Ten Minutes Older was a 2002 film project conceived and curated by producer Nicolas McClintock to mark the dawning stages of the 21st century. A selection of prominent film-makers, including the likes of Spike Lee, Jim Jarmusch and Wim Wenders, were tasked with creating a short piece on the subject of time, with the specification that each be ten minutes in length. The title, inspired by a 1978 short by Herz Frank, highlights the fact that the viewer would indeed be ten minutes older after viewing each film in its entirety. But would they necessarily be ten minutes wiser?
Fifteen shorts were contributed in total, and were assembled into two companion features, The Trumpet and The Cello,
the titular instruments alluding to the musical compositions heard during the
linking titles between each short. I'm not sure if there were any
additional themes determining which contributions were sorted into which
feature, although it does not escape my notice that all of the really miserable material ended up in The Cello. Despite its deceptive opening, a charmingly meditative fable entitled "Histoire d'eaux" from Bernardo Bertloucci, The Cello is by and far the heavier-going experience - slower, colder and periodically nastier (the nastiest segment of the lot, "The Enlightenment" by Volker Schlöndorff, follows a philosophical mosquito who monologues on the nature of time while observing incidents of human folly at a holiday camp - to quote Milhouse Van Houten, it sounds like more fun than it really is). Reception for both features was fairly mixed - critics found things they admired here and there, though many complained of the uneven tone (somewhat inevitable for an anthology film helmed by so many different hands) - but was generally more favourable toward The Trumpet, which is probably no coincidence. It's not that The Trumpet is an intrinsically more optimistic film than The Cello, but the shorts therein, even at their most haunting and righteously angry, do have an all-round stronger sense of warmth and humanity. The Cello, by comparison, is chilly and cerebral - a fascinating package but, Bertloucci opener aside, not a particularly likeable one.
The overall lack of likeability in The Cello also makes it a harder film to consume in one sitting - compared to The Trumpet, which hangs together more cohesively. Although I've tapped The Trumpet quite extensively for its rewatchability value, to the extent that it now feels like a good, genial friend of mine, The Cello I've only ever viewed in its entirety once, back when I was all-too eager to write the film off as a disappointment. As a whole, it's still got that distant alien quality to me. Yet many of the individual shorts did stay with me, and I've found myself periodically compelled to return to them - in particular, the anthology's penultimate piece, a little science fiction yarn called "Addicted To The Stars" by Michael Radford. Radford's piece is unique among the fifteen for being the only short to attempt to represent a possible future vision of life on Earth. Elsewhere, segments are more interested in exploring the tensions between the past and the present (notably Werner Herzog's "Ten Thousand Years Older" and Chen Kaige's "100 Flowers Hidden Deep", both of which deal with worlds and cultures that have been extinguished with the coming of the modern era) or honing in on small, specific moments in time where something vital hangs in the balance, be it the life or death of an individual (Wim Wenders' "Twelve Miles to Trona", Victor Erice's "Lifeline") or a nation's entire social and political trajectory (Spike Lee's "We Wuz Robbed", Erice's "Lifeline" again).
"Addicted To The Stars" tells the gracefully straightforward story of an astronaut completing an eighty light-year journey and returning to Earth in the year 2146, to be confronted by the consequences of time-dilation. Cecil Thomas (Daniel Craig, a few years before his successful turn as the latest Bond incarnation) discovers that while he has aged by merely ten minutes (it is, I believe, the only short to explicitly evoke the project title) an entire lifetime has elapsed on Earth in his absence. He has only one real interest in the Earth to which he's returned - seeking out a man by the name of Martin (Charles Simon), who is revealed to be Cecil's son. Last seen by Cecil as a sprightly adolescent, Martin is now old and frail and visibly teetering on the edge of his existence. Martin is overjoyed to see his father again, having waited so long for his return, but their reunion proves to be fleeting - the short concludes with Cecil leaving Martin yet again, apparently having grown accustomed to the atmosphere and the solitude of outer space.
Despite pivoting around such a tender moment of human connection, the dominant mood of "Addicted To The Stars" is that very characteristic Cello coldness. The world to which Cecil returns - although it does not look radically different to our own - feels dark, empty and sterile. The busiest, brightest moments occur at the beginning of the short, when Cecil and his co-pilot (Roland Gift) arrive at the space station and get their first tasters of the Earth of '46, but once Cecil ventures beyond, a haunting desolation accompanies his every step. Radford inserts elements of humor throughout - Claire Adamson plays an android whose uncanny smile does not exactly radiate congeniality, and Cecil has an underground encounter with a nun (Daisy Beaumont) who exploits his unfamiliarity with the future London's transportation system in order to scrounge a cigarette - but humor designed to increase our sense of alienation. Little is seen of the natural world, besides the shimmering of the River Thames as Cecil twice crosses the Millennium Bridge (which, back in 2002, was still a very recent addition to the London architecture). Meanwhile, technology and its ability to improve daily living is represented with a wry cynicism, as Cecil learns that the "instantaneous" travel promised by the modern Tube isn't functioning, forcing him to complete the journey to Martin's by foot. The effect is to make the Earth seem like more of a lifeless vacuum than outer space, which is depicted with a vast, awe-inspiring grandeur in the short's bookending sequences. Space is expansive and filled with infinite possibilities; Earth is a dead-end, perfectly symbolised by that run-down futuristic Tube that isn't going anywhere.
