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In 1979 and in the wake of Star
Wars, Walt Disney Studios released a big-budgeted
outer-space adventure called The
Black Hole directed by Gary
Nelson. It was the first movie in Disney history to be rated PG rather than G
for general audiences. And it faced direct competition in theaters from the
likes of Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), the long-awaited revival of
the popular sci-fi TV series.
Reviews of the film at the time were
generally negative. The word from science-fiction magazines and writers was far
less gracious. "Poisonous" might be a better descriptor.
Even three decades after the film's
theatrical release reviewers were still deriding the movie in articles with
titles like "Does The Black Hole still suck?"
The main point of contention for most
science-based writers appears to be The Black Hole's flagrant ignorance about the laws of
physics.
For instance, there appears to be a
breathable atmosphere in outer space at the mouth of the black hole during the
film's fiery finale.
And then there is Kate McCrae's (Yvette
Mimieux's) famously mangled line of dialogue early on insisting that the
Palomino and Cygnus vessels share the same mission: "to find habitable life"
in space.
Technically, the learned scientist claims
to be looking for "life" that people can inhabit or live in, and
obviously that makes no sense. Had Kate simply said they were in search of
"habitable worlds" or new "life forms," this wouldn't have
been a concern. But there you have it: The Black Hole didn't do itself any favors by
featuring a nonsensical line that should have been cut.
Despite such problematic moments, The
Black Hole has
survived and endured mainly on the affection of fans, I suspect, who first
viewed the film in childhood and never forgot it. But is there more to The
Black Hole than
the inescapable gravitational pull of nostalgia? Exactly what are the film's
merits? And why, thirty years on, does it remain such a polarizing and
influential film?
Foremost among The Black Hole’s merits
is its exploration of Manichean universe. More about that aspect of the film, and other
positive attributes too, after the synopsis, below.
"If there's any justice at all, the black hole will be your grave!"
A small Earth space craft, The Palomino,
has been charged with seeking out and discovering life in space. On mission day
547, however, the exploratory craft commanded by Captain Dan Holland (Robert
Forster) discovers something else of interest: the
largest black hole ever detected by man.
Intriguingly, the ship's robot, V.I.N.Cent
(Vital Information Network Centralized) (Roddy McDowall) detects a stationary
object near the black hole: the shrouded silhouette of a vast spaceship. The
crew soon recognizes the craft as Space Probe One, or the Cygnus...the costliest fiasco in America's space program history.
The Cygnus's eccentric
commander, Dr. Hans Reinhardt (Maximilian Schell) -- "one
of the greatest space scientists of all time" --
refused Mission Control's recall order and the Cygnus has not been seen or
heard from since.
Now, the quiescent Cygnus sits at the lip of the swirling black
hole, miraculously resisting the pull of the devouring maw.
After acquiring some damage the Palomino lands on the Cygnus and
the crew comes to learn the secrets of Reinhardt and his vast "death
ship." V.I.N.Cent learns
from another robot, Old B.O.B., that Reinhardt is insane; and that he
lobotomized his mutinous human crew, eradicating their will and leaving the men
and women of Cygnus mindless,
spiritless automatons.
Also, Reinhardt has created a devilish red
robot, Maximillian to help him carry out his plans to travel inside the black
hole, inside “the mind of God.”
The survivors of the Palomino attempt to escape from
Reinhardt even as the Cygnus sets
a fateful course for the black hole. The escape attempt fails, and characters
good and evil meet their fates inside the strange, mystical forces of the black
hole
"Some cause may have created all this, but what caused the cause?"
Mani was a Persian philosopher of
antiquity (210-176 AD) who contended in his writings and teachings that that
the universe was split into two opposing natures: Darkness
and Light. He furthermore suggested that these warring forces
fought their battles in the terrain of the human being. Man's body -- the
material world -- was
the world of sin and darkness. And man's soul -- his
spirit side --
represented the Light. Roiling inside all of us is the never-ending conflict
between these forces.
