The Day the Earth Stood Still

In the following entry, I compare the recent remake with the original 1951 version, which is one of my all-time favorite movies. As I say below, the new film is a disappointment, but a highly interesting one, and I think definitely worth seeing. I almost can't forgive it for reducing Gort's role to nothing--but forgive it I shall. Its heart is in the right place, even if its head is stuck somewhere in outer space. Still, couldn't they at least have found a way to use the immortal line, "Gort...barata...nicto"? I mean, come on, that's one of the coolest movie lines ever!


THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL

The Day the Earth Stood Still is a rather fascinating film, but not a very good one. A remake of the 1951 science fiction classic, this new edition takes the original as a springboard to what it hopes are greater heights, or perhaps more insightful depths. It achieves neither convincingly, but at least does not fail so completely that it causes us to forget why the first version still matters. And, despite its muddled nature, I kind of liked it. I liked it first and foremost for not treating the original movie as either camp or nostalgia, but instead as a worthwhile cultural document in need of a new translation for contemporary audiences. In fact, this is true. Great as the 1951 film is--and I must disclose that it is one of my personal favorite films--its age does show, and I’m not simply referring to the ’50s clothes or cars or hairstyles, but rather to the attitudes that partly block what the film still has to tell us.

The plot, 1951: Klaatu, an emissary from another planet, lands on Earth in a flying saucer, and after being wounded by a soldier’s gunshot, disappears to live for a time among earthlings and learn their ways until he is ready to reveal the purpose of his visit. During his brief stay, he forms bonds with three people--a young war widow, Helen Benson, her son Bobby, and a world-famous scientist, Prof. Barnhardt, who eventually helps him fulfill his mission. This mission, revealed at the film’s end, is to deliver a warning to Earth: settle its differences so that it does not export wars and belligerence between nations into outer space, or it will be destroyed to preserve the peace of the galaxy. With that, Klaatu departs in his space ship, leaving a shaken human populace to ponder its future.

The film is unsettling not just because of this stern allusion to nuclear proliferation and the destruction it threatens--the Cold War was heating up in 1951--but because Klaatu is clearly modeled after Jesus Christ. Eventually tracked down by the army, he is shot and killed and his body “entombed” in a jail cell. The powerful robot that serves him, Gort--the film’s most famous image--rescues him and returns him to the ship, where it revives him with an impressive-looking electromagnetic procedure. Thus risen from the dead, Klaatu delivers his sermon pointing the way to humankind’s salvation, then ascends into the heavens, from which he originally came.

The parallel is audacious and still a major source of the film’s power, but I have always found the Christian allegory a bit jarring because of the nature of the message that Klaatu finally delivers. Instead of counseling humans to treat one another better, with love and understanding, he threatens the earth with annihilation unless it reforms. The figure is New Testament, the message Old, as if Christ used his “Sermon on the Mount” to warn of a second Great Flood. Chalk it up, I suppose, to the urgencies of Cold War thinking--Christ in 1951 would have been considered “soft on sin” if he didn’t take a harder line. So Klaatu uses the arguments of nuclear brinkmanship to checkmate the human race: You don’t dare use your bombs because ours are bigger and more powerful.

But what would Klaatu’s message be today? In what terms would it be couched if he were to visit us now? The new version of this tale attempts to answer those questions, and while the movie fails where the original succeeds--as a coherent story and a neat thriller--it has a lot to say about how America’s outlook has changed over the years. The plot, 2008: Klaatu comes to Earth on an unknown mission, he is wounded and escapes, and once again meets up with Helen Benson (now Dr. Benson, an astrobiologist, and part of the team picked to study him) and her stepson, Jacob, whose father died serving in Iraq. He bonds with Helen, but Jacob is suspicious and resentful, and refuses to befriend him. Eventually, all are on the run from federal agents, and they take shelter with Prof. Barnhardt, who again helps Klaatu, but in a different way. Klaatu’s mission is not the same either. He reveals that he has come to Earth not to warn but to inform its people that the decision has been made to destroy humanity, in order to save the planet. In other words, the Flood is coming. Klaatu says the decision is irreversible, but Prof. Barnhardt argues that the human race can change its ways and live in harmony with the other life on Earth, and thus is deserving of a second chance. Klaatu is therefore faced with a choice, just as humanity, if given the chance, must itself choose between death and a new direction.

