Guest Review: A Quiet Place (2018)

"Hear No Evil:" A Quiet Place

By Jonas Schwartz

Sound plays such a vital essence of any film, whether horror, sci-fi, or comedy, that the audience almost- takes it for granted. Not so for John Krasinski's masterful shocker A Quiet Place. Practically a silent movie, Krasinski's film reminds audiences just how much noise we make even without trying. Even something as gentle as a foot rustling in grass can be deafening when the rest of the world is absolutely still. And silence is tantamount in the world created in A Quiet Place, for even the softest whisper can get you and your loved ones eviscerated by creatures in wait.

The world is almost vacant, the human race almost decimated. Alien beings with hyper-sensitive hearing have slaughtered everyone. One family has survived because they could communicate through sign language -- their only daughter (Millicent Simmonds) is deaf. Mother (Emily Blunt), father (Krasinski) and their three children live on a farm in upstate New York. They sneak into their deserted town for resources, drugs, food etc. They think they've covered all their bases, made sure that everyone is safe, but 2 AA batteries become blood in the water for the family.

Krasinski turns the suspense on high, with several terrifying set pieces and makes every sound seem dangerous.  Something as ordinary as picking a pill container from a shelf becomes a hair-raising moment if any of the bottles should topple over. He concentrates the camera on potential dangers, like a nail sticking on a step-board or a birthing, and pounds the fear into the audience that something horrific is around the corner. The film has minimal gore but relies on shock, tautness, and cringe moments.

The script by Krasinski, Bryan Woods and Scott Beck wastes no time with exposition or flashbacks. The prologue takes place a few months after the attack and the rest of the film, a year and a half after day zero. There's no explanations of why or how, just a few clues in newspaper clippings. The unknown becomes a leading horror. There's no idea how many alien monsters exist, where they came from, or how to kill them, so the family is always in peril. Adding to the horror, the film centers purely on the family. Other than a random character or two, the family is the audiences' only focal point. There's not a bus of camp counselors with victim tattooed to their foreheads, just the family, in constant jeopardy.

There are a few stretches of the imagination. For the storyline, having a main character pregnant, where one cannot stop the noises of childbirth or control a baby's wails, only adds to the tension, however, it's hard to believe that the parents in this situation would have done everything up to wrapping each other's full bodies in condoms to not get pregnant while merciless creatures are on the warpath. Also, because the aliens' weakness is revealed to the audience way before the characters, the public has plenty of time to work out why the characters should have been a bit savvier in bringing down the monsters.

Without the performances, the movie would never work. Krasinski, Blunt and the children play their roles without irony. The pain on their face throughout the film gives the illusion the actors are as terrified as their characters. Because this family unit is the whole film, the two leads, married in real life, have built formidable relationships with Simmonds, Noah Jupe, and Cade Woodward, so that the bonds between them are undeniable.

Just like John William's seminal theme for Jaws, the score by Marco Beltrami warns the audience to hold tight to their neighbor's hand. Sounding like a fog horn over rattling tin, the music is simplistic but primal.

The creatures are reminiscent of Stan Winston's aliens from the space franchise, with spiderlike bodies and protruding teeth.  By adding pumpkin-like heads that glow and pull apart to reveal more teeth and ear drums that glow, the motion capture monsters feel fresh. 

Like last year's Oscar winner Jordan Peele, another comedy actor has emerged as a horror icon, someone not only carrying the torch but reinventing it.  John Krasinski's A Quiet Place is as startling as the early juggernauts of Steven Spielberg (Jaws), John Carpenter (Halloween), and Tobe Hooper (Texas Chainsaw Massacre). It will be exciting to see what brave new world he invents next.

The Films of 2017: The Last Jedi

[Warning: This is the most super-spoiler-y review of The Last Jedi ever. Do not read it if you haven’t seen the film, or want to be surprised by it.]

[Second warning: Please re-read first warning. This review is chock full of spoilers on a level never before seen on this blog, or on any blog, in the history of the Internet.]

The Last Jedi (2017) has arrived, and divided fans and critics fiercely. Some fans feel it is the greatest Star Wars film since The Empire Strikes Back (1980), while others feel it is the worst one since Attack of the Clones (2002).

Notice, that -- in both instances -- The Last Jedi is being compared specifically to its reflection in a previous trilogy: the second part of that particular movement. The Empire Strikes Back, it is understood, defines a good second chapter in a trilogy. Attack of the Clones apparently fails that test dramatically.

