Thematically speaking, a science fiction is no more mature than a fantasy with fools and horses, unless burdened with the weight of a place in time, an existential question. Things change when you start to say ‘this story can happen, it’s very very unlikely, but yet, I can vividly imagine it being a reality’.
This is why mature science fiction films are difficult to make, and in the evanescence of special effects becoming commonplace in all films, making them can only get harder.
Yet, ROSS NEIL, a london based creative director who usually works on commercials and ads, pulled it off beautifully in his first directed short film ‘DEFOE’. I found it whilst meandering through the archives at the SHORT FILM CORNER at the CANNES FILM FESTIVAL, and it seems to have done well in other film festivals like TORONTO, CANADA and EDINBURGH. The story strongly captures the lonely and tense beginnings of an inter-planetary cast-away, who is trapped on a surreal alien planet after having crashed into it in a space shuttle. Shot on 16mm film, and with top end prosthetic costume and make up design plus a bit of CGI, it gives off that feeling of being really well planned, and really well made. Alien, is the feeling that comes to mind whilst watching this small gem, like being in a country with no one to talk to, where the locals look like they’d want to skewer you for lunch.
The over-saturation of other science fiction films within my brain occasionally lifted me out of the film, but this was a minor issue. For instance, given that the protagonist is an APE-MAN (with a superb prosthetic face), it brings to mind the world from the 1968 version of ‘THE PLANET OF THE APES’ or elements of ‘2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY’. The isolation felt by the protagonist when he is orienteering a mysterious landscape with caution and haste, gives it an acquired adventure taste not too dissimilar to the 1981 cave-man adventure ‘QUEST FOR FIRE’.
My only qualm with the film is that the weather in it is just as famously grey and dull as england’s, but maybe, that’s what makes the film strangely familiar. Their informative website has a trailer, storyboards and production stills, but no sign of where to watch another screening. Blast.
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