What are human beings if not feedback organisms? We talk, we fight, we do both horrible and wonderful things to each other across the world on a daily basis; at times we are a reflection of what others tells us as much as we are our own selves. We are social animals where one of the chief forms of torture would be complete isolation. Life is simply no fun without someone, friends, lovers, colleagues, with which to share it. Science fiction films have often tackled the ‘last man on earth’ as a starting point for whatever monsters or disease or wherever the story may go, but what if the last man on Earth, was not on Earth? What if the enemy is not disease or zombies but simply the knowledge that you are stuck in isolation. This is the scenario played out in William Eubank’s science fiction odyssey simply titled Love.
Opening with a tour de force Civil War prologue, in which one man is sent away from a doomed siege – ordered by his commanding officer to be the sole survivor of the engagement. The man is consumed with guilt over being left alive when others are all to perish yet nonetheless ends up in one of the most beautiful places on earth. Flash-forward in a single cut to the International Space Station. The year is 2039 and astronaut Lee James Miller is a single-man crew charged with the task of taking systems inventory of the previously abandoned and obsolete station. During a routine series of systems checks, he loses contact with Houston, Koroloyov, everyone. It is a sublime moment. One moment, you are a trained professional doing your job, the next, you have lost all contact with everyone. For Miller at that instant, his world comes into laser focus and loses focus simultaneously. Love is the story of Miller’s attempt to keep himself alive, and more importantly sane, when he has no one to talk to. He spends his time keeping the life-support and other critical systems going and trying to keep from being bored with the detritus left on the station: old tech manuals (unfortunately in Russian), polaroids of the crews of 20 years past which provide a little fantasy fodder and role playing, but hardly offer the real thing. Ironically, he also has the most gorgeous window seat in the solar system. The film tries to use this situation to get at the understanding of the real importance of social connection, the illusion of self-control as an individual and as a species. Visualized in a slow but inevitable change in behaviour and body language when left alone with nobody watching, it is not taken to the extreme taken in say José Saramago’s Blindness, but Gunner Wright is very convincing in his reaction to first loss of control, then boredom, then loneliness and despair. This is especially so since much of the film hangs on his solo performance.
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Page One: Inside the New York Times
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
Bad Teacher
Red State
Monte Carlo