In The Black Hole, viewers can detect a number of
Manichean ideas expressed in the dramatis personae and
the narrative situations. This is especially so during the metaphysical journey
through the black hole in the finale, a strange religious twist on the trippy
denouement of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Mani believed that Evil had many
faces...but that at all those faces were part and parcel of the same Evil, not different
ones.
In The Black Hole, audiences see Maximillian and Hans
Reinhardt as two faces of Evil (mechanical and human, respectively) throughout
the film, but in their nightmarish last scene, these two evils literally join
to become one: Reinhardt is subsumed inside the robot demon Maximillian.
Hauntingly, we see Reinhardt's frightened
human eyes peering out from the machine's mechanical shell. This is our last
close-up view of the characters, of twin evils welded together.
This strange inhuman union occurs inside
the black hole, in a realm that resembles a Boschean vision of Hell, with
hopeless souls (the spirit-less humanoids) trudging across a Tartarus-like
underworld as flames lick at the bottom of the frame. High atop a hellish, craggy
mountain, the Maximillian/Reinhardt Hybrid rules, like Milton's Lucifer.
In keeping with Manichean beliefs, this is
visibly the realm of physical things:
bodies, mountains, fire...materialism.
It is no coincidence either that the production designs of the film have
colored Maximillian, Dr. Hans Reinhardt and Hell itself in crimson tones.
This bond of red -- whether Reinhardt's
uniform, Maximillian's coat of scarlet paint, or the strange illuminating light
of Hell itself -- connects all of them as "the One Evil," not separate evils, as conceived by the ancient
philosophy of Mani.
Contrarily, the four survivors of the Palomino expedition (Holland, McCrae, Pizer and
V.I.N.C.ent) find not Hell in at the event horizon of the black hole, but
rather a celestial cathedral of sorts. Their vessel, the probe ship, is guided
through this realm of the spirit (not the body), by another soul...a white
guardian angel. The protagonists temporarily seem to exit the world of the
body, and the film reveals their thoughts -- past and present -- "merging" during a brief,
strange scene involving slow-motion photography.
What this scene appears to portend is that
the three humans -- and robot (!) -- have been judged by the cosmic, Manichean
forces inside the black hole and found to be above "sin," hence their
journey through the long, Near Death Experience-style "light at the end of the
tunnel" and subsequent safe re-emergence back into space.
Instead of remaining trapped in a physical
Hell (like the Reinhardt/Maximillian hybrid), the probe ship and those aboard it
pass through the gauntlet of "spirituality" where nothing -- not even
sin -- can escape, and arrive safely in what appears to be a new universe. The
closing shot of the film finds the probe ship on course for a giant white sun...a
beacon of light and hope, and perhaps even a new beginning for the human race
(and again, oddly enough, robot-kind...).
Reinhardt's final utterance before
entering the crucible of the black hole is simply a mumbled..."all light."
This might be an allusion to William Wordsworth's poem, An
Evening Walk Addressed to A Young Lady: "all light is mute amid the gloom," It may be Reinhardt's (too
late...) recognition of the fact that just as he has squelched out all light in
the souls of his crew so will the black hole mute out his spiritual light...sending
him into utter, eternal darkness.
Whether intentionally or not, the
climactic and symbolic final moments of The Black Hole -- long
a subject of debate among the movie's detractors and admirers -- fit the philosophical
tenets of Manicheism perfectly, positing for audiences the metaphor of
devouring black hole as a spiritual testing ground or judgment day:
one where humans understand that the secret of creation...is man's
spirituality; his sense of morality.
So the use that the movie ultimately puts
the black hole to is not scientific at all,
but rather spiritual or even religious. For some viewers, that may simply be a
bridge too far in belief. For other', it's a recognition, perhaps, that man
must ultimately reckon with himself, especially when facing what Reinhardt
explicitly terms the Mind of God.
Another, all-together different way to
appreciate The Black Hole is as a virtual compendium of Jules
Verne concepts and characters as they appeared in both literature and film
history, only translated from the sea to the realm of outer space.
