Exploring connections and the Southern Reach trilogy

I'm currently reading the Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer, which consists of three books--Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance. I read Annihilation after I had seen the film of the same name directed by Alex Garland, who has admitted that when he made Annihilation, he was influenced by the film Stalker, which was directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, who in turn was influenced by the book Roadside Picnic written by Arkady Strugatsky and Boris Strugatsky. These types of connections are what I enjoy so much about the creative world; there's a kind of flow from one genre or creative art form into another. Sometimes that flow is successful, sometimes not. But it doesn't matter to me, what matters is that the author, filmmaker, or songwriter took a risk, stepped out of his or her comfort zone. That's what matters, in the end. There will always be people who love what you did, and those who didn't. Some will even hate the finished product. Does it really matter? Life goes on, creativity goes on, the flow goes on. As an artist, you know that you will have touched someone's soul, and that someone will remember that touch for life. I know that's true for me. I can list up books that I read as a teenager that touched my life forever; the stories have stayed with me for so long, that's how powerful the writing was. 

Authority is the weakest book in VanderMeer's trilogy, but I understand why he wrote it. He wanted us to really get to know Control, the new director of the Southern Reach. Control is a troubled soul, a middle-aged man who really doesn't know what he wants. He's a loner for starters, the son of a domineering mother and an artistic father. His mother is part of the organization, Central, that Control works for. His mother pulls a lot of strings, including for him. You could almost say that she is the puppeteer and he the marionette. They have a strange relationship, very difficult to define. The book is difficult to categorize overall, but it has its creepy, hair-raising moments. As I wrote in my review of the book on Goodreads: 

There are whole passages in Authority that are downright creepy, e.g., when Control discovers what Whitby has been doing and where he has been doing it. The description of his meeting in the 'secret room' with Whitby will make your hair stand on end. Or when the building wall dissolves, and the former director shows up. I live for those moments in these kinds of books. VanderMeer has a way of building up the anticipation of something bad that's going to happen, even if it doesn't at exactly that time, as when Control visits the director's house. But you know disaster is coming. When he writes like that, this book is at its best. But there are also whole sections that are too drawn-out; I suppose VanderMeer wanted to enforce the idea that Control was a pawn in Central's bureaucratic game (and in his mother's as well). But this means that there are long descriptions of bureaucracy and chain of command, and of events that are illogical at best, e.g. why Lowry was the Voice. But in a place like Southern Reach, it would perhaps be hard to expect anything but irrationality and chaos. VanderMeer is a very good writer, but the book could have been shorter without losing any of the 'atmosphere'. I am currently reading Acceptance and hope that the mystery of Area X is explained satisfactorily. 

After I finish reading Acceptance, I will read Roadside Picnic. I'm looking forward to reading the book that led to the films Stalker and Annihilation. And after that I will watch a few more Alex Garland films, although I've already seen 28 Days Later and Ex Machina, both of which are excellent. If you haven't seen them, I recommend them highly. 

Two by Tarkovsky

I watched the sci-fi horror movie Annihilation on Netflix this past week for the second time; the first time was during the pandemic. I didn't remember some of the plot points, so it was good to see it again. A very good movie overall, with some interesting points to discuss. It was directed by Alex Garland of Ex Machina fame, another sci-fi (with some horror elements) movie that was excellent. In Annihilation, the 'Shimmer' is a land zone defined by continual mutation and which, once you enter, alters (mutates) a person inasmuch as the entry of said person alters the zone (its physical/biological/psychological/ emotional composition). All those that have previously entered the Shimmer have not returned and are presumed dead, with the exception of a man named Kane, who is married to Lena (played by an excellent Natalie Portman), a biologist and former soldier (like Kane). The reason for missions into the Shimmer is to find out what has happened at the lighthouse on the coast, where it is rumored that a meteorite has hit, bringing with it something extraterrestrial. The Shimmer seems to be mutating and expanding continuously with the expected repercussions (altered humanity and animal/bird life and death). Kane is completely disoriented upon his return and falls gravely ill within a few hours afterward. Lena joins a five-woman team of scientists who enter the Shimmer in order to find answers as to how to save Kane, what the Shimmer is as well as to what has happened to previous missions. Lena also wants to assuage her conscience of the guilt she has over an extramarital affair that Kane found out about, and which influenced his decision to join a military (suicide) mission to enter the Shimmer. I won't give away any more of the story, since it's absolutely worth seeing as much for the story as for the scares. The theme that runs throughout the film is that human life is characterized by a propensity for self-destruction (via our biology, psychology, personality and choices). When I was reading about the movie online, I found out that it was based on a book (book 1 of the Southern Reach trilogy) by Jeffrey VanderMeer, which I plan to read. But a major influence on Alex Garland's Annihilation was the 1979 Soviet sci-fi film Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky, which Garland has acknowledged. 