And so The Last Jedi…has created a schism in the Force.

But here’s the truth, from someone who has absolutely no horse in this race: The Last Jedi is neither the greatest nor the worst Star Wars film, and it features both great highs and great lows. It deserves some praise, for certain, and also some criticism. Like any other Star Wars movie you can think of, it is both highly enjoyable, and simultaneously, highly imperfect.

What I find so relentlessly intriguing about The Last Jedi, however is the specific manner of its success and failure.  The film succeeds on the basis of ambitious storytelling, character development, and most crucially, overall theme, as I will explain below. These are the “big” issues of a movie: what does it mean, and how does it express its meaning?

Where The Last Jedi fails egregiously, I would argue, is in the basics of movie-making: plotting and editing.

In other words, the big picture “stuff” of The Last Jedi is largely terrific, and the basic “stuff” is, at times, horrendous.

Where does assessment that leave us?

With a flawed but absolutely fascinating Star Wars film that will be evaluated and re-evaluated for years to come.

I know, you don’t read a review for even-handedness. You read it to know where the reviewer stands. So where do I stand, ultimately, when I can see both the positive and negative elements associated with the film?

If choose a side I must, finally, I must count the positive elements as more important, if only slightly.

In my books, and here on my blog, I often write about how a work of art reflects the time period that gave life to it. The Last Jedi, accordingly, is the most populist film in the Star Wars saga, a rallying cry for the “resistance” movement in the Trump Era. The film reminds us that failure is not an end, but a beginning; a lesson to learn from, And The Last Jedi also reminds us that we all have a voice in our future. Like the Force, we can choose to be “woke,” or choose to accept the status quo.

On those grounds, The Last Jedi is relevant and provocative, and the Star Wars film we need, right now, in this moment of national darkness.

It’s a terrible shame, then, that some of the worthwhile messaging in The Last Jedi is lost in the oppressive, repetitive cross-cutting, and in the weak “go-nowhere” narrative.

“We are what they grow beyond.”

While Rey (Daisy Ridley) contacts the long-missing Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) on Ahch-To, the Resistance attempts to flee an attack by the First Order.

General Leia (Carrie Fisher) is injured in an assault on the Resistance fleet after it is learned that the First Order has developed “hyperspace tracking” technology, and can trace escaping ships to their destination.  Unable to travel to hyperspace without facing attack, the fleet limps away lamely as the First Order picks off ships one at a time.

This strategy of limping away from battle doesn’t sit well with hot-shot pilot Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), who launches an insurrection against Leia’s chosen successor, Holdo (Lara Dern). Meanwhile he sends Finn (John Boyega) and Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran) to Canto Bight, a casino world to find a hacker who can disable the First Order’s hyperspace tracking device.

Elsewhere, Rey learns that Luke wants nothing of the Force, or the battle with the First Order, and has, in fact, cut himself off from the Force. Luke trains Rey in the ways of the Jedi only grudgingly, and seems afraid of her abilities. When Rey connects with Ben Solo/Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) through the Force, Luke can’t stop her from going to him, and attempting to sway him from the Dark Side of the Force.

Unfortunately, Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis) is behind the Force connection Rey and Ren share, and now Rey is in his manipulative hands.  This fact leads to a change in the First Order, and a new stage in the relationship between Kylo and Rey.

Finally, Luke is visited by an old friend, who urges him to learn from his failures, and pick a side in the upcoming battle; a battle which could see the end of the Resistance, or the beginning of a new hope.

“Every word of what you said is wrong.”

My greatest criticism of The Force Awakens (2015) was (and remains) the rehashed nature of the narrative. The film slavishly recreated the details of A New Hope (1977), down to a third iteration of the Death Star (called Starkiller Base, but still, really, a Death Star…). The Last Jedi addresses this sense of “sameness” beautifully, taking the Star Wars saga in bold and challenging directions. If you’ve seen the film, you know that -- love it or hate it -- the film takes creative chances.

For example, The Last Jedi reveals new iterations of Force powers, ones that allow Leia to survive in the vacuum of space, and Luke to astral-project himself across the galaxy. I have absolutely no problem with any of this new information. Indeed, I would not want the Force to be limited only to what we have seen in the movies in the past, and it is wonderful to see Force sensitive individuals “stretch” their use of the mystical power that binds the universe together.

