correct: 

“But Wakandans are trapped in the binary. So Strict. So Western. Boxes where there should be circles.” 

He’s villainous so he also adds, 

“Stasis when what we need is revolution”^

But this call for more fluid thinking is striking, offering an alternative to a rock and a hard place, to one or the other, against extremism. With mainstream entertainment reaching further and showing that, hey, a wider selection of viewpoints makes money, a this-or-that approach is belatedly but hopefully going to look old-fashioned sooner rather than later, even with the current resurgence of far Right Wing political reaction to the success of alternative thinking and agendas in the mainstream.** The sheer range of representation in ‘Black Panther’ is surely a triumph: but that it is done so well is important. Or as Davika Girish summarises,  

…but what makes Black Panther truly unique is that this “dystopian” present is juxtaposed with a (stunningly realised) utopian vision that is wholly steeped in the black experience – in its history, iconography, and culture. In doing so, Black Panther gives blockbuster science-fiction its new vocation: a grounded and inclusive reflection of reality that isn’t closed off by mass spectacle, but instead – in the tradition of Afrofuturism – allows for radical reimaginings of both the past and the future.***

But putting aside its place in this discussion about race and gender, it is a fun, well-measured and well-made film – this cannot be underestimated and this will be the foundation of its longevity. Yes, it has that typical third-act showdown and it doesn’t really relinquish genre norms, and Black Panther’s unique attributes are bound to go on to be subsumed and diluted by his inclusion to ‘The Avengers’ universe, but for now its perspective gives it relevance and grit. A superhero film with one eye on David Simon’s ‘The Wire’, perhaps. One can only hope that, now the bottom line has shown that such inclusivity is a money-maker, that the doors have truly been kicked open. Perhaps it is apt that entertainments so rooted in wish-fulfillment like superhero films are making headway in the way in the mainstream – both quietly and bombastically.

• ^ ‘Black Panther’ (issue #170, April 2018)
• * Indeed, I read one social media comment where someone reported that his sister cried throughout the film because it was full of faces and characters that were familiar to her experience.
• ** At its most basic, the election of President Trump can be seen as a retort to President Obama; indeed by his own tweets and policies one could easily frame the argument that Trump himself treats it this way.
• *** ‘Film Comment’ March-April 2018

Alamar (To The Sea)

Pedro González-Rubio, 2009, Mexico

Films are often criticised for not having enough plot: for example would be ‘The Revenant’ and ‘The Raid’, as if cinema is only at the mercy of drama. But these films are about other things upon which a familiar premise is but a coat-hanger (execution and acting in the former; fighting in the latter); you could even say it about ‘Victoria’ (execution and acting). Sometimes a film might feel improved if it had more plot, or rather more originality in the writing – say, ‘Hardcore Henry’. But sometimes the visuals can be enough.

Pedro González-Rubio’s ‘Alamar’ barely has a narrative at all: the child of a holiday romance, Natan (Natan Machado Palombini), goes to spend some time with his father Roberta (Roberta Palombini) who lives off the Mexican coast on the Caribbean reef of Banco Chinchorro. The film is composed of the men’s daily routine in fishing: there are no women, although they do call a bird that seems to temporarily adopt them by the feminine. Once the mother sets up the background story, she merely bookends this portrayal of father-son bonding. This separation may raise the probability of some kind of disharmony, but there is very little friction here, perhaps even less than dialogue. What we do have are gorgeous visuals of the reef, of a sea-based community. Highlights are the feeding of birds and crocodiles. 

The film has a documentary style in its matter-of-factness, but the visuals are gorgeous because what it is looking at is abundant natural beauty. It’s a home-movie of a gorgeous holiday or perhaps a ‘National Geographic’ article come to life. It captures a mood, a fleeting happiness and beauty. It leaves many questions unanswered but this is not a film of answers. Rather, it implies the continuous nature of emotional response in that it does not bestow Natan immediately with reflective sadness for a lost paradise when he returns home to his mother in Rome –after all, he is only five – but perhaps the value of this time with his father will reveal such reflections as he grows up. It is perhaps nice, for once, just to wallow in a mood of a moment without the demands and tensions of drama.

Zardoz

John Boorman, GB, 1974

I have a life-long relationship with ‘Zardoz’. When I was a kid, I read a lot of splendid science fiction (before I read a lot of junk horror) and ‘Zardoz’ seemed, to me, to simulate what I was reading (just like ‘Westworld’, ‘Soylent Green’, ‘Planet of the Apes’, 'Phase IV' and, um, ‘Logan’s Run’, etc.). It was full of big ideas, a little tacky, a little mad: the central idea was a rogue rebel let loose in an alien world and that was a perennial narrative of the genre. Still is, as we all wanna be rogue rebels (it’s one of the principal selling points of advertising). I liked it. So then I was surprised when I next saw it: I was barely on my teens and at the Glastonbury music festival, spending all my time in the film marquee, of course. This was the early eighties and it was still called a CND festival. I saw ‘The Blues Brothers’ there; someone played the bongos throughout a screening of ‘Woodstock’; and then I saw ‘An American Werewolf in London’ during which … well, that’s a story for another time. But they also showed ‘Zardoz’, which I had seen before on TV: remember, this was hardly the VHS era and it was still a major venture to try a track down a repeat viewing of that film you liked on the three channels on TV. Anyway, I was happily watching the film when its ‘Wizard of Oz’ revelation came…. and the audience laughed. A laughter of ridicule, of “really?” I was perplexed. It was my first taste of realising that others might find ridiculous the things I took for granted. I couldn’t fathom why they found this amusing. Of course, since then, I realise that ‘Zardoz’ has a certain reputation for being silly, pretentious, laughable, a failure. Mark Kermode, for example, writes that “I think Zardoz is a terrible film – a fascinating failure perhaps, but rubbish nonetheless.” 

