L5: FIRST CITY IN SPACE
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1997 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: The first science fiction film in
IMAX 3-D is the curiously subdued story of a rather
prosaic mission to help maintain the L5 colony.
The process may be more interesting than the rather
sterile and idealized view of life on the nearly
self-sustaining space colony. But besides the size
of the screen there is little in the process that
was not present in 3-D films of the 1950s. Rating:
low 0 (-4 to +4)
Back in the 1950s and 60s the film industry wanted to give the public something they could not get on TV. They invented a wide-screen process using three strips of film and a screen that wrapped around the audience. The process was called "Cinerama." And the films made in this process were mostly just demonstration films to show what could be done. The films had names like THIS IS CINERAMA, CINERAMA HOLIDAY, WINDJAMMER, and THE SEVEN WONDERS OF THE WORLD. Eventually the public got bored with just picturesque documentaries and the filmmakers had to start putting plots into the films, but they kept them simple and episodic with big action sequences. After all audiences did not need Cinerama for MACBETH. They wanted exciting action sequences. So they made films like HOW THE WEST WAS WON which was really more a set of short stories which featured thrill scenes like runaway stage coaches. THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF THE BROTHERS GRIMM actually had a story that went the length of the film, but it also had sequences of fairy tales. The films were intentionally kept big and kind of stupid to make the best use of the process. The final film I remember being made in the process was supposed to take the viewer on a scenic ride into space. I suspect it was originally intended to be that and to have only the faintest whisper of a plot. It was given a kind of vacuous name to imply that it was a sort of WINDJAMMER in space. It was to be called 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. By the time this film was finally made some of the people behind it had sort of meddled with the concept a little. For one thing it was not really an odyssey any more, but it was still a sort of futuristic, science-fictional demonstration of the new medium. And it proved to be the most popular of the Cinerama films.
For the new IMAX 3-D process they did not wait so long to try science fiction. One of their first films is a voyage into space. And not to mix my analogies, but just as the film THE CONQUEST OF SPACE was heavily based on a speculative non-fiction book, THE CONQUEST OF SPACE by Willy Ley, L5: FIRST CITY IN SPACE is based heavily based on Gerard K. O'Neill's THE HIGH FRONTIER, in which the author describes in detail a mammoth space station that will be placed at the L5 point. L5 is a point first described by the mathematician and astronomer Comte Joseph Louis Lagrange which will hold onto matter in a stable equilibrium. As soon as the matter starts to move away from the point gravitational forces from the Earth and the Moon will pull it back. A space colony placed at the L5 point will need to expend no energy to remain at the that point. O'Neill described a sort of perfect world, nearly self- sufficient, hanging in space at the L5 point. L5: FIRST CITY IN SPACE is a story set in this future world.
Director Toni Myers seems to share Stanley Kubrick's belief that in space the furniture will not be wooden but all the people will be. The story seems to be performed by catatonics. There is not a lot to the story here, since the entire film is only 34 minutes long (and sports a hefty ticket price of $9). The film starts with a sort of tour of the interior of the L5 station, much as it was described in THE HIGH FRONTIER. Interiors are short live-action but the exteriors are done in 3-D animation, but using art very much the style of O'Neill's illustrations. We meet Chieko, a little girl living in the L5 colony with freshets of water feeding long rows of perfect palm trees, hydroponically grown to produce perfect fruit of exotic types. But her parents and grandfather are worried (note the worried expressions on their faces). The L5 colony has a problem, just about the most prosaic problem imaginable. It is not the same problem that plagued the runaway forest in SILENT RUNNING, but it is just as basic and it is just as amazing that it takes the characters by surprise. But it is a serious problem, enough so that the actors can look worried. Fixing the problem involves travel to a comet that happens to be hurtling by. But the story is told with little dramatic tension in explaining threat so there is not much excitement. There is just quiet worry that is eventually alleviated.
Among the things that bothered me about the film was that in the exteriors the stars seemed to be in 3-D with some appearing closer than others. In a word we got parallax on stars. This is a total absurdity added to use the 3-D effect. The film shares the book's optimism that everything on the L5 colony would be just about ideal. The fruit grown from hydroponics is just perfect looking. And even the view of Earth from the colony is perfect and beautiful. On the dark side the cities show up as perfect little jewels of bright light. I could believe some pinpoints, but not as big as the film shows them to be. The final unlikely element is the presence of a Holodeck sequence--I know of nothing else to call it--whose technology is unexplained.
Some comments should be made about the IMAX 3-D process itself. First the screen in New York seems smaller than other IMAX screens I have seen, at least as I remember them. Even sitting close to the screen, due to arriving late, I could see both edges at the same time. The fact that we are seeing a 3-D process makes the screen look even smaller. I do not know exactly why that is, but 3-D processes I have seen seem to make the screen look smaller than it looks without the goggles or glasses. This 3-D process is actually quite primitive, in spite of the supposedly advanced presentation. The goggles use simple polarized lenses and if one tips ones head only the slightest, a ghost image comes into view. The ghost image often would show up even without tipping. The 3-D process, in short, presented little technology that was not present for DIAL M FOR MURDER in 1954.
It is not clear that you can rate a little demonstration film like it was a feature film in a more standard theater, but this one satisfied like a film that would have gotten a low 0 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@lucent.com
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