More than that, it is refreshing that director Rian Johnson has thought about The Force in a way that is bold and surprising but not at all out of line with what we know. Luke’s feat, during the climax, is rousing, and a wonderful apotheosis for the beloved character. Consider that Luke has been defined, since The Empire Strikes Back, as a character who always focused on the future, or some other place, not where “he was” or “what he was doing.” Appropriately, his final act in this mortal coil is to transform that weakness, or character flaw, into a strength; projecting himself to the one place in the galaxy where he can do the most good. For once, his mind being in another place is exactly the right answer.

Similarly, the movie goes in a surprising direction with Snoke, the Supreme Leader of the First Order. It says something about the audience’s limited imagination that everyone just assumed he would be around until the final film of the trilogy, leaving Kylo Ren permanently in the apprentice role. Again, just because that’s what we saw with Vader and Palpatine, it is not how things must be. Once more, the writer-director answers the biggest criticism of The Force Awakens by pushing the saga in new and often shocking directions. We don’t have to wait for the third chapter to see Snoke fall.

Better yet, many of these new directions are aligned to a larger theme, and purpose in The Last Jedi. To sum up the film’s theme, it is that failure makes us stronger. “The greatest teacher, failure is,” Yoda informs Luke at one point in The Last Jedi, and that wisdom seems to be the galvanizing thought of this second chapter. Indeed, it is through the failure of the main characters, primarily, that this film expresses itself as a second chapter, one of reverses and down-turns. 

Poe fails dramatically, unable to save the Resistance cruisers, or even take command of the fleet. He learns it was a failure to even think in the terms he did, as playing the “hero” when grown-ups like Holdo and Leia already had a plan, minus the heroic theatrics, to save their fleet.

Finn fails radically in the film too. He not only fails to wrangle the right hacker on Canto Bight, he fails to disable the First Order’s tracking device aboard the dreadnought. Later, he even fails in his bid to take down a dangerous cannon-weapon, and go out in a blaze of glory. He is dealt set-back after set-back, only to find -- at the end of this road of failure -- a friendship he never saw coming, with Rose. That friendship could be the beginning of something more.  Had Finn succeeded in his earlier endeavors, perhaps that doorway would not have been open to him. Failure opened a door for him.

Rey fails too. She fails to turn Kylo Ren to the light side of the Force, and nearly dies at the hand of Snoke. On a simpler level, she fails to get Luke to invest in her training, and in the battle for freedom in the galaxy. Luke is right when he tells that things won’t go as she expects. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t learn something.

And I expect that this is where Star Wars fans really get upset. Luke Skywalker himself grapples with failure in this film.

If The Last Jedi belongs to any character, it belongs to Luke. He clearly sees and feels his failure to stop Kylo Ren’s descent to the dark side of the Force. And in a very clear reference to the first trilogy, the prequels, he notes too, the Jedi Order’s failure to stop the rise of Darth Sidious (Palpatine) in the first place. All around him -- and in the mirror too -- Luke sees only his own failure, and how he failed to live up to the Luke Skywalker legend. But Yoda’s Force ghost appears and makes it clear that we learn best from failure. This message seems to resonate with him.

Mark Hamill is terrific in the film, and I believe The Last Jedi represents his best performance as Luke. Too often, mainstream films forget that we are not complete and “grown” at forty, fifty, or even sixty. We grow and change through our whole lives. It’s not just the young who face challenges, or hurdles. The journey we saw Luke begin in the OT continues and concludes meaningfully in The Last Jedi. He finally becomes the Jedi he always dreamed of becoming.

Luke saves the Resistance, one last time, lighting the spark that will rejuvenate “light” in the galaxy. We have every reason to expect that Finn, Poe, and Rey, fresh from their failures, will similarly bounce back, providing us the triumphant conclusion to the trilogy we all hope for in Episode IX.

The whole “failure” motif, which runs throughout The Last Jedi, also refers to our contemporary politics, make no mistake. For those who feel bereft and devastated by the most recent presidential election, the film is a reminder to keep up the fight.  I know there will be some readers who call “foul” and note that Star Wars films are not political.

But, of course, history reveals them to be wrong.

George Lucas has acknowledged on many occasions that he wrote the Star Wars story as a deliberate response to the Nixon Presidency, and his fear at the time that Nixon would oversee a move from democracy to authoritarianism.

Likewise, Revenge of the Sith all but echoes George W. Bush’s “you’re either with us, or you’re against us” language, and equates such “absolute” thinking with the behavior of Sith Lords. 

