A few words on my new favorite film: Journey to the Far Side of the Sun.
A film made a team who for years worked in the field of puppetry. As such the humans depicted in the film aren’t really human beings, not really people…they have no psychology.
Only action.
Odd then that the main character of the film ‘Jason’, (who doesn’t actually go to the far side of the Sun, or in fact, seemingly leave his office, brags about how he ‘knows’ people; the filmmakers projecting?).
In other films models are made to ‘match’ the rest of the ‘real’ footage. In this movie though the models are the reason for the films existence, so the ‘real’ footage is shot to look like models. As such there is a wonderful, clear, graphic quality to the footage and framing.
Look at the great font used in the titles!
Shades of Dr. No. in the set above.
The film is set in some undetermined future in which, (fitting for the age of the Space Race), the primary goal of man is his journey to the stars.
The exploration of space seems to be the main goal of our species in the film, (the only goal? There is no sense of any world outside of ‘space work’ – and in fact almost the whole film is set in a ‘space complex’ in Portugal, (why Portugal? It’s unexplained)).
Oddly, given the primary role of space exploration in human affairs as seen in the film much of the plot of the picture is given over to budget concerns for the ‘Journey to the Far Side of the Sun’. This feels odd as everyone is ensconced in total luxury – notice the copious use of marble, customized artwork and fashion in the frame above.
In this future people wear ‘cardiac monitors’ to let them know what their heart is up to.
The film makes a fetish of technology – but in a random way – there is no reason to focus on the ‘cardiac monitors’ – shouldn’t the technology featured in the film mirror the script’s focus on doppelgangers, and the strife between peoples?, (there are long swathes of time in the picture given over to relationship problems between an NASA astronaut and his wife. Why? It has no import in the film itself. It’s another component in the strange nature of this film – it feels like it’s made by machines from our future – possible slight Aspergers syndrome in the creators?)
The frame above is from an impressive, long series of scenes at the beginning of the film: great music, production design and suspense throughout – all with practically no bearing on the rest of the pic, (involving characters and sets we don’t see again and an espionage plot that is relevant only to the budget problems discussed in the start of the picture).
The NASA astronaut arrives in Portugal. Instead of walking off the plane, the plane itself splits into multiple parts and is driven to the gate – this takes a long time to watch. The film is telling us that this is what is important; the operation of the machine, rather than the people who inhabit it.
A genuinely chilling moment. Astronauts are confronted by aliens on the surface of another planet. This is one of the creepiest evocations of ‘the other’ I’ve seen in movies.
What is going on in the frame above, I’ll leave up to others to explain.
Another oddity. The film posits a world in which a bureaucracy like a European Space Agency would have interrogation rooms. This, combined with the fact that Jason orders an assassination would seem to say that this future world is some sort of fascist state. Yet the film doesn’t seem to know that.
I’m not clear how conscious the filmmakers were about the world they were describing.
The gentleman above looks familiar to me but I can’t place him.
In the end, (spoiler’s ahoy), everything and everyone, (with one exception), we’ve seen in the film is destroyed.
I’ll say that again. It appears that everyone dies. And every record of what happens is erased.
A strange, strange film; a film of staggering naivety and clumsiness on the human level and great artisty on the graphic level.
I can’t recommend it highly enough.
The familiar-looking bloke is Nicholas Courtney (I think) the UNIT Brigadier from 'Dr Who'.
Yes, a very odd very flawed film. I'vebeen quitely obsessed with it for years.
Why Portugal? I suppose it's cinematic enough to work well as the possible location for the space-arm of the future growth depicted of the then-Common Market. Seems reasonable enough to me.
The beautful self-deconstructing airliner docking with the terminal still wows me (ditto the immensely long Zero X flight-assembly scene starting 'Thunderbirds Are Go').
And yes, the scenes in the barren nameless valley where the Dove crashes are fantastically eerie. You'll surely appreciate how much overlap there is with 'UFO, which must have been well into pre-production was 'JTTFSOTS' was being finished: props, actors, set-dressing, and lots of music. The film and the TV series are like distorted mirror images of each other. Note also the gratuitous acid-trip bits a) during the 3 week space flight b) during the 'truth drug' interrogation of Ross.
