9.15.2013

radio silence

So George Clooney and Sandra Bullock get lost in space. Two minutes into the movie they run out of oxygen and the remaining 285 are dedicated to their silent decomposing fading toward the edges of the solar system. For the sequel eons later their capsule burns on entry on some other inhabited planet. It's a love story in which a passel of alien teenagers on an alien camping trip are briefly impressed by a bright flash as the capsule burns on atmospheric entry. They all spend the rest of the movie pondering the significance of the falling star that graced an ordinary alien Saturday night. Theirs is a culture that has never seen a falling star. Two aliens, Zomyx and Klukweg, fall in love that night, and a good part of the film is dedicated to the triumphs, minutia, alien child-rearing, and ultimate fading from the scene. The other teens go on to relatively fulfilling alien lives. One becomes a dentist, another an accountant. Another a kind of alien elevator repairman. Ascent and descent, a mechanical recreation, a kind of poem or paean that many partake in, without knowing. For the remainder of their lives they all find themselves looking to the night sky as a reference point, awaiting a second flash of light or falling star, to confirm through repetition what they'll swear to themselves and to anyone who'll listen that they actually saw. But it never recurs. The third film in the trilogy is devastating in its simplicity. Only normal lives lived by the descendants of Zomyx and Klukweg, generations removed from the singular experience of those alien teens. No direct remnant of the original story remains, but these lost souls find themselves strangely dissatisfied, still looking to the night sky instinctively for a trace of some miracle. But nothing happens, only radio silence, and the final ten minutes of the film are only darkness, radio silence, a forever ellipsis.