And now, The Last Jedi serves as a call -- right from its opening crawl -- for “RESISTANCE” (all-caps) in the face of what seems a lost cause, or a lost country. Very clearly, Kylo Ren, is our Donald Trump corollary here.  He is a faux populist who tells Rey that he wants to “let the past die,” and start fresh, draining the swamp as it were, to use a familiar phrase. But we know from a year of Trump’s Presidency that the swamp is now exponentially deeper, and that our country is being plundered by corrupt, self-interested plutocrats.

It is clear that faux populism in a desperate time gave us Trump. Similarly, we know it would be a grave mistake to trust the future to Kylo Ren. He wants to “kill the past” but for him, all that really means is that he gets to rule the galaxy.  The people and their needs are forgotten, as they are in Trump’s Administration. I have read that Star Wars fans are upset, feeling that Ren’s call to kill the past is actually a message to Star Wars fans to forget the franchise’s past.  To them, I say, not so fast. Remember who is making this call, and remember what he really desires: absolute power.

Again, folks can complain about Star Wars being political, but it has always been political, and it has always been liberal too. Trust your feelings. You know it to be true.

Accordingly, The Last Jedi is full-on populist/progressive in outlook. We see on Canto Bight, a world where the rich and powerful live in luxury, unconcerned about the war raging everywhere. Indeed, many of the folks enjoying the high life at the casino sell weapons to both the First Order and the Resistance. Like Trump himself, these folks don’t really care about ideology, they care about making money, about fleecing everybody else to maintain their status as “elite.”

Rey's lineage is another example of the populist outlook of this installment of the saga. Kylo Ren tells Rey that her parents are nobodies, just drunks from Jakku, and that, accordingly she "has no role in this story." 

But, once more, everyone has a role in the story. You don't have to have a name like Skywalker, or Kenobi, or Solo to be important to this galaxy far, far, away. Just like in real life, our leaders shouldn't have to be members of the Trump, Bush, or Clinton family to wield power. 

The movie’s sense of populism extends to the awakened Force. A stable boy slave, like Rey -- a desert scavenger -- is sensitive to it. This is a metaphor for individual power in the political arena in 2017. So many people feel powerless today in America, unaware that they still hold great power as long as they make their voice heard (which, frankly, just got exponentially harder with the anti-democratic repeal of Net Neutrality).

But for the time being, we all still possess power to resist the corruption, greed, and foreign collusion we see emanating from our ethically-compromised“leader” in the White House. We just have to let our activism “awaken,” and fight back.  The message of The Last Jedi is The Force is with us, and will be with us, and so we must stand up and use it. Those without hope must “awaken” to the fact that even after a great defeat, they do possess power: to organize, protest, and most importantly, vote.

These qualities all make The Last Jedi a Star Wars film for 2017, just as Revenge of the Sith spoke trenchantly to 2005, or A New Hope did in the immediate post-Watergate era.

Where I believe The Last Jedi fails, however, is in terms of many of its specific plot lines and contrivances, not to mention the editing.

Much of the film is spent with a Resistance fleet crawling away from a First Order armada. The Resistance ships run out of fuel, and because they can be tracked in hyperspace, they get picked off one at a time.  The first thing to consider here is the bizarre notion that hyperspace tracking is a new or revolutionary development in Star Wars. A homing beacon on the Millennium Falcon allowed Darth Vader (and the Death Star) to track it to Yavin IV in Star Wars. That’s the same thing as hyperspace tracking, no? I fail to see the distinction, because a ship is tracked both ways, to its ultimate destination, with hyperspace as the route. By my reckoning, this kind of technology has been around at least thirty years, in-universe.

But let’s put this detail aside for a minute.

This movie asks us to believe that the First Order fleet -- which does possess plenty of fuel, ostensibly -- can’t make tiny jumps at hyperspace, and instantly catch up with the fleeing Resistance ships? The whole battle should be over in five minutes.  Even if we accept that the First Order fleet can’t catch up just by increasing speed a little, it could have sent fighters ahead, let them burn their fuel in the battle, and then refuel the craft when the dreadnoughts finally catch up.

Instead, the whole blooming movie -- Finn’s adventure on Canto Bight and Rey’s on Ahch-To -- occur while the Resistance fleet barely outruns the First Order ships. If Finn can get away to other planets, why can’t the Resistance fighters do the same? Why don’t they all launch escape pods or those convenient little transports and make a run to Canto Bight?