The paradox at the heart of "Addicted To The Stars" concerns why, despite his obvious emotional attachment to Martin, Cecil is so driven to abandon him twice over. The answer is hinted in the title, which tells us that Cecil's commitment to space travel is, in part, driven by compulsion. This much is implied during the short itself when, on his journey, Cecil surveys the city skyline and gazes longingly at a bright light streaking upwards across the night sky. But what exactly is the attraction that has Cecil going back again and again, overriding his paternal allegiances down on Earth? The exhilaration? The tranquillity? Regardless, Cecil does not exactly fit the bill of the archetypal negligent father who puts career before family; even if he has missed out on a lifetime with his son, it does ironically appear to be his devotion to Martin that fuels him. The opening shot shows Cecil's hand extending out and collecting a rock from the surface of a barren planet; he later places the same rock on Martin's mantelpiece, suggesting that he is fulfilling a request made to to him by the young Martin before his departure. In the closing shot, we see that Cecil has returned to the exact same spot where he collected the rock, only this time he leaves a photograph of the adolescent Martin in its place. My interpretation of this ending would be that it is Cecil's attempt to give Martin immortality, by taking his likeness well away from an Earth where all inhabitants are doomed to death and decay and preserving him as a static image, forever youthful, out in the depths of space. His final departure is a rejection of time, and of the vicissitudes it has already inflicted on Martin, rather than a rejection of his son per se.
I think "Addicted To The Stars" is best understood as a type of ghost story, albeit one in which the ghost in question is not actually dead, just out of place in a time to which he feels he has no business bearing witness. Cecil's spectral qualities are evoked during a sequence where he gazes out onto the city and comments on a large triangular building that was not part of the architecture when he left. The shot of the night skyline is superimposed with the shot of Cecil looking out at it, a great transparent figure lingering over this futuristic landscape. Cecil left this world decades ago and is aware that it has moved on without him; his return, unaged and practically unchanged, is akin to coming back from the dead. He is unable to adjust to the living world, not because the technology is insurmountable, but because of his understanding that, by the natural order of things, he should not be there. The stars to which he is so addicted can be viewed as a symbolic afterlife; Cecil's adherence to them lies in his desire for immortality, and for total liberation from the tyrannies of time - not for himself, but for the loved one he is counter-intuitively required to abandon in the process. The secondary paradox in this scenario is that the "ghost", Cecil, still has most of his life ahead of him, while the living, Martin, is visibly at the end. If we view Cecil as having already died a symbolic death, we might view his return as an expedition to greet the dying Martin and transport him to his own heavenly existence among the stars - something Cecil fulfils by carrying his likeness up into space. The dawning light as Cecil traverses back across the Millennium Bridge after his meeting with Martin is suggestive of a new beginning, either in Martin's incoming extraterrestrial existence, or in Cecil's newfound liberty, having achieved closure with his remaining Earthly attachment, to look exclusively to the stars.
At the same time, we are reminded of the regenerative potential that still exists on this Earth, even one so cold and impersonal, although this is ultimately rejected by Cecil. The other enigma of "Addicted To The Stars" concerns the character played by Branka Kratic, who lives with Martin and is credited only as "young woman". She could be presumed to be Martin's carer, yet she regards Cecil with a barely concealed awe, suggesting that she brings her own pre-loaded emotional baggage to their encounter. Might she be a descendent of Cecil, either Martin's daughter or his granddaughter? This reading is possibly undermined by her calling Martin by his first name, which seems unusual for a relationship of that nature (although by 2146, who could say?), and yet she clearly feels an attachment to Cecil. Whereas Martin seems resigned to Cecil's inevitable departure, she puts up a muted protest, asking him if he really has to leave. If she is not actually a relative of Cecil's, then the next best implication is that she signifies something of the solitude felt by the residents of the futuristic Earth. Irrespective of her true identity, she stands for the planet's current generation, and presents an opportunity for a fresh connection to which Cecil is mostly indifferent - although he does linger, as if momentarily tempted by her suggestion of a possible alternative outcome.
"Addicted To The Stars" is a story of the human desire to continuously push boundaries and transcend limitations, but also of the hidden cost to looking so high up as to fail to take advantage of what is already right there in front of us. Just as unsettling as the regret, lost time and missed opportunities that pervade Cecil and Martin's relationship are those that occur on a more subtle level between Cecil and Kratic's character. Cecil chooses not to stay with her, in part out of his commitment to obtaining immortality to Martin, but also because of his distrust of the living world, and his aversion to becoming emotionally entangled with anything else inevitably doomed to death and decay. Instead, he keeps on walking, and sends himself back to infinity.
No comments:
Post a Comment