Doc Corner: The retro hippy futurism of 'Spaceship Earth'
Wednesday, May 13, 2020 at 11:07AM By Glenn Dunks
Would you believe that I also dream about documentaries? You probably would. We surely all dream about movies in some form. Well, just a few weeks ago I found myself awakening after a dream about a (non-existent) documentary that went back to the first ever series of Big Brother and interviewed the participants—none of whom I would know or have any sort of facial recognition of as I surprisingly did not watch turn-of-the-century Dutch TV—about living in isolation and what we could all learn while in our own contemporary COVID-19 isolation.
At the time it struck me as actually quite an interesting concept, a rare occurrence of wishing I had any inclination towards actually making documentaries instead of simply watching them. I needn’t have spent the mental energy. While crass reality television isn’t the theme of Matt Wolf’s Spaceship Earth, what it is about is the futuristic science experiment of the early 1990s known as Biosphere 2, a trial in inter-planetary life preservation that began rather improbably with a San Franciscan experimental avant-garde art troupe and ended, somehow just as improbably, with Steve Bannon.
Biosphere 2 was born almost equally out of hope for a better future, a genuine curiosity to the capabilities of humanity and the organisms that call it home, and despair for the way people have treated the planet. After progressively larger-scaled flexes of hippie ambition, Biosphere 2 (the ‘sequel’ to Earth, the original biosphere) was the next logical, albeit scientifically advanced, step for this almost cult-like collective known for their free spirits and their early experiments in similar ecosystem building communes. Backed by a rebellious philanthropist billionaire and capitalising on imagery found in science fiction like Silent Running, Biosphere 2 was designed to test the possibilities of life in space as a result of the nascent environmentalist movement. A media lightning rod in the Arizona desert as eight humans (imaginatively nicknamed as Biospherians) lock themselves in a glass sculpture cultivating different ecosystems alongside their own private relationships that began to come undone as public skepticism grew to its new age futurism.
If the story here overtakes Wolf’s filmmaking acumen, then it’s easy to understand how. After all, that last paragraph alone brings together so many disparate elements that it sounds a little bit like sci-fi mad libs. The strength of its story, however, isn’t in the Star Trek costumes the participants wore for official functions or the half-naked self-portraits by its fitness-minded leader or the footage of psychedelic spirit dancers in the desert. Rather, it comes from way it speaks to the environmental—and purely by accident, the quarantine—concerns of the contemporary age.
Flawed as it may have been, labelled “trendy ecological entertainment” by one scientist who appears in bitterly dismissive archival footage, the Biosphere 2 project must have surely been something altogether new and exciting. A bold declaration of hope that dared to actualize a concept that appears more and more necessary three decades later as humanity further pillages and destroys the Earth beyond its limit. A remarkable feat of futuristic vision in an age when progressive ideas around planetary sustainability and environmental protection hadn’t quite become quite so weaponized and villainized by the vested interests of conservative capitalism within politics.
Despite its near two-hour length, Wolf and editor David Teague (whose refined cutting has been seen in multiple Oscar nominees like Cutie and the Boxer and Life Animated) rush through sections with seemingly an entire year going by in a blink during its time in biospheric isolation. Maybe it’s just the current phenomena speaking, but this period is its most interesting. It’s the Biosphere after all! I can’t quite understand why the film feels at times to be more interested in the circus around Biosphere 2 than the Biosphere itself. True, as Big Brother has shown us just as well as self-quarantine, being cooped up with people is a sure fire way of bringing tensions to the forefront and while I have to somewhat admire the film for not devolving into that aforementioned ecological entertainment, the human interactions were nonetheless an integral part of this fascinating experiment. It seems like something of a missed opportunity to focus so much on the wackier hijinks of the group’s early days when what we are here to see is the fruition of a genuine scientific anomaly. The Rue McClanahan footage, however, is A+.
What Spaceship Earth best details is the interference experienced by the project. The nitpicking by those eager to vilify the worst rather than celebrate the best. Just watch that new Michael Moore produced Planet of the Humans documentary to find a solid gold example of the left eating their own. There are many lessons to be learned from Biosphere and from Spaceship Earth; many incorrectly finding the faults of their delivery as reasons to damn the project rather than confirmations that Earth is on a pathway to deadly over-heating that is increasingly uninhabitable for animals and people alike. Much like Biosphere 2 itself, I enjoyed my time spent with this film despite its flaws. To twist an environmental metaphor, I hope others can see the forest for the trees.
Release: Currently streaming through Neon Virtual Cinema as well as streaming on Hulu and VOD platforms in the US and DocPlay in Australia.
Oscar chances: It’s polished and relevant enough, plus Neon had success in this race last year, so it will likely be a higher profile candidate than others. However, the lack of what I assume would have been pretty good box office (I’d have predicted north of $4mil) could hurt it attention wise.
Reader Comments (2)
whoa. that's quite a prediction for $$$. so it sounds very accessible.
Oh for sure. I definitely think it could've done well. Early summer release would have worked, I reckon. The nostalgia for a better time, too.