The Last Man on Earth is Never Alone
Added 8/14/2009
THE QUIET EARTH begins in a low key with Zac Hobson (Bruno Larence) waking up on what seems a typical day. Trouble begins when he soon realizes that he may well be the last human being on earth. This concept of the Last Man has been done many times (THE WORLD THE FLESH AND THE DEVIL and FIVE) come to mind and the genre demands that the sole survivor must grapple more with retaining sanity than in finding a flush toilet. Director Geoff Murphy makes it clear that the hold that Zac has on his mental equilibrium is a tenuous one. He takes to wearing a lady's sleeping gown as he walks the deserted streets. He puts up props of famous politicians like Hitler, Nixon, and Mao so that he can lecture them as the new President of Earth. We think that his descent into madness is the inevitable result of enforced loneliness, but we soon learn otherwise. Zac is a scientist who performed a minor role in the Flashlight Effect, an experiment co-conducted with America whose purpose it was to create an airplane that could fly for extended periods of time without refueling. Something terribly wrong happened and every human being on earth "blinked" out of existence. Since the film shows no animals or birds, presumably all mammals followed suit. His guilt drives him to near suicide. Amazingly enough he meets two other survivors, whose respective tales of surviving are equally smudgy on details. One is an attractive woman Joanne (Allison Routledge) with whom he soon begins an affair and the other is a Maori named Api (Peter Smith). Although THE QUIET EARTH spends some minutes on the techno-babble of how the universal constant of the uni-directional movement of an electron has altered, the film instead zeroes in on how the survivors meet in fear, coalesce in unison, fall apart in bickering, then attempt to patch up differences in ways that are eminently believable. The ending, which I shall not here reveal, is one that can easily be interpreted in various ways, not the least of which may be due to sloppy scripting or brilliant imagining. Regardless of how you accept the ending, THE QUIET EARTH serves to remind the viewer that even in desolation, there are eternal values that still persist that still mark us as human.
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Still a fascinating film
Added 7/1/2009
I loved this film in the 80's when it was first released and I was happy to find the DVD available on Amazon. The topic of what may happen if some technological disaster wiped out the entire (except for one) population of the planet is still as timely as ever, and the production quality seems to have stood the test of time. It's a very well-made (acting, direction, cinematography), especially for an independent film that certainly had a restricted budget ... especially for a sci-fi film! The concept of the story has stuck with me over the years and reminds me a lot of the Andromeda Strain. This is another in a long line of outstanding New Zealand films. Loved the ending ... hoping for a sequel!
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A Great Thinkpiece.
Added 6/30/2009
Although sharing a lot of themes with "The World, the Flesh and the Devil" (With Harry Bellafonte) The Quiet Earth stands alone as a great end of the world flick.
The music is incredible and the cinematography is exceptional especially with a budget of $1 million.
The ending was awesome and NOT your typical "Hollywood" ending.
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Good Sci-Fi flick!
Added 6/25/2009
Although I might not go into great detail, I just want to say- I rented this movie, but wish I had it on dvd (my own collection) I thought the storyline was decent and had a surprise or two in it. I like the last person on Earth subject (scary-to say the least) I would say, if you arent sure you want to buy it---its as simple to just rent it. I am glad I took the time to watch it!
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Much less here than meets the eye.
Added 6/18/2009
<**SPOILERS**> As there is really not much to spoil.
What is worse? A sci-fi movie that let's you know that it is junk early on (so it can be turned off) or one that starts out well, meanders for an hour or so, then finally comes to nothing (luring its victim into watching the whole thing)?
This movie is the the latter category. It looks good. It's not major big budget effects but the modest effects it does have are not tacky. Good not great. The story concerns three characters (Old Smart Guy, Young Woman, Hunky Young Ethnic) that are the only three left in the world. The first, OSG, wakes up (in that cinema rarity, full frontal male nudity) to find that he seems to be the only person on a undamaged earth (except where planes crash etc). I mean the ONLY person, living or dead, as there are very few bodies or little piles of white dust or anything. There also appears to be no living things other than humans either, the earth is indeed quiet. OSG does the usual last man on earth things, looks for survivors, gets on the radio (sure to reach everyone who scans the police bands all day), gathers up useful and delicious things, gets drunk, makes speeches to cut-outs of famous people, tries on women's clothes, the usual. So far so good. Then YM turns up. OK. Not much happens as OSG investigates what happened, and YM investigates the empty stores. There is a little (very little, and that's good) sex segment with OSG in bed (another full frontal), and YM going bottomless behind her maid/nurse/whatever outfit (crotch gag goes here, comic relief?). Next, enter HYE, as he cunningly traps OSG at machine gun point but turns out to be OK after he sees YM soon after. (Good news: no automatic sex, no violence, no rape etc) Now we are on "Five" and "World, Flesh and the Devil" territory but not much develops. OSG turns out to have been a scientist involved in the program that did all this and he determines that the device involved will make it happen again soon. Perhaps you are wondering why these lucky people are still here? Turns out that being near death at the critical instant is the key. I am not impressed but at least it does go easy on the well-worn "long tunnel into the light" stuff. Action with trucks to get explosives to blow up the machine fills up the next few minutes. OSG goes forward to suicide bomb the building where the device is. So what else? (I guess the tension is just too much...) HYE and YM (finally) rip off their draperies for a little perfunctory leg-over (perfunctory apart from the interracial angle perhaps, another edgy element to complement the nudity?)just in case the world ends (as if Jay in "Dogma" HAD gotten his wish). OSG blows the thing up, lights flash, OSG is on a beach (is he On The Beach?) on a dark earth with a Saturn-like object in the sky looking much bigger than the moon. THE END. What happened? Where did HYE and YM go? Is the earth out by Saturn now? (If so shouldn't OSG be flash frozen along with the waves offshore?) Is Saturn near the earth? (The gravitational issues here boggle the mind) Is there any prospect at all of a future humanity? Your guess is as good as mine. In short we have another one of those "leave it up to the viewer", BS, cop-out, non-ending with what is supposed to be an impressive visual.