I rented Stalker last night and watched it on GooglePlay. Like Annihilation, Stalker got under my skin. I thought the film, although long (2 hours and 42 minutes) was very good, but it's definitely not for everyone. It's a bleak film with a bleak message, no doubt influenced by Tarkovsky's personal resistance to the oppressive Soviet communist regime (dark, bleak, cold). The story is about a Stalker (a guide) who leads a Writer and a Professor into a zoned-off secure area where no one is permitted to enter, so they must sneak their way in. The Zone is an unpopulated nature preserve where there exists a house with a magical room that grants a person's most fervent wishes. As the Stalker explains to the two men, they must not wander off or disturb the Zone in any way, because it is dangerous to do so. The Zone senses the presence of the men, and as in Annihilation, few to no people return from the Zone. The Stalker's work is to guide unhappy people into the Zone and guide them out again; he earns money doing this, but he himself is not allowed to enter the wish room. The Stalker's life is not very happy; his wife berates him for leaving her and their crippled daughter for days/weeks at a time, they have very little money, and they live in a small flat that vibrates when the trains go by. As the film progresses, there is much discussion about the meaning of life, the meaning of art and science, the meaning of the wish room and the repercussions of having one's wishes granted. It is a philosophical film in that regard. I found it bleak because I felt for the Stalker, a good and simple man whose sole goal was in helping others to be happy and not worrying about himself. He believes in hope and the possibility of a better life for others, less for himself as he seems to have accepted his fate as a poor man. He does not want the Zone destroyed as it would destroy the meaning for his existence. He believes in the Zone and that the Zone has to be respected and preserved. He has faith that his work is helping others, but by the end of the film, that faith has been shaken. Again, I won't give away the story, as it is worth experiencing. What compounded the sadness for me was learning that Tarkovsky, his wife Larisa, and the man who played the Writer (Anatoly Solonitsyn) all died of the same type of lung cancer after the film was released--Solonitsyn in 1982, Tarkovsky in 1986, and his wife in 1998. It is thought that their cancers resulted from exposure to toxic chemicals from the chemical plant located upstream from the movie set--a deserted hydroelectric power plant in Estonia. 

Stalker was made in 1979; Tarkovsky's probably best-known film, Solaris, was made in 1972. The film Solaris from 2002, directed by Steven Soderbergh, is also one of my favorite films (A New Yorker in Oslo: “There are no answers, only choices” (paulamdeangelis.blogspot.com); A New Yorker in Oslo: The Martian Chronicles and Solaris (paulamdeangelis.blogspot.com). Both films are based on the book Solaris by the Polish writer Stanislaw Lem. Both deviate from Lem's book; apparently Lem was none too pleased with Tarkovsky's changes to his book and was even less pleased with Soderbergh's. I rented the 1972 film today on GooglePlay. Like Stalker, it's a long film, clocking in at 2 hours and 47 minutes, with long sequences here and there focused on one object, e.g., waving grass, a picture on a wall, a pitcher, a broken container. Both the length of the film and the extended sequences can test your patience, and I can't help but think that the film could have benefitted from trimming at some points. But I fall into the category of viewers who give directors the benefit of the doubt. Are they leading us somewhere? Are they revealing small clues as to what's coming? Like Stalker, Solaris has an atmosphere of foreboding that hangs over it; you know that something's coming and that it's not likely to be good. Tarkovsky is excellent at creating 'atmosphere'; it can be uncanny, bleak, grim, mystical--sometimes all of them in one. Both films deal with metaphysical questions--who we are, what makes us who we are, the importance of memories, the meaning of existence, the acquisition of sentience and the implications of that for the definition of humanity. Again, as I wrote in my blog post 'There are no answers, only choices', that remains the conclusion (for me) after seeing both of Tarkovsky's films. He was not interested in providing pat answers for us, he was interested in probing these questions. As such, his films are not for everyone, especially not for those looking for sci-fi movies with alien monsters and the resultant body count. In Solaris, the 'alien' is a sentient ocean, one that is trying to understand humanity as much as humans are trying to understand it. The Solaris Ocean provides humans onboard the spaceship, who are probing and studying it, with 'gifts' in the form of people they have known and loved but who are actually dead in reality. These entities, called 'guests' in Tarkovsky's film, can be viewed as manifestations of an individual's nagging conscience regarding the deaths of his or her loved ones. The sequence when the psychologist Kelvin first arrives on the spaceship is eerie enough; the spaceship is mostly deserted, and the two surviving crew members have chosen to remain in their rooms rather than greet him on his arrival. Over the course of the movie, we learn that some of the crew members (now dead) went insane because of these 'guests'. I'll have to go back and reread Lem's novel, but both Tarkovsky and Soderbergh came up with interesting endings for their respective movies, even if Lem didn't approve. They are the kinds of endings I love, as they lead to discussion about what happened and what the director was aiming at. I like doing postmortems on movies, but I know that not everyone does. I also like a good alien monster move, because I love movies, period. If the movie is made well, I enjoy it. Stalker and Solaris are both worth watching and discussing afterward.