I don’t feel this. You see, I still feel it’s a full of big ideas, a little hemmed in by its Seventies feel – which I now see as campness – bizarre and a little mad. And I approve. I still feel it resembles some of the pulp I was reading, and once I became acquainted with ‘Heavy Metal’ magazine and Marvel’s short-lived comic ‘Epic Illustrated’ I thought it resembled the stories in them too. They explored worlds that were immersive and were often hinged on the bizarre. I like absurdism if it’s working – making absurdism work is a trait I admire (another reason I am a horror fan) – and I have long since realised that I regularly have a blind spot to what others might find preposterous. It’s too pulpy to be serious and too serious to be pure pulp. In this sense, it is an oddity.

So, yeah: Sean Connery wears a nappy. Which I never had a problem with as I saw it as a loincloth and this seemed to me a simple, primitive kind of clothing which made sense in context. But it’s become a prime tagline for the film’s detractors. And the other one? When the God Zardoz says that “The gun is good. The penis is Evil.” Indeed, it seems a comedic line when isolated, but I don’t think this is unintentional. Isn’t this a political philosophy that we have seen dictating modern principles for a long, long time, boiled down its essence? It reminds me of Immortan Joe’s spouting similarly outrageous and destructive propaganda in ‘Mad Mad: Fury Road’ when he tells the masses not to become addicted to water. We hear leaders spout such frightening and illogical agenda all the time. But it’s true that the somewhat stilted dialogue at the start deteriorates into characters relating the obvious by the end. The strength of the film is not in what the characters say, even when they are speaking arch-poetry or genuine TS  Eliot and Neitzsche. The strengths are in the world-building and visuals.

And the floating head of Zardoz is an unforgettable image: a God that vomits guns and violence to followers. It’s not subtle but its effective symbolism. Just one of many vivid images Boorman offers. As Tom Milne says: “But visually the film remains a sparkling display of fireworks, brilliantly shot and directed.” And Zed (Sean Connery) stows away in this head and crosses to the Vortex, a New Agey villagey idyll whose residents are immortal and possessed of great psychic abilities. He explores and tours this world, then is encouraged to be its downfall. These eternals, of course, want death. 

There is a subtext underlying all the feminine authority, which is dominant here, that is negative – for example, as part of his rebellious nature and seemingly sidestepping any advancement made in gender concepts, the character of Friend says he hates women. The Vortex is a world built on lies but its gated community manipulating the apparent inferiors outside goes a little beyond class war: intellectuality and elitism is seen as cold, unfeeling and as incomplete. And the implication seems to be that voting and democracy is also stifling, as ideas of civilisation that omit innate emotion. Zed’s brute-force liberates the Vortex community even as his education leads him away from naked brutality. One could argue that Zed becomes a balance of primitive and intellectual motivations by the end – and he points this out by saying he is what not what he once was – but the film does not venture into this. From the outset, Zed is a mutant capable of scheming and suppressing his baser reactions in the service of a greater plan. 

The convolutions of the plot concerning Zed doesn’t really merit close scrutiny, as Oancitizen’s summary clearly outlines: 

"So his plan was... herd a bunch of working class Brits into, breeding someone genetically able to think on the Eternals level; lead him to a library. Hope, that he taught himself how to read properly. Hope, that he came across the one specific book that inspired the whole Zardoz shtick. Hope, that he would stow-away on the Zardoz head and shoot him. Then hope, that the head would crash back inside the vortex. Hope, that the other Eternals didn't kill him immediately, and teach them all that they know; in the hopes that he would figure out how to destroy the tabernacle and therefore all the Eternals. In other words, the exact kind of plan you expect for a man who draws on his goatee."

Yeah, well, when you put it like that…. But the whackiness is part of it all: such a plot makes sense in context. Or rather, in context you can forego logical improbabilities. Far more problematic is surely Zed’s inclination for rape, although it is understood that he has been conditioned this way. If he is bred to match the Eternals, would this not cause him to consider the question of rape (especially if he has read all in a library that surely has its share of female and feminist authors)? 

But I am more with Ben Wheatley on this: ‘Zardoz’ is all-immersive, its devotion to creating another world full-hearted and, along with the direction, helps to mitigate any shortcomings through budgetary restrictions. All the colourful period trimmings are grounded in the exposition that this is all in the service of a plan for space-travel. Even the much ridiculed costumes speak of how the Eternals are meant to have a more hands-on agenda to community (making their own). That the Vortex appears to be a picturesque lake; that there are psychic mind-games played out under colourful bed-sheets; multiple prism and mirror effects and reverse play-back all thrown into a psychedelic mix – they all speak of limits of budget and the compensation of imagination. It may be overstuffed but that is not a bad thing.

No, they don’t quite make films like this anymore: in fact it’s uniqueness means that they hardly ever did. It is authentic. And the fact that John Boorman went to this after ‘Deliverance’ is quite remarkable (although some of the existentialist concerns of ‘Zardoz’ is alluded to in ‘Deliverance’). When so much of contemporary science-fiction is just other genres with space helmets, it is when you look at something like ‘Zardoz’ that it is clear how short-sighted most genre cinema is.