Pals, Peril, and Playing God

 There exists unanimous agreement among film historians that 1939 was ‘the greatest in Hollywood film history’. The watershed year witnessed the release of such landmark films as Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Stagecoach, Of Mice and Men, Dark Victory, Mr Smith Goes to Washington, Wuthering Heights, and Ninotchka. What made 1939 all the more fascinating was that these films encompassed a wide array of genres—historical romance (Gone with the Wind), musical (The Wizard of Oz), western (Stagecoach), literary adaptation (Wuthering Heights), drama (Of Mice and Men), social commentary (Mr Smith goes to Washington), tragedy (Dark Victory), and comedy (Ninotchka).

In the same vein, though far less celebrated, 1988 was an astounding year for the Japanese film industry. However, there is one small difference. The three Japanese films released that year that went on to make a mark worldwide all belonged to the same broad genre—animation, or anime (Japanimation) to be precise, which is the nomenclature for the peculiar animation style originating in Japan. Isao Takahata’s Grave of the Fireflies, an animated drama, is widely known as one of the most powerful and influential anti-war films ever made; the maestro Hayao Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro is a top-drawer example of animated adventure-fantasy; while Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira has the envious reputation of having introduced anime to the West.

Akira is a two-hour-long film, condensed from a six-volume, 2,182-page long manga (cartoons, comic books, and animated films that adhere to a typical Japanese style of drawing), created by Otomo himself that was published in a serialised form from 1982 to 1990. When it was first released in the US and Europe in the 1990s, Akira changed the way Westerners—who were till then fed only on a Disney diet—view animation forever (in one particular scene of the film there is a building, which bears an uncanny resemblance to the Walt Disney logo). Even today, almost 25 years after it crept on to celluloid, Akira continues to astound its audience in the same manner it stumped the American distributors on its release, who had never seen an animation film like it before. Similarly, audiences to this day are confounded when they try to pigeonhole Akira into a specific sub-genre. But all these differences aside, if there is consensus on a film as path-breaking as Akira, which paved the way for renowned anime directors like Satoshi Kon (Perfect Blue, Paprika), Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell) and Yoshiaki Kawajiri (Ninja Scroll), it is that Akira is prescient and prophetic.

As the film begins with a bird’s eye view of Tokyo, we learn that on 16 July 1988 (which, incidentally, happened to be the exact date when Akira was first screened in Japan), after a nuclear explosion ripped through the city, Third World War had broken out. The screen immediately turns red and the overhead view of the topographical features of the city take on an eerie resemblance to blood-soaked veins and arteries.

This pre-title card scene encapsulates the entire philosophy of the film. The perspective from above is akin to god’s point-of-view. But what followed was not an act of creation but a deed of destruction. It is as if our relentless pursuit to play god runs through our veins and inevitably ends in blood being spilled.

Thirty-one years later, in 2019, a lot of blood is being spilled on the roads of Neo-Tokyo—the city that arose from the ashes. Tokyo, or the Old City, as it is known, is now nothing but a crater that stares continuously like an unblinking eye. The physical destruction of the Old City is mirrored in the disruption of the moral fabric of the new one. Here, terrorism is rampant, unemployment is on the rise, and nationwide riots between the aggrieved populace and the police are commonplace. In such a dystopian future, where corrupt politicians rule the roost, the streets and highways provide the backdrop for a different kind of power struggle—that between rival biker gangs like the Capsules and the Clowns.

Shôtarô Kaneda is the leader of the Capsules. His best friend and companion since childhood is Tetsuo Shima. Ever since they met each other at a shelter, Kaneda has treated Tetsuo more as a brother than a friend. This protective nature has led Tetsuo to bear a thinly veiled grudge towards Kaneda, who has made a habit of coming to his rescue every time. But one day, during a high-speed bike chase, Tetsuo meets with an accident, and for the first time Kaneda fails to offer his helping hand. Instead, the military steps in and carries the wounded Tetsuo away.

What begins as Kaneda’s attempt to rescue his companion soon turns into a perilous journey that will involve a terrorist group; a trio of wrinkle-faced, psychic kids called Espers; the hard-as-nails Colonel Shikishima; the scientist Dr Onishi; and above all, the shrouded-in-mystery military experiment named Akira.

Man-made destructions and their aftermath are a leit motif in manga. It is a common device to tap into the cultural consciousness of Japan. Against this background that portrays man not as a higher power but akin to an amoeba that devours everything in its path, Akira posits the pros and cons of a psycho-spiritual awakening at two levels—man as an individual and as a species.

Otomo’s pessimism towards the so-called ‘evolution’ of man is apparent in the first scene of Akira itself, when in one singular motion an entire city gets wiped out. This is nothing but a depiction of an ungodly act that arises from harnessing god-like power. While humanity’s relentless pursuit has always been to control such power, Otomo shows that there comes a time when the power starts controlling us, instead.

Drawing upon the basic philosophy that is preached by religions as varied as Buddhism and Sufism—that of the innate relation between the creator and the created—Akira’s anime might look slightly dated today, but the secret of its longevity lies in its message that transcend time: ‘There’s ought to be a future that we can choose for ourselves. It’s up to us to find it’.

