Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)
"Well, that's a nice surprise." This was my first reaction upon beginning Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The reason? It has an overture. Starting films, usually 3+ hour epics, with an excerpt from their musical score set to a blank screen (or static image) was all the rage in the late '50s and much of the '60s - said films almost always had intermissions and exit music too - but these grandiose practices fell out of favour in the revolutionary 1970s. I, however, always find these little sections are a great way to set the mood, and of course it helps when the musical score in question is good. And in TMP's case, it's a humdinger.
Of course, I was familiar with the main theme, as it had later been appropriated for use as Star Trek: The Next Generation's opening titles (a show I never watched, but its theme is firmly seeped into the cultural consciousness). Jerry Goldsmith has a ball here, and is given plenty of opportunities to really let the orchestra loose. There are frequent extended sections of little or no dialogue in the film, which means that the score can really dominate the soundtrack. Orchestral music had come back in fashion with John Williams' Star Wars masterwork, and Goldsmith's contribution here is every bit as instrumental (in both senses!). Veering between lush Wagnerian fanfares and Herrmann-esque menace, with a good dash of Forbidden Planet-style electronic warbles, it's a score of superb variety and richness.
It was probably the consistently delightful and surprising music that kept my attention glued to the screen for the entirety of TMP's run time. That's right, the film that is often dubbed "The Motionless Picture" gripped me for the duration. Sure, there were some very slow sections, but the magisterial score constantly kept me engaged. It'll be interesting to gauge how my interest is sustained on a second viewing, because I'm sure a big part of my engagement was the sense of novelty and wonder that will no doubt diminish second time round.
The effects also assist the immersion. Hoping for Star Wars-sized grosses, Paramount threw money at the film and the results are on screen. With an effects team as qualified as this - including Douglas Trumbull, of 2001 and Close Encounters, and John Dykstra, fresh off Star Wars - impressive sights are to be expected, but thanks to the budget they are really allowed to outdo themselves this time. Especially considering its age and the fact that the effects (in the original theatrical version that I watched) have not been touched up with modern CGI, it's an astounding achievement. Indeed the film can certainly be criticised for prioritising the imagery over the story and character development; it is basically a test case for the argument that spectacle interrupts and halts narrative.
The story does not, on paper, sound promising. An impossibly giant and utterly unfriendly, er, cloud, is found to be on course to destroy Earth in a matter of days. Only one ship, a certain USS Enterprise, can hope to stop it... Yes, the big bad here is basically an enormous - like, 7-billion-miles-across enormous - cloud, but this isn't a case of Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer syndrome. The cloud, which does admittedly have an alien ship at its centre, is actually quite threatening, thanks to some superb sound design (this film is really great in the aural department) and a general sense of malicious mysteriousness - just what is it? If the final answer to that question at first seemed underwhelming, on reflection I quite liked the film's philosophical posturing.
I have to say, though, that even if more scenes of crew interaction wouldn't have gone amiss (a problem apparently rectified somewhat in the Director's Edition, not included with these new DVDs), the plot is far from non-existent. At times it even verges on thought-provoking. 2001: A Space Odyssey is rather unashamedly channelled throughout; it even has its very own 'Beyond the Infinity' sequence as a spacewalking Spock floats to the heart of the massive sentient vessel. And while director Robert Wise could never have hoped to emulate the quality of the pinnacle of cinematic space opera, he does not do a bad job of aping some of its imagery while bringing some sense of heart and humanity. There are moments too that are just as baffling as Kubrick's classic, which may or may not be a good thing, depending on taste. Personally I appreciated the ambiguity. By all accounts, Wise - the experienced helmer behind such hits as The Sound of Music and The Day the Earth Stood Still - had a hell of a time dealing with all the conflicting egos and ceaseless rewrites during production, so it's a real credit to him that the resulting film works at all.
In summary, then, Star Trek: The Motion Picture worked for me thanks to two things: (1) the music, and (2) the visuals. Despite its respectable box office grosses, this wound up being the largest-budgeted of the original films, so I am not expecting such spectacle in the later instalments. But up next is The Wrath of Khan, the certified Best Star Trek Film Ever, so I'm hopeful that the quality will only improve from here.
4 out of 5
No comments:
Post a Comment