Journey to the Far Side of the Sun
In the year 2000, Portugal became a full-fledged member of the European Space Agency.
The movie was ahead of it's time, perhaps?
The film feels 'out of time' I think = the strange vision of a strange, strange man – almost like outsider art.
Thanks for replying, chaps.
Jett – that's a great, lively young Dog you have there – a Black Labrador?
Yep, it's very 'graphic' that film. Could almost read its clunky autistic logic as the screenplay equivalent of the aircraft carrying Ross to Portugal. I love the title sequence too – adds to the sense of watching an animated brochure/prospectus for some late 60s data-processing agency.
Anderson later quoted one of the reviews at the time of release saying “The actors were wooden – Gerry was pulling the strings” and that he thought “it was a very good show” but that it got “lousy promotion”. Wonder how much it cost and how much it made back…
I've come across two separate assertions for its time-frame, neither with any apparent authority 1) sometime in the 1980s according to some sci-fi-film digest of 30 years ago – 2 ) circa 2069 (I forget where from) – I wonder if there was ever any kind of film time-in novelisation that might have given clues to the makers' thinking.
1) seems more plausible. We're in the luxury end of the world depicted in 'UFO'.
You may know that the actor playing Ross's wife's lover was to play the action-man role in 'UFO' that turned into the character of Paul Foster a few days into shooting when the Italian chap concerned proved impossible (apparently). The air-sea rescue 'alien' (Anthony Chin?) turned up as a 'real' alien at least once in 'UFO' I'm sure. Is that authentic Mongolian he's distortedly barking at Ross was he's winched down?
I'm going to have to watch some of this again thanks to you, you bugger. So glad they reissued it. But that STUPID Thunderbirds-on-steroids ending will have to go. I'll make my own.
SF
Yep the title sequence is fantastic +
* UFO is a strange, strange show – I remember watching the first ep probably around 20 years ago – and my recollection is that the entire 'drama' of the ep was upended in the last couple of minutes by a bizarre technical explanation – I could be wrong – but I remember it being almost 'dadaist' in it's structure
* the 'luxury' element is fascinating too – all the complaints about there being no money in 'Journey' – the characters are bitching about the lack of funds for space research while they're sitting in their customised offices composed of expensive looking marble and bespoke/site specific interactive artworks
* the ending (both the explosion and the 'mirror-drive' are so preposterous that they almost ruin it – well, in fact it ends so abruptly one could say that the film is a ruin – but a magnificent one.
'UFO'…so illogical at times it's almost a po-faced 60s-hi-tech Theatre of the Absurd. If you can, watch 'Reflections in the Water', a late episode (with heavy involvement from one of 'The Prisoner's creative circle IIRC – David Twomblin?) where the aliens construct an excellently-eerie dome on Earth's sea-bed. Within the dome is set an exact replica of SHADO HQ staffed by exact MUTE doubles of the SHADO personnel (ie the aliens have duplicated their enemy & his stronghold under the enemy's nose), its apparent purpose being to disrupt the Earth defences through spurious orders issued via radio, the latter necessitating………the mute doubles miming in sync to facsimiles of their respective originals' voices played back from little mono note-taker cassette decks on their desks (!!!!!)
I kid you not. Truly surreal.
Yes, the luxury thing also is ahead of its time, judging by the way the EUSSR looks after itself. The ruthless will-to-power shown by Jason would also go down well in Brussels IMO. Lately I've been curious to flesh out the hints dropped in films like 'Rollerball' (the original) and 'The Man Who Fell To Earth' about the relation between State/Govt and Big Business, seemingly responses to Eisenhower's “Military Industrial Complex” talk, Cold War detente and other things.
I hear what you say about there being plenty more to a film etc than its story's logical integrity. 'Journey' and its ilk attain a condition akin to narrative music for me – gauchely composed in places and with pages of the score missing due to the copyist running late, but with its own character, appeal and internal logic (of sorts). This one has an entire amazing but mundane familiarish possible world as its hinterland.
