Space Station 3D

In Memory...

"I have seen some incredible sights: lightning spreading over the Pacific, the Aurora Australis lighting up the entire visible horizon with the cityglow of Australia below, the crescent moon setting over the limb of the Earth, the vast plains of Africa and the dunes on Cape Horn, rivers breaking through tall mountain passes, the scars of humanity, the continuous line of life extending from North America, through Central America and into South America, a crescent moon setting over the limb of our blue planet.

"I feel blessed to be here, representing our country and carrying out the research of scientists around the world. The food is great and I am feeling very comfortable in this new, totally different environment.

This was definitely one to beat all.

Love to all, Laurel."

- Laurel Clark: Columbia crew member

Review

Space Station 3D
Sydney Imax

Rating: Huh?

I don't usually make much of a habit of seeing films at the Imax.

After all, 17 dollars for 45 minutes of film is rather expensive. Over time I have worked out a general rule of thumb as to which films I should see, and which not. The theory is quite simple.

If the film is about somewhere on Earth, I consider going there. If I can't be bothered going to the place physically, there is no reason that I should see the film. Bingo. 80% of Imax offerings just vanished. (Along with a misconceived plan to visit Antarctica to see the water buffalo migration.)

If the film is computer animation, I don't even consider going. After all, if I want to watch malformed computer generated retards mouthing "family oriented" platitudes with all the humour of a yellow headed zit, I just watch "Question Time" on the Parliamentary News Channel.

Another 15 % of Imax offerings just bit the dust.

This leaves a magical five- percent. Into this exclusive category fall "accidents" like a film about water buffalos (in AFRICA for Gods sake, who'd have thunk it,) the films which I just happen to see by wandering into the theatre when I could have wandered past it ... and films about space.

Now, don't get me wrong, I would LOVE to go to space. Except I am too old, too tiresome, suffer from claustrophobia and would insist of chain smoking the entire time. I am a realist. I know that the only way that I am going to get to go into space is if I either light one of those farts that I do (another reason NASA would knock me back) or I somehow get my head stuck right through George W. Bushes ear.

This saddens me. I saw those good old farm boys blundering around on the moon back when I was young enough to think of them as being merely PEOPLE, and, like millions of others I saw the poetry and caught the dream. That is why I make an effort to see anything in space, at the Imax. It is a nod towards that youngster in the distant past who saw the poetry, and not the politics.

So, I made a special effort to see SPACE STATION 3D. I got up. Walked out into the cold and went to the theatre. I was looking forward to it. I collected my battery operated 3D specs and acquired the best seat in the house, about four rows back and exactly in the centre. I then devoted some time to cleaning the lenses of the 3D glasses which appeared to have been rubbed industriously in someone's armpit.

After cleaning, I noticed a large scratch on one lens. I thought to myself, "does this matter?" At that precise moment, the house lights vanished and the film started. I was faced with a LONG walk to "replacement glasses" land, down steep steps, in what amounted to pitch dark. I put the glasses on. The scratch mattered. I had also apparently missed enough oil to lubricate a 57 Chevy.

I settled back to watch the film.

Spacecraft launched. Space was big. The inside of the space station looked like the inside of a jumbo jet's kitchen. Astronauts played self consciously with zero gee items. Astronauts played self consciously with more zero gee items. Space is really big. Astronauts played self consciously with even more zero gee items. More spacecraft took off. Space is really big. Woh. A zero gee bubble of water.

Throughout all this Tom Cruise narrated a self-congratulatory rant with all the poetry of the sort of press release that no one ever reads more that a paragraph of. Tom however, read the whole thing. Out loud. The only saving grace of the narration was the slight tinge of self-congratulation that he allowed to seep into his voice when he got someone's difficult name right. I laughed.

Well, I suppose he got the difficult names right, but I guess I will never know for sure. That said, TOM does not appear in person in the film. As far as I am concerned this is a good thing, but if you were looking forward to seeing TOM in all his glory at the Imax, save your money. Run under a moving train instead. Preserve the gene pool.

All this is not to say that this film was BAD, as such, only that it was as woodenly uninspired as any that I have seen in a long, long time. It was dull, and it was dull in ways that have been done before, ad nauseam going back all the way to the days of black and white television. The only difference was that everything was really REALLY big, really clear, and in dodgy 3D.

Big and boring and in 3D as opposed to small black and white and boring, is still, after all, boring.

"How can it be boring?" I found myself thinking. This is SPACE. This is the outer edge of the atmosphere. The edge of the great void. This is the essence of the human journey beyond the cradle of the planet that gave us birth. It has all the charm of a road accident.

I will attempt to explain what I mean.

One of the Americans was launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome, by the Russians. The equipment is more primitive, he explains, but reliable. The thing that strikes him is that the launch itself is far more chaotic. Crowds of well wishers follow the astronauts to the foot of the launch platform steps yelling, cheering and waving goodbye. The astronauts stand on the steps and wave before climbing the steps and being fired into the void. It is human, and incredibly KIND. You can see from the way that everyone stands that the astronauts are only somewhat convinced that everything will not blow up. You can see that the well wishers are worried too. Everyone puts a brave human face on the proceedings. It is an honest operation. Mad, perhaps, but honest.

