Brave new worlds: what can we learn from film's utopian visions?
As we emerge blinking into the sunlight after lockdown, many of us will be daring to dream of a more harmonious, ecological future. It’s what the subjects of Spaceship Earth were hoping to create when they locked down voluntarily for two years as part of an experiment around communal, self-sufficient living. The new documentary tells the story of Biosphere 2, an Earth system science research facility located in the Arizona desert. Back in 1991, eight people moved into the huge vivarium as a dress rehearsal in case humans had to repopulate to Mars. Matt Wolf’s film is a fascinating watch that vividly recalls classic sci-fi cinema: the “biospherians” wear designer space suits and their mission references 1972’s Silent Running, in which a botanist astronaut tries to save a biosystem orbiting in space.
It begs the question: what other lessons can we learn from sci-fi movies, post lockdown? In the past, many films have depicted a post-apocalyptic world where artificial communities have been created in an attempt to save at least some of the planet. But these are rarely truly happy places. In the family animation WALL-E (2008), lazy humans live on starliners, having trashed the Earth. A seemingly harmonious world conceals hidden horrors in Logan’s Run, the 1973 film with an upcoming remake.
Utopias that turn dystopian are common in cinema, as noted by the novelist and critic Kim Newman: “The first act shows you everyone having a good time, but you notice the cracks. Then you learn how terrible things really are.” Many fictional future worlds are divided between rich and poor, such as Metropolis (1927) and Soylent Green (1973). Others can be threatened by one bad egg. Comic-book adaptations are full of these, from Loki in the Thor series to Killmonger in Black Panther. Wonder Woman’s Themyscira is disrupted by the arrival of men.
More recently, the young adult genre has been dominated by pure dystopias: children were forced to hunt and kill each other in the Hunger Games series (2012-2015). The 2015 Disney film Tomorrowland struck a more optimistic note, depicting a secret world built by “all the geniuses, the artists, the scientists, the smartest, most creative people … in a place free from politics and bureaucracy, distractions, greed”. Brad Bird’s film directly addressed the subject of how we respond to dystopian images: inventor David Nix (Hugh Laurie) tried to warn humanity by broadcasting images of impending doom. “They didn’t fear their demise, they repackaged it!” he laments. “It can be enjoyed as video games, as TV shows, books, movies – the entire world wholeheartedly embraced the apocalypse, and sprinted towards it with gleeful abandon.” But hopeful heroine Casey (Britt Robertson) still went in search of “dreamers” to build a better future.
Such optimism is reminiscent of Spaceship Earth. Far from being stereotypical hippies, the members of this commune built a huge houseboat to travel the world, forging partnerships with likeminded financiers. They formed a theatre company and performed avant-garde shows. They wanted to see if self-sufficient life was possible on Mars, so they tried it – or at least, as close as they could get. Not everything in the garden was rosy, but at least it grew.
The idea of a contained, peaceful community is prevalent in onscreen utopias. Newman describes these as being, “collectivist, contemplative … with tamed natural spaces”. Biospherian Mark Nelson, however, finds few of them are believable. “I and other biospherians would laugh, because in almost all science fiction movies, there are hardly any green plants or other lifeforms around – yet no one asks: ‘How are they getting their oxygen, water regeneration, clean food?’”
Silent Running does emphasise the difference between fresh, locally grown food and bland, artificial meals, while Soylent Green takes the idea to a more sinister extreme. Meanwhile veganism – on the rise in real life – features in several onscreen utopias. Simon Amstell’s pointed TV mockumentary, Carnage, painted a picture of a harmonious, sustainable future where the only pain was the memory of their elders murdering animals.
A plant-based diet also features in the cult French comedy La Belle Verte (The Green Beautiful, 1996). Writerdirector Coline Serreau plays Mila, an alien from a utopian community who comes to 90s Paris and is comically horrified by the pollution, smoking, meat eating and overcrowding. La Belle Verte’s farcical humour eases into a strong message about a self-sufficient community with no leaders, where the days consist of strengthening acrobatic play and exercises in telepathy. All inhabitants work the land and agree on population control (“After the harvest, we decide how many babies to make”). It turns out that their lives used to look much like ours on Earth.
I asked Jennifer Wells, a professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, and memberat-large of the Society of Utopian Studies, what she thought of La Grande Verte. “Serreau evokes a foreign utopian planet with ecological lifestyles, spiritual harmony, zero carbon technologies and equality,” she says. “This ideal society on a far-off planet may not be realisable – unless we are getting close to switching out cell phones for telepathy, and football for group ballet.”
She adds: “What is realisable is the deeper questioning that comes up when Mila visits Earth. Through Mila’s hilarious escapades, we get a fresh view on how some of the things we accept as most normal are, in fact, in need of transformation.”
This “fresh view” chimes with the lockdown experience: not only have more people started growing their own vegetables, but they have had the space to take a long look at their lives and the world – much like biospherians. Nelson says: “Since we experienced the metabolic connection we had to our mini-world so bodily and viscerally, when we came out, we were eager to share that insight – every human’s very life depends on Earth’s biosphere!” He sees clear parallels with the current crisis. “This pandemic lockdown can be a shock point for people to realise how vital a healthy biosphere is for them. Help make your city greener and less polluted; connect with your neighbours, your community, the trees, birds and natural elements around you.”
Spaceship Earth’s director agrees. “In light of Covid-19, we have all been living like biospherians, and we are now re-entering a different world,” says Wolf. “The question is: how will we be transformed, and how might that compel us to reimagine our world?”
Perhaps film-makers can inspire us. Jude Law has been cast as an architect building a utopia in Francis Ford Coppola’s long-planned Megalopolis, while screenwriter Caitlin Moran (How to Build a Girl) recently revealed she is writing “a cheerful utopian sci fi movie”. That’s something I’d welcome: La Belle Verte is the only sci-fi movie I have watched recently that didn’t give me nightmares. In fact, I woke energised and inspired. After the darkness, maybe a positive vision is what tomorrow’s dreamers need.
• Anna Smith is a film critic and host of the Girls on Film podcast. Spaceship Earth is available on demand from Amazon Prime Video. La Belle Verte is available free on Vimeo
lising how much I’ve missed seeing
Page in the top flight of movies over the past decade, and also noticing how Hardy can sometimes look as pudgy as some bloke in a pub, and sometimes snap mysteriously into shape, athletic as a future Bond. With this film, Nolan virtually reinvented virtual reality.
• Inception is in cinemas from 31 July.