LIFE

'''LIFE (vt LIFE: VIDA INTELIGENTE). Daniel Espinosa, dir.''' Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, script. Nigel Phelps, production design. Steven Lawrence, senior art director. USA: Columbia Pictures, Skydance Media, Sony Pictures Entertainment (production) / Columbia Pictures (US distribution), 2017. See IMDb for details of distribution.

Logline from the usually fastidious IMDb on 28 March 2017: "A team of scientists aboard the International Space Station [ISS] discover a rapidly evolving life form, that caused extinction on Mars, and now threatens the crew and all life on Earth." Summary from Metacritic: "The six-member crew of the International Space Station is on the cutting edge of one of the most important discoveries in human history: the first evidence of extraterrestrial life on Mars. As the crew begins to conduct research, their methods end up having unintended consequences and the life form proves more intelligent than anyone ever expected." Initial Clockworks 2 Compiler Rich Erlich would note that the Mars connection is not stressed — as in he missed it — and the extinction-on-Mars bit is not in the movie. What we see is a "Ten Little Indians" motif in space, in a more science-fictional, less Horror ALIEN. Where the Nostromo spaceship of ALIEN is "Industrial" in appearance, with Gothic touches and artificial gravity, the ISS is more Modern — but not completely (there are some old-fashioned instrument dials, possibly going back to the Soviet era) — scientific in purpose, and with the crew weightless. Into this protective containment, is introduced for joyous xenobiological study a microscopic organism kids of Earth name "Calvin." Like the Alien of ALIEN, Calvin grows rapidly, but with the thermodynamics explained: significantly, the theatrical-release film version of ALIEN (primarily a Horror film) doesn't account explicitly for what the Alien eats; LIFE is R-rated explicit, and that far more science-fictional. Calvin is in the H. R. Giger tradition, but without suggestions of the mechanical and more squidlike, with a hint of insect and a rapaciously carnivorous plant. So the alien threat in LIFE is definitely organic, and the mechanical, cybernetic, and generally inorganic are neutral or epitomized in spaces offering positive, protective containment (if not for long).

The common trope of a person held down and tortured — Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four is a classic example — is varied in LIFE with the "Ensign Deadmeat/Red-Shirt" character played by a tied-down lab rat (i.e., a literal rat, not a nerdish technician or studious science student). Note that one effective place of temporary refuge is a sleeping pod like those in the ALIEN series, PASSENGERS, and 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (film) and novel.

The politics of LIFE are more nuanced but still similar to a 1950s film like THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD (1951), as analyzed in Peter Biskind's "Pods, Blobs, and Ideology in American Films of the Fifties," in Shadows of the Magic Lamp, George E. Slusser and Erik S. Rabkin, eds. (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois P, 1985): scientific curiosity is dangerous, the only good alien like Calvin is a dead Calvin, and inviting in the alien is an invitation to have people's bodies invaded and our impressive machines destroyed (plus possibly the bloody slaughter of a good deal of life on Earth).

Erlich, 28 March 2017 28/III/17