For instance, Hans Reinhardt is clearly a
futuristic version of Captain Nemo. Like his literary predecessor, Reinhardt is
a figure associated with a magnificent and highly-advanced vessel. In this case,
that vessel is Cygnus not Nautilus.
But consider that both Reinhardt and Nemo
also grant their "guests" (prisoners?) an extensive tour of those
ships, with special attention paid to technological innovation. In the book 20,000
Leagues Under the Sea, Nemo
created a ship that ran on electricity; in the film it was atomic energy that
powered Nautilus. In The Black Hole, Reinhardt discusses his
creation of a limitless power source called "Cygnium" after his
beloved ship. This is the thing that allows his ship to resist the forces of
the black hole.
Furthermore, both Nemo and Reinhardt are
defined as characters in terms of their ingenious ability to live off the
resources at hand; off the sea or off outer space, as it were. In both 20,000
Leagues Under The Sea and The
Black Hole, the Nemo figure explains this fact in a dining room setting to his guests.
In the former tale, Nemo serves Aronnax
and the others delicacies acquired from the abundant sea. In the latter
narrative, Reinhardt discusses his personal hydroponic garden, which has grown
all of his food.
Again, it's intriguing that both dining
rooms (on the Nautilus and Cygnus respectively...)
genuflect to the traditions of the past in terms of decor (candelabras, crystal
glass ware, a naval telescope, statuary...) while the remainder of rooms on
each ship suggest an overtly technological future.
As is the case in Mysterious
Island (1961)
and 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea (1954), The
Black Hole's screenplay
explicitly debates the essential, conflicted, and perhaps Manichean nature of
Hans Reinhardt with the very words we've seen utilized before in relation to
Nemo: "insane" and "genius."
Similarly, like Nemo, Reinhardt is a man
who has left mankind behind, dwelling in a realm of exile. Yet there's an
important distinction here: Reinhardt is not an anti-hero like Nemo. He is
not a hero of any kind. Reinhardt is actually an egomaniac
who has robbed his crew of their very souls in his quest to probe the mysteries
of God.
Reinhardt is so narcissistic in fact, that
he has forced his soulless crew members to wear reflective, mirrored face-plates
over their own visages. What does this mean in practice? When
Reinhardt looks at his crew, he sees only his own face reflected back. This is arrogance
and vanity far beyond anything which Nemo ever aspired to or considered.
It seems clear that if the film Mysterious
Island transforms
Captain Nemo into a more palatable, rational 1960s "man of peace,"
Reinhardt is a post-Watergate, post-Three-Mile-Island, post-Vietnam figure of
corruption, avarice, and madness. He is Nemo, perhaps, but Nemo skewed heavily
to the dark side, instead of to the light.
The remaining characters in The
Black Hole also
seem to have distinct corollaries with those found in Verne's works.
Most clearly, Alex Durant (Anthony
Perkins) is a dedicated man of science and one in "search of his own greatness." He thus seems a skewed
version of the noble Professor Aronnax (another French name...) from 20,000
Leagues Under The Sea. Aronnax clearly boasted a healthy
moral compass, however, and by comparison Durant seems mesmerized, star-struck,
and overcome by the dreams and accomplishments of Reinhardt. Again, we see a
character from Verne's universe skewed to the dark side. This is appropriate
given the increasingly low public approval of scientists as the 1970s wore on.
Harry Booth is very much the same story. A
journalist, he could very well be the "war correspondent" Spillit
from the movie Mysterious Island, only once more
decidedly tweaked to seem more negative: this time emerging as a treacherous coward.
Both Mysterious Island and The Black Hole feature confrontational scenes in
which the Captain Nemo figure reveals his disdain for the reporter. Perhaps it
is because the reporter, in both situations, represents the interests of the
population back home and their "earthly" concerns: the so-called
"unwashed" masses.
The similarities between Verne's world and
the world of The Black
Hole don't end
with character descriptions.
Consider that a crew
funeral plays
an important role in both the Fleischer version of 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea and also the Disney space film.
In 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, the
underwater funeral is the first thing Aronnax sees of Nemo's nature, crew, and
world. In The Black Hole, Holland spies a
humanoid funeral and garners the first clue about the nature of those
"robots."