The astronaut continues that by comparison the US launch technique is cold, and values efficiency. The astronauts are segregated from everyone except launch personnel and ferried to the shuttle in a sealed bus. The subtext is that the Russian technique is more fun. I can only agree, but I think that the subtext runs deeper than that. The Americans (I suspect) have the same rigid screening procedures but weight them in a different way, valuing job efficiency and the ability to "get along" far above personality and anything approaching the humanity that the Russians seem to take for granted. This results in extremely trained, utterly competent people, functioning as a team in an alien environment. Put another way, this forms a group of people so devoid of personality that the fact that they are IN SPACE seems to have simply not occurred to them. Who the hell would want to be in space, with them? After a few minutes of being "up close and personal" with them, I was reduced to mindlessly wondering who was fucking who, (in the alien environment of zero gee) and who wasn't. As far as that thought process went, I decided that if I was in space, I would remain celibate, and look out the windows. This is an activity that none of them seemed to indulge in.

The shuttle's manipulation arm is operated by a Japanese guy whose name TOM pronounces correctly. This guy says that he was five when he watched the lunar landings live on television. He was so inspired that he devoted his life to getting into space. He floats in the cockpit of the shuttle and manipulates the new airlock into place using the arm. He is successful. The crew cheers. He follows this with a poetic moment where he shares his feelings on the occasion. He felt "great" in the approbation of his crewmates. When they all cheered he felt "great." He says, "SOMEONE said 'way to go, Takashi,'" (or whatever) this made him feel, "Great."

This moment is in the film, the radio feeds are live. It is a woman's voice. There are two women on board. I recognised the voice. After months of training, and days being trapped in a space the size of a small public urinal with the person, he did not. Now I ask you, would YOU like to share the wonder of space with this person? You can rest assured, he fits in. The psychologists made damn sure of that.

One other scene is permanently burned into my mind. The school at Spartan (Georgia) has a Ham Radio Club. The Ham Radio Club can communicate with the International Space Station. In a publicity event the likes of which have not been seen since the witch trials of the Cold War, the Ham Radio Club, in the person of two, small, white INCREDIBLY clean and barbered twelve year old boys get to ask INCREDIBLY over rehearsed and vetted questions of the astronauts in front of the whole school.

They sit, terrified, in front of the radio on the school stage, in front of two terrified young girls who are dressed in clothes that would have been considered suitably 'God Fearing" in Iowa in 1951. The girls don't get a go at the radio. The boys, the "Ham Radio Club" don't even get to touch the mike. The astronaut misunderstands the question and answers, vacantly, while he does something else.

This scene is so excruciatingly embarrassing that I cannot do it justice. If it had terminated with a couple of choruses of "America Uber Alles" it could not have been more profoundly repulsive. The horrible thing is that the scene then CONTINUES with more avuncular narration from TOM. "Aren't they sweet?" drips from his voice as later, in front of a school audience too bored to even move, a small Indian boy asks his haltering question of the astronaut in space. In long shot, backlit, he leans towards the mike and asks, "How do astronauts shower in space?"

I almost cried. All I could hear was a small outcast, desperately asking the astronaut, someone who has to be closer to God than us mere mortals, how he could wash off the brown skin that made him so happy, and such a token, down on Earth, in Spartan, Georgia.

This shot made it into the film. Isn't that sweet?

This is not to say that there are no black astronauts you understand. Heavens no. There is one shot of a profoundly happy African American in a space suit peering in through a porthole at the camera, mugging and smiling through the three panes of thick glass. He is as happy as anyone can get. He has made it. If he never gets to go again they can't take the fact that he has been in space away from him. He is a winner, and it is obvious that he knows it, in every fibre of his body.

Oddly though, this guy does not feature in even one of the interior scenes. We do not get to stare embarrassed up the leg of his shorts as he floats in the "alien environment of zero gee" or as he shares a self conscious "quality moment" with the rest of the crew. After all, if he did, well, lets just say that the two women astronauts are both white, and well, that wouldn't do at all, now would it? After all, what would they think down on Earth, in Spartan, Georgia?

...

The film ended. I gave my 3D glasses back to the young lady at the door. I said, "There is a huge scratch on one lens." She looked at me vacantly. The woman just ahead of me turned and said "your glasses too?" We both looked back in time to see the young lady put BOTH sets of glasses back on the rack with all the others. We looked at each other. No words were necessary. Neither of us would ever see another 3D film at the Sydney Imax. Makes you wonder how come the one in Adelaide went broke.

Still, not going to see 3D films at the Imax as well as any of the other sorts means that maybe only one percent of available programs will be tempting to me now. I can cope with one percent. It's a good number.

What a waste.

(C)opyright Alex Rieneck, 2002.