The most obvious difference between the two films is that Klaatu is no longer asked to sacrifice his “life” for our sake. Rather, he seems to have come to Earth to learn the nature of our humanity and to listen to the case for our survival. Who, or what, does he represent? Not, as in the first film, an infallible higher authority, or an all-knowing point-of-view, but a judgment that can be swayed--Klaatu is now us, an embodiment of the consciousness we need to create in order to survive. To reinforce this idea, the contours of the story have been changed to place more emphasis on Helen. Her role has been enriched and deepened, reflecting both the improved status of women in American culture since the 1950’s and the new film’s focal shift from doomsday warnings to human response. Helen’s story pivots on her troubled relationship with Jacob. Bitter at the loss of both his natural parents, the boy resists acknowledging Helen as his mother until a critical moment late in the film when the barrier between them comes down and he finally accepts her love. Silently observing this, Klaatu experiences the first stirrings of empathy and the belief that human beings can change their destiny.

Despite the many alterations, Earth in its 2008 incarnation remains a Christian allegory, just with different symbols. Most intriguingly, Christ’s sacrifice of his earthly life has been replaced by his relationship with Mary. Helen is mother to a son without giving birth to him--the closest thing to virgin motherhood the 21st century has to offer--and it is the love that develops between them that may be what will save the human race. The Old Testament is still around, too, in the concept of destroying human life but saving other forms--a modern equivalent of the Ark to rescue Earth’s creatures from the ecological wickedness of humankind.

I find many of these notions provocative and interesting, but how do they translate into a film experience for the average moviegoer, not to mention fans of the original classic? Unfortunately, not as well as they should. Director Scott Derrickson and screenwriter David Scarpa have taken too much on board, mixed their metaphors somewhat, and produced a film that re-imagines the original’s simple, straightforward narrative as if through the skewed logic of a dream. It frequently makes little sense. Why, for instance, if the decision to destroy human life on Earth has already been made, does Klaatu come at all? Why travel all this way just to tell a species it’s going to die, if there’s no thought of negotiations? And exactly why--and how--does the earth “stand still”? In the 1951 film, Klaatu arranges to halt all electromagnetic power on Earth for one full hour, in order to demonstrate the overwhelming force its inhabitants are up against and make them more receptive to his ultimatum. Something vaguely like this happens at the climax of the new film, but without any stated purpose or explanation, so that the moment has little impact. Those unfamiliar with this movie’s predecessor are more likely to be confused than unnerved, and they might not even connect the event with the title.

But most of all, I pity those viewers who came to see Gort. Reviving one of the great icons of ’50s cinema should have been reason enough to remake the film, but if it was, poor Gort wound up on the cutting room floor. Outside of its initial appearance and one later scene, the robot does nothing at all, and seems mostly forgotten by the film. Frustrating as this is for Gort groupies like me, it might actually be for the best. Earth’s special effects are uninspired, even slipshod at times, and Gort almost looks like a cartoon. With the recent advances in computer imaging, and the impressive uses cinema can make of them, there’s no excuse for the second-rate look of this film.

The human cast fares somewhat better. Keanu Reeves at first seems a strange choice for Klaatu--slight of build, unprepossessing in appearance, he’s in marked contrast to the tall, commanding presence of Michael Rennie in the first version. But the difference in appearance between the two men cleverly underscores Klaatu’s altered status in the story. He’s no longer completely in charge, despite initial impressions, and Reeves’s monotonal, slightly puzzled performance expresses this well. Kathy Bates makes the most of her few scenes as the take-no-prisoners U.S. Secretary of Defense, but John Cleese is sadly wasted as Prof. Barnhardt. As the conscience of the film, he plays it completely straight, and this offbeat bit of casting could have been one of the film’s real coups had it made more use of him. Nevertheless, his appearance is welcome.

The film’s best performance comes from Jennifer Connelly as Helen. Still an underappreciated actress, despite her Academy Award a few years ago, Connelly combines cover-of-Cosmopolitan looks with an ability to project the kind of intelligence needed to play a brilliant scientist without appearing ridiculous, as other beautiful women might. In a film that is chilly and detached, despite the urgency of its message, Connelly scores the few genuinely moving moments, giving warmth to the film and proof to Barnhardt’s thesis about humanity‘s worth.

So, does The Day the Earth Stood Still have anything to offer besides curiosity value? I would argue yes, because for all its misfires and wasted opportunities, it also makes some fascinating choices. Shifting moral responsibility from Klaatu to Helen, and the Christian model from Christ’s death and resurrection to the bond of love between Madonna and Child, reinforce the movement from a Cold War version of events--with its forbidding reprimand by distant superiors--to a more contemporary emphasis on shared responsibility and action. Through love and real commitment to change, the film is trying to say, there is hope for our future. We may be on the brink of self-extinction, but we can turn history around and save ourselves. The trust to carry out this task is in us now; no longer do we have to rely on a higher authority to deliver us the possibility of salvation.

It’s an interesting moment into which this film has been released, given recent events, especially a presidential election which evoked many of these same themes. Earth perhaps shows us just how scared we are--or at least how scared Hollywood would have us believe we are. Whichever it is, what this film is trying to convey, in its fumbling way, is just as timely and important as its namesake’s wake-up call nearly sixty years ago.