The movie-length, slow-motion crawl from the First Order gives one the hard-to-shake sense that The Last Jedi possesses absolutely no forward momentum; that the movie actually goes nowhere.

And this is perhaps the worst edited of all eight Star Wars films. The film is a never-ending series of periodic, choppy cross-cuts from one plot to the next. The result of the repressive “A story, B story, C story” editing is that we are never with Rey and Luke, or Leia and Poe, or Finn and Rose, long enough to truly glean a sense of place, time, or, significantly, scope. Ahch-to is beautiful, but we hardly get any time to marvel at its beauty, because the film is always cross-cutting to the next plot-line in a blunt, intrusive manner.

The editing style is a devastating miscalculation that makes The Last Jedi a film that is nearly impossible to be swept away by.  Finn’s plot-line is the weakest, but we seem to spend the most time on it, perhaps so that the film’s coda (with the stable boy’s awakening) has a dramatic pay off.

Another example of the lousy editing involves an attack on Leia’s cruiser, and the death of Admiral Ackbar. The blast hits, and Leia and the others are seen blown into space. The film then cuts away, to another scene, and it is absolutely impossible to concentrate on because we have just seen our beloved Leia blown into space, and have no idea that she possesses a “Force” power that can save her. Also, identification with Leia and her plight is lost via the editing. The scene would have worked much effectively if we had followed Leia into space, watched her nearly die, and summon up the Force all in one scene.

What else doesn’t work in The Last Jedi?

Captain Phasma is a terrible character, one resurrected only to be killed off yet again. She is perilously close to being a total joke at this point. If Phasma shows up again in Episode IX, only to be dispatched a third time, she will be remembered as Star Wars’ lamest and most incompetent villain.

If one thinks about it, the evil BB-8 droid on the dreadnought is a much more effective and sinister villain than Phasma ends up being in this film.  Maybe the droid should come back in Episode IX.

So Snoke is dead, in an effective surprise attack, Phasma is a joke, and we are left with Kylo Ren -- who can’t outfight a phantom -- as our main villain going into the third and last film of the trilogy.  He doesn’t exactly inspire fear or respect Kylo still has his emo temper tantrums, and he still hesitates when going in for the kill.  The Knights of Ren better show up to supplement him in Episode IX, or it’s going to be a short, lopsided finale. I feel this approach is a mistake. I understand the value of surprising us with Snoke’s death, and I like that moment, but the idea that this trilogy has a “plan” and a “direction” is in utter shambles after The Last Jedi.

Star Wars fans are up in arms for the way that The Last Jedi treats Luke, or the way that it re-wires the Force, or for the new, more populist approach to the material. For this critic, all those elements are well-played, hard-earned, and an effort to overcome the weaknesses of The Force Awakens. The qualities that upset me most about this movie are the technical details, from the lousy pacing and cross-cutting to unbelievable central scenario.

The Porgs, the crystal foxes, the caretakers, and the racing dogs on Canto Bight almost make up for these deficits, as they are a welcome reminder of the galaxy’s diversity. It wouldn’t have killed the filmmakers, however, to populate the casino with a Rodian, Neimoidian, or other familiar face from canon, which would have visually reminded us that even as Star Wars pushes forward, it remembers its history too.  This way we would know, for sure that Kylo’s line “let the past die” isn’t the filmmakers speaking to fans, but rather a character’s distinctive point of view.

In the introduction, I noted that, ultimately, I fall on the positive side, when regarding The Last Jedi, and I do.

I would rather watch a flawed film with great ambition, than a mindless rehash of past glories. If, in some way, the film’s reach exceeds its grasp, that’s ultimately okay, especially as this is a second chapter in a trilogy. Rian Johnson goes for broke, and I appreciate the audacity of his vision. If the film’s editing and narrative had lived up to Luke’s final, elegiac moment -- once more gazing hopefully at the twin stars of Tatooine -- then The Last Jedi might have truly been the new trilogy’s The Empire Strikes Back.

That doesn’t happen, exactly. But I have little doubt that the filmmakers will grow beyond their failures here, and continue to take Star Wars to daring and unexpected new heights. 

In terms of 21^st century Star Wars movies, however, this one still falls (well) behind Rogue One (2016), and ahead of The Force Awakens (2015).

The Films of 1979: The Black Hole

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.