This movie is a major disappointment as it starts out looking like the real thing, meanders becoming neither really interesting, nor steamy, nor real trash to finally peter out into mush. No message, no moral, no point and nowhere near enough "oh, Wow!" to compensate with mindless entertainment for what is lacking as literature. It is mercifully brief at 90 minutes. It would have been REALLY annoying have sat through a "Solaris" sized epic for what this delivers.
The movie is based on a novel. I wonder if the novel is really much better but, as so often happens, not much more than its title got into the movie. (This was the case with the sorry movie "Freejack" "based on" the fine novel "Immortality Inc". In that case it was a spectacular car crash not a title that was only thing that made it into the movie.)
I recommend that you flip it once on Netflix if you must, but it is definitely no masterpiece and, for me at least, a long way from a keeper. One star for looking good, one for not being pure trash.
2 out of 5 people found this helpful.
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The Last Man on Earth is Never Alone
Added 8/14/2009
THE QUIET EARTH begins in a low key with Zac Hobson (Bruno Larence) waking up on what seems a typical day. Trouble begins when he soon realizes that he may well be the last human being on earth. This concept of the Last Man has been done many times (THE WORLD THE FLESH AND THE DEVIL and FIVE) come to mind and the genre demands that the sole survivor must grapple more with retaining sanity than in finding a flush toilet. Director Geoff Murphy makes it clear that the hold that Zac has on his mental equilibrium is a tenuous one. He takes to wearing a lady's sleeping gown as he walks the deserted streets. He puts up props of famous politicians like Hitler, Nixon, and Mao so that he can lecture them as the new President of Earth. We think that his descent into madness is the inevitable result of enforced loneliness, but we soon learn otherwise. Zac is a scientist who performed a minor role in the Flashlight Effect, an experiment co-conducted with America whose purpose it was to create an airplane that could fly for extended periods of time without refueling. Something terribly wrong happened and every human being on earth "blinked" out of existence. Since the film shows no animals or birds, presumably all mammals followed suit. His guilt drives him to near suicide. Amazingly enough he meets two other survivors, whose respective tales of surviving are equally smudgy on details. One is an attractive woman Joanne (Allison Routledge) with whom he soon begins an affair and the other is a Maori named Api (Peter Smith). Although THE QUIET EARTH spends some minutes on the techno-babble of how the universal constant of the uni-directional movement of an electron has altered, the film instead zeroes in on how the survivors meet in fear, coalesce in unison, fall apart in bickering, then attempt to patch up differences in ways that are eminently believable. The ending, which I shall not here reveal, is one that can easily be interpreted in various ways, not the least of which may be due to sloppy scripting or brilliant imagining. Regardless of how you accept the ending, THE QUIET EARTH serves to remind the viewer that even in desolation, there are eternal values that still persist that still mark us as human.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
Still a fascinating film
Added 7/1/2009
I loved this film in the 80's when it was first released and I was happy to find the DVD available on Amazon. The topic of what may happen if some technological disaster wiped out the entire (except for one) population of the planet is still as timely as ever, and the production quality seems to have stood the test of time. It's a very well-made (acting, direction, cinematography), especially for an independent film that certainly had a restricted budget ... especially for a sci-fi film! The concept of the story has stuck with me over the years and reminds me a lot of the Andromeda Strain. This is another in a long line of outstanding New Zealand films. Loved the ending ... hoping for a sequel!
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
A Great Thinkpiece.
Added 6/30/2009
Although sharing a lot of themes with "The World, the Flesh and the Devil" (With Harry Bellafonte) The Quiet Earth stands alone as a great end of the world flick.
The music is incredible and the cinematography is exceptional especially with a budget of $1 million.
The ending was awesome and NOT your typical "Hollywood" ending.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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