The dangerous black hole itself seems to
represent the ocean-bound whirlpool, the deadly maelstrom that destroyed the Nautilus in
Verne's literary masterpiece, serving the same function in The
Black Hole.
Finally, it is impossible not to notice
that Reinhardt and Nemo share very similar death scenes in both The
Black Hole and
the movie version of Mysterious Island. In The Black Hole, Reinhardt is crushed by
a falling view screen, and we see him die with his (bulging...) eyes wide open.
In Mysterious Island, Nemo also dies with
eyes open, after a crushing beam has fallen on his torso.
While one or two of these Verne-style
visuals, narrative points, characterizations or story traits might simply prove
a coincidence, there is such a preponderance of them in The
Black Hole that
it becomes incumbent on us to view the film as almost literally a post-Star Wars adaptation of 20,000
Leagues Under The Sea. It is one that has updated the
"fantasy" setting from the bottom of the sea to the most distant
reaches of outer space; one that has re-fashioned the anti-hero Nemo as a more
cynical, more corrupt 1970s-style figure. It is also one that has replaced
atomic age fears of self-annihilation, with the 1970s "Me Generation"
fear of personal oblivion and spiritual malaise.
Leaving behind
Manichean interpretations and thoughts on its Jules Verne-ish qualities, The Black Hole impresses on another
field of play. I believe it was Nicholas Meyer, director
of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and The Undiscovered Country who discussed the idea that many of
the greatest works of art leave some sort of "gap" for the
percipients to fill in for themselves. When we listen to music, our mind
supplies the images. When we gaze at a great painting, our mind fills in
movement or "life," perhaps. And in great, artistic films some gaps
in motive, narration, and explanation are left open so that we -- the viewers --
can bridge that gulf with our own imagination. We thus engage the material not
with passive disinterest, but with active thought.
For all of its flagrant ignorance
regarding science and physics, The Black Hole is positively filled with bizarre,
almost throwaway moments of remarkable imagination and implications. For
instance, late in the film, after Maximillian has disemboweled Dr. Durant with
his spinning propeller blades, Dr. Reinhardt approaches Kate with extreme fear
in his eyes. He begs her in a whisper (so that his machine minion cannot
overhear...): "Protect me from Maximillian."
There is no explicit follow-up to this
moment; no real mention of it later in the film, just this urgent, persuasive
conversational alleyway (lensed in medium shot) that suggests -- for a
fraction of a second --
that Reinhardt fears his own Frankenstein monster. That it is the hovering,
scarlet cyclops named Maximillian who rules the Cygnus, not the fallible,
eccentric human being. It is as though Maximillian is Reinhardt's Id, only
physically separated from him, acting of his own volition.
We might extrapolate that this single line
of dialogue helps better to explain Reinhardt's final disposition -- his
personal Hell. Inside the black hole, he is forced to join with Maximillian, to
go inside the beast and dwell there for eternity. We know from that single, odd
line of dialogue that Reinhardt fears such a thing...a monster he can no longer control, but
that controls him. Where many people believe that in death we leave our bodies
for non-corporeal spirit forms, the Manichean truth of Reinhardt's afterlife is
that the Darkness has prevailed and he will be trapped in a metal shell for
eternity. There is no ascension for him because of his sins. We know this later
when we hear (inside the probe ship), his repeated and tortured calls for
"help."
There are several odd little moments like
this one in The Black Hole that are worthy of mention and
analysis.
Many critics picked on V.I.N.Cent -- the
Cicero-quoting platitude machine -- as some kind of R2-D2 rip-off. They
complained about his mode of communication too. Throughout the film, the robot
speaks almost entirely in proverb and platitudes, throwing out one after the
other in clearly...mechanical fashion. One can look
at V.I.N.C.ent's mode of expression as a result of bad writing, or as something
a bit more interesting. That V.I.N.C.ent apparently sees his world in terms
of metaphors suggests
that he possesses some sense of understanding of life beyond the literal.