Another flick I love from that same period, which also couldn't possibly be made now, a succession of strange episodes with no real resolution or even interconnectedness – 'The Magic Christian'. Journey to the far side of…60s personal revolution? The establishment ostensibly being rebelled against?
* Wow – you're description of 'Reflections' sounds great – am Netflixing the series now!
* re: military industrial complex = would make a good essay / book / mini-film fest. series
* re: journey et al. as music = for me i watch the films as i would watch video installations in a gallery – and in fact journey would play well in any gallery ala '24 Psycho'
* another thing i love about sci-fi films of that time is the nature of the 'analog' in them = computer are featured prominently, (espcially in title sequences – see: Colossus – The Forbin Project), yet the films themselves are resolutely analog, (even 2001 had Bowman and Poole reading off of punch cards!); it's the final 'gasp' before total 'digitalization' of media/control systems.
Watched 'Reflections' a couple of times over the Xmas-New Year period: it is even more bizarre than I'd recalled. can't help thinking that the writer/director was laughing into his sleeve – fish, Cornwall, doubles, absurdly overelaborate plans, idiotic procedures, geothermal energy, a film studio, generalised autism of all the principals.
The latter part of the series (inc 'Reflections') was made months later than the first batch and leans far more towards the strange. The film studios that SHADO hides beneath is used as a setting for some of the oddest things in the whole run, with the sets for the base turning up as sets in their own right as Straker finds himself holding a script for recent events ('Mindbender') during filming of a heated argument with his boss, the actor playing whom is addressed by his real name by the director. See also the brainwashing sequence in 'Kill Straker' for what I love of the eerie, unsettling side of UK post-psychedelia, along with the glittering, shimmering, opaque alien craft and their unknowable, bumbling occupants, stumbling about in darkened forests, looking for a lonely cottage to menace or a silent lake to hide in.
I like your idea of these and others as installation pieces. Has anyone looped bits of '2001' to create visual Ambient House yet? Or done a cut of David Fincher's 'Seven' with all the gore & most of the dialogue expurgated?
Can't wait for the ordered UFO disks to get here! :)
+ would love to go to a house party with UFO projected on all the walls 1/4 speed!
Watched 'Reflections' a couple of times over the Xmas-New Year period: it is even more bizarre than I'd recalled. can't help thinking that the writer/director was laughing into his sleeve – fish, Cornwall, doubles, absurdly overelaborate plans, idiotic procedures, geothermal energy, a film studio, generalised autism of all the principals.
The latter part of the series (inc 'Reflections') was made months later than the first batch and leans far more towards the strange. The film studios that SHADO hides beneath is used as a setting for some of the oddest things in the whole run, with the sets for the base turning up as sets in their own right as Straker finds himself holding a script for recent events ('Mindbender') during filming of a heated argument with his boss, the actor playing whom is addressed by his real name by the director. See also the brainwashing sequence in 'Kill Straker' for what I love of the eerie, unsettling side of UK post-psychedelia, along with the glittering, shimmering, opaque alien craft and their unknowable, bumbling occupants, stumbling about in darkened forests, looking for a lonely cottage to menace or a silent lake to hide in.
I like your idea of these and others as installation pieces. Has anyone looped bits of '2001' to create visual Ambient House yet? Or done a cut of David Fincher's 'Seven' with all the gore & most of the dialogue expurgated?
Can't wait for the ordered UFO disks to get here! :)
+ would love to go to a house party with UFO projected on all the walls 1/4 speed!
[...] parallel world book covers aren’t just graphically strong , (in a ‘Journey to the Far Side of the Sun’ large slabs of solid color no human presence k…), they have something that’s missing from most, if not all, current popular mainstream [...]
[...] parallel world book covers aren’t just graphically strong , (in a ‘Journey to the Far Side of the Sun’ large slabs of solid color no human presence k…), they have something that’s missing from most, if not all, current popular mainstream [...]