Space Tourists
1/24/10
One of my favorite parts about film festivals is being able to see a film with literally no idea what it’s about, aside from the title. I went in blindly to Space Tourists, which very well could be the reason I enjoyed it so much— I had no expectations to begin with. (See the trailer here, if you’re curious. But I find it not very representative of the film as a whole.)
I spent the first 5 minutes trying to figure out if I was watching a doc or a narrative feature, which was actually a rather thrilling experience. Much of this ambiguity is due to the refreshing directorial style of Christian Frei, who expertly plays with documentary form, toeing the line between factual and fictional cinematic tropes. It’s unclear at times whether the narrator is a pre-written inner monologue of a character, or an excerpt from an interview. It’s almost as if he is in disbelief of the subject matter, which can seem quite unbelievable.
One of the most refreshing elements was the near-complete lack of talking heads. In the last decade, I feel the documentary genre has become severely saturated with copycats who own DV cameras, read an interesting article in a newspaper, and set out to hit it big with a doc feature about a subject worth maybe 1500 words at best. Contemporary American documentaries by newcomers especially have encouraged the idea that docs only require an interesting subject, not any formal style or artistic thought from behind the camera. Get some interviews, scan some photos, buy rights to stock footage, and find an editor.
Thankfully, the ongoing narration by all characters in the film is coupled and juxtaposed with A- and B-roll, creating a thought-provoking synergy between sound and visuals. Frei literally jumps from Kazakhstan to outer space to the middle of the Russian plains in a matter of seconds. For these stylistic and narrative risks, I can forgive the film for its shortcomings, which are few: I felt there were too many characters, which left me unable to fully engage with one single storyline. With so many threads, the narrative felt meandering at times, and the messages became muddled by the end.
I fully admit I am a sucker for outer space, and might even consider space tourism if I could remotely afford it. There is something completely awe-inspiring about seeing footage from space, especially as recent as the scenes in the film. What really resonated with me though was how the film embraced and then moved past current documentary trends toward cynicism and pessimism. I see so many films about how we are destroying our world, how society is falling apart, and how nobody cares about anything. And there is a place for these films, but they are starting to suffocate me. That Space Tourists acknowledged Earth’s plights, and suggested a possible solution really felt refreshing. Maybe we aren’t completely doomed, after all.