Just who are the monsters here?

‘We have learned now that we cannot regard this planet as being fenced in and a secure abiding place for Man; we can never anticipate the unseen good or evil that may come upon us suddenly out of space’. — H G Wells

This sentence, from Wells’ The War of the Worlds, published in 1898, has, since the 1950s, served as the template for a sub-genre of science fiction films—the alien-invasion movie. Notable examples include: The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), It Came From Outer Space (1953), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956, remade in 1978, and re-remade as the inferior The Invasion in 2007), Earth versus Flying Saucers (1956), Independence Day and Mars Attacks (both in 1996), Men in Black (1997), Men in Black II (2002), and the superb District 9 (2009);  not to mention the attempts made at bringing that particular classic of Wells to the silver screen—the first in 1953 by Byron Haskin, and the next, an adaptation that came out 52 years later, helmed by a certain Steven Spielberg. The recently released Skyline (2010), and the upcoming Cowboys and Aliens (2011) starring the dynamic Ford-Craig duo and Battle: Los Angeles (2011)  make it apparent that screenwriters and directors are not yet ready to forsake this once-fertile sub-genre.

What is also common to almost all these aforementioned films is that in each case, the aliens seem to have a particular agenda—a hostile takeover of planet Earth. It seems we have all but forgotten that Wells had, in his writing also mentioned the words ‘unseen good’. It is true that Gareth Edwards’ Monsters (2010) does not delve into that particular aspect of an alien invasion; at the same time, it would not be incorrect to state that he has portrayed a scenario that makes the sub-genre almost come full-circle—back to The Man from Planet X (1951), where the visitor from outer space was not a belligerent foe but a benign extraterrestrial.

Six years prior to the incidents depicted in Monsters, we are told that NASA discovered alien life on Europa, one of Jupiter’s 63 moons. A deep-space probe was sent to Europa, which, however, crashed over Mexico during re-entry. Since then, new life forms have begun to appear in and around the area, so much so that half the country had to be quarantined as an ‘infected zone’. While the US and Mexican military are on continuous vigil against the ‘creatures’, a huge man-made wall has been erected at the US-Mexico border, while tall fences try to keep the tentacled aliens out of civilian-inhabited areas.

Our male protagonist, Andrew Kaulder (Scoot McNairy), is a photographer working for a magazine. Posted at San Jose, Central America, his intentions of following the story of his life suddenly faces a roadblock, when he is asked by his superior to take on a completely unrelated assignment—to escort the magazine’s owner’s daughter, Samantha (played by McNairy’s real-life spouse Whitney Able) to the US border. Thus begins a journey that will take the two of them through the dreaded ‘infected zone’.

The landscape is littered with evidences of large-scale destruction. Buildings have been turned into rubble, helicopters have crash landed by the road, an aircraft and a tank are seen sunk in water, and there are cars on trees. Curiously, amidst this bleak scenario, Sam and Andrew—as alien to each other as the creatures they fear might attack them anytime—start to drop their individual guard slowly but gradually, and begin to learn more about one another.

At the same time, they start gaining knowledge on the towering, tentacled tormentors. They are told by the group of armed men who are accompanying them to the US border that the creatures are amphibians—they stay mostly in water, crawl up to the land at times, and lay eggs in trees. They are also told that ‘If you don’t bother them, they don’t bother you’. Similar to the visitor from The Man from Planet X, who only turned violent after being confronted by an evil scientist, the creatures in Monsters are known to attack only when they are fired upon.

With a budget as low as $800,000 (some mention it to be even lower, at $500,000); a meagre three-week long shooting schedule; location shooting for the entirety of the film in Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Texas; and while helming the quadruple responsibility of director, writer, production designer and special effects, the Brit Gareth Edwards has taken a route diametrically opposite to his American counterparts like Michael Bay. Just as Andrew and Sam, while standing at the US-Mexico border stare at the gargantuan wall and realise that there are not many occasions when Americans get an opportunity to look at their country ‘from the outside in’, Gareth, too, wonders at our penchant to shut out what we do not understand because we immediately reckon it to be threatening.

For those of us searching for it, there is an obvious political subtext to the film—that of immigration, but there are two other aspects that make this road movie nestled inside a sci-fi fascinating. One is that the aliens, unlike the overwhelming majority of their ilk that has been depicted on celluloid, are completely without an agenda. In fact, they are trying as hard as us to survive on this unfamiliar planet. And second is how the fact that the overarching theme that humans and the creatures are two life forms that seem to be unable to understand each other is reflected in the story of Andrew and Sam. They started off as strangers, and when they understood each other, they understood the ‘monsters’, too.

It is indeed an irony that we are sending signals to outer space in search of intelligent life forms, but have this penchant for shutting out anyone or anything that does not seem to conform to our preset notions, views, and perspectives. It is communication that broke the mental fence that Sam and Andrew had erected between themselves. But the US military did not follow suit, while dealing with the creatures. They opted to open fire instead, thereby vindicating the words of another doyen of science-fiction, Isaac Asimov, who had asserted in Foundation, ‘Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.’