By Hemanth Kissoon
“Not everything has to mean something,” Gerald Mortenhoe (Max von Sydow) to Katherine Mortenhoe (Romy Schneider)
I love intelligent sci-fi. Director Bertrand Tavernier’s 1980 look at privacy, self-determination and morality gets a new digital restoration. Far ahead of its time, pre-figuring THE TRUMAN SHOW and CHILDREN OF MEN, Harvey Keitel’s Roddy inveigles his way into a dying woman’s life – Katherine. He has implants in his eyes that provide a live feed to a major television channel, NTV, where it is edited and shown later in the day to a captivated audience. It seems that much of the population are removed from death of the young, it is a novelty. There is very little explanation to this future world, which is very recognisably the late 1970s, except for odd bits of technology, like a novel written by a computer. Tech is not on the agenda; the strengths and weaknesses of personality are instead being put under the microscope. Think Kazuo Ishiguro’s NEVER LET ME GO (the excellent novel, not the subpar movie).
“Not everything has to mean something,” Gerald Mortenhoe (Max von Sydow) to Katherine Mortenhoe (Romy Schneider)
I love intelligent sci-fi. Director Bertrand Tavernier’s 1980 look at privacy, self-determination and morality gets a new digital restoration. Far ahead of its time, pre-figuring THE TRUMAN SHOW and CHILDREN OF MEN, Harvey Keitel’s Roddy inveigles his way into a dying woman’s life – Katherine. He has implants in his eyes that provide a live feed to a major television channel, NTV, where it is edited and shown later in the day to a captivated audience. It seems that much of the population are removed from death of the young, it is a novelty. There is very little explanation to this future world, which is very recognisably the late 1970s, except for odd bits of technology, like a novel written by a computer. Tech is not on the agenda; the strengths and weaknesses of personality are instead being put under the microscope. Think Kazuo Ishiguro’s NEVER LET ME GO (the excellent novel, not the subpar movie).
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While an excellent cast explores human dignity (Schneider, Keitel, von Sydow and Harry Dean Stanton), and the cinematographer eschews cliché dystopian parable presentation, there is still a coldness to proceedings, which slightly hampers empathy. Charisma conveying though is not the problem; Keitel is still in his early hungry energy phase (compared to his latter world-weary menace).
Like all landmark science fiction, is still relevant.
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