Again, this uncommented-upon touch plays
into the ending of the film: the robot boasts a "soul," apparently,
and survives the crucible of judgment inside the black hole since he -- a
machine -- is put there on equal footing with Dan, Kate and Charlie Pizer...and
we are privy to his thoughts. Even his throwaway line about disliking the
company of robots seems to indicate that V.I.N.C.ent for all his lamentable cartoonish qualities...is more than mere robot.
Kate is able to communicate telepathically
with this distinctive robot, another indicator that V.I.N.cent is more than the sum of his parts.
And that realization brings us to another
interesting line of dialogue laden with implications: while on the Cygnus V.I.N.C.ent reveals the specifics of
something called "Project Black Hole," a governmental operation which
sent robots to the event horizon and telepathically recorded their responses to
the strange events occurring there.
Again, this idea has no play in the
remainder of the film, but it raises all kinds of notions. Are robots the
slaves of man in the future envisioned by The Black Hole? Or are they an artificial life form
slowly developing sentience? And if Project Black Hole existed a long time ago
as V.I.N.C.ent indicates, then did Reinhardt know of it? Did he actually create
Maximillian to house his body (knowing a robot could survive there...) in case
of emergency? Was Maximillian's armor but Reinhardt's second fallback measure,
behind the probe ship?
It's very easy to gaze at many moments in The
Black Hole as
being mere "fun with robots," or other such nonsense, but if one
returns to the argument about Manichiesm, one might see how Maximillian
symbolizes the realm of the body/darkness and V.I.N.C.ent seems to evolve
beyond that, achieving the level of the spiritual/Light. The movie is thus about not only about man,
but the evolution of his machines into self-aware beings who are expected to
conform to a moral compass.
Another thing that The
Black Hole does
remarkably well is hint at the larger universe of the characters. You see that
in V.I.N.C.ent's casual mention of Project Black Hole, but elsewhere as well.
Early in the film, the crew of the
Palomino attempts to identify the Cygnus on a holographic projector, and we are
treated to a visual litany of missing ships. Arcturus 10 from Great Britain,
Liberty 7 from the U.S., Russian Series 5 Experimental Space Station and the
French Sahara Module. Eventually the
crew hits on the Cygnus, but not before we get a sense of how
"dangerous" outer space can be in this particular universe. This gives a much-needed context to the main
storyline, that space is a dangerous and mysterious realm.
Indeed, another part of the film's
longevity derives from the fact that it possesses this creepy, almost gothic texture
of dread and terror. The humanoids are like faceless medieval monks, and
Maximillian is deliberately a devil in red armor. The Cygnus itself is a vast,
empty, “Flying Dutchman” of ghosts, loaded with mysteries (like limping robots,
and eerily empty crew quarters...) that lurk around every corner.
The Black Hole even opens in macabre fashion, with an
early digital representation of a black hole -- here something like a neon
green spider-web leading to a kind of inescapable funnel. We spin inexorably towards
this cosmic whirlpool faster and faster, all to the portentous strains of John
Barry's Herman-nesque score. The stage is thus set for dark fantasy.
But the creep factor finds its fullest
voice in a scene set in the Cygnus control tower. Dr. Durant removes a
humanoid's face-plate and in horrifying close-up we see briefly what a human
looks like without his soul. The face we see is drawn, dry, and desiccated; awake
but unseeing. It's a gruesome visage...and certainly nightmare
fodder for children. And that moment is followed almost immediately by the
sequence in which Maximilllian brutally slices and dices Dr. Durant (and
Perkins' reaction is particularly effective.) Finally, the end of the movie
takes us on a tour through Hell. Sci-fi movies don't get much darker than that.
So while it would be foolish and
counterproductive to deny "nostalgia" as a reason for remembering The
Black Hole fondly
even today, one must wonder if the
movie's creepy, unsettling nature is the thing that, over the years, has brought
many adults back to the movie a second, even third time.
Like the cosmic force of its titular
phenomenon, there’s something tantalizing about The Black Hole that draws in and captures the attentive and engaged viewer.
