The Quiet Earth | |
---|---|
Directed by | Geoff Murphy |
Screenplay by |
|
Based on | The Quiet Earth by Craig Harrison |
Produced by |
|
Starring |
|
Cinematography | James Bartle |
Edited by | Michael J. Horton |
Music by | John Charles |
Release date |
|
Running time | 91 minutes |
Country | New Zealand |
Language | English |
Box office | NZ$600,000 (New Zealand) [1] |
The Quiet Earth is a 1985 New Zealand post-apocalyptic science fiction film directed by Geoff Murphy and starring Bruno Lawrence, Alison Routledge and Peter Smith as three survivors of a cataclysmic disaster. It is loosely based on the 1981 science fiction novel of the same name by Craig Harrison. [2] [3] Other sources of inspiration have been suggested: the 1954 novel I Am Legend , Dawn of the Dead , and especially the 1959 film The World, the Flesh and the Devil , of which it has been called an unofficial remake. [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]
July 5 begins as a normal winter morning near Hamilton, New Zealand. At 6:12 a.m., the sun darkens for a moment, and a red light surrounded by darkness is briefly seen.
Zac Hobson, a scientist employed by Delenco, part of a United States-led international consortium working on "Project Flashlight" – an experiment to create a wireless global energy grid, awakens abruptly; when he turns on his radio, Zac is unable to receive any transmissions. Zac drives into the city, which he finds completely deserted. Investigating a fire, he discovers the burning wreckage of a passenger jet, but there are no bodies, only empty seats.
Zac enters his laboratory outside Auckland, but fails to contact any of the other labs around the world. In an underground lab, he discovers the dead body of Perrin, his superior, at the primary Flashlight Grid control panel; a monitor displays the message "Operation Flashlight Complete". The mass disappearance seems to coincide with the moment Flashlight was activated. The lab is suddenly and automatically sealed because of radiation, so he improvises a gas bomb to escape. He listens to his own voice on a tape recorder describing the project as having "phenomenal destructive potential", then notes: "Zac Hobson, July 5th. One: there has been a malfunction in Project Flashlight with devastating results. Two: it seems I am the only person left on Earth." He refers to the phenomenon as "The Effect".
After a week of trying to contact another human being with no response, Zac moves into a mansion. His mental state begins to deteriorate. He puts on a woman's nightgown and alternates between exhilaration and despair. He assembles cardboard cutouts of famous people (including Adolf Hitler, Elizabeth II, and Pope John Paul II), plays a loud fanfare and cheers from large speakers, and addresses the cutouts from a balcony. He declares himself "President of this Quiet Earth", then goes on a destructive rampage after the power blacks out. He bursts into a church, shoots a statue of Jesus off a crucifix, and announces that he is God. After accidentally crushing an empty pram with an enormous earthmover, he puts the barrel of a shotgun into his mouth, but desists. This event serves to break his insanity.
Zac settles into a more normal routine. One morning, a young woman named Joanne appears. Zac is attracted to her, and after a few days they have sex. They find a third survivor, a Māori man named Api. The three determine why they survived: at the instant of The Effect, they were all at the moment of death: Api was being drowned during a fight, Joanne was electrocuted by a faulty hairdryer, and Zac had overdosed on pills in a suicide attempt. He had realised the experiment posed serious dangers and was guilt-ridden for not speaking out. The discovery of his body, with his lab ID and tape recorder nearby, would have the consequence of exposing Project Flashlight and ending the experiment before it was too late.
A love triangle develops, but Zac is more concerned about his scientific observations: universal physical constants are changing, causing the Sun's output to fluctuate and become highly unstable. Zac fears The Effect will occur again (and that the Sun will soon collapse in any case and obliterate the Earth) and decides to destroy the Delenco facility. Api has provided the possible answer – if the still-active Flashlight Grid is balanced, and is continually destabilising the Sun, then knocking out the facility would make the Grid fail. The three put aside their personal conflicts and drive a truckload of explosives to the installation, only to be stopped at the perimeter when Zac detects dangerous levels of ionising radiation emanating from the plant. He says that he will go to town to retrieve a remote control device to send the truck into the facility.
While Zac is gone, Joanne and Api have sex. Afterward, Api tells Joanne that he will sacrifice himself by driving the truck; he doubts that Zac's device will be capable of controlling the vehicle. They then hear the truck. Zac has not returned to town after all and drives the truck onto the gas-bomb-weakened roof of the laboratory, which caves in. Just as the Second Effect occurs, he triggers the explosives.
Once again, a bright red light is seen surrounded by a dark tunnel. Zac awakens on his own on a beach at twilight, holding his tape recorder. There are strange cloud formations, resembling waterspouts, rising out of the ocean. He walks to the water's edge, then sees an enormous ringed planet slowly rise over the horizon. Zac stares in confusion and awe at his unearthly surroundings.
The precise meaning of the final scene is left to the audience. In his commentary on the Umbrella Entertainment DVD release, writer/producer Sam Pillsbury states, "...we all thought it was quite simple; I mean, our intention was just that, what happened was, he died at the moment of the effect for a second time and he's now found himself in another world, what the hell's he gonna do...", he then says, more or less jokingly, that director Geoff Murphy being "a Catholic or lapsed Catholic, [it] may well have been something to do with purgatory, and y'know, you being trapped in cyclical and going back into having to relive your thing until you work out your karma, [something; possibly 'if I'm not'] mixing my metaphors; anyway, enigmatic is good, I think, to a certain extent..."
Walter Goodman of The New York Times wrote, "...it's easy to watch most of the time and never positively painful." [9] Variety wrote, "One of New Zealand's top directors, Geoff Murphy has taken a man-alone theme and turned it imaginatively to strong and refreshing effect in The Quiet Earth." [10] Sheila Benson of the Los Angeles Times called Lawrence's screen presence "electrifying". [11]
It has since become a cult film. [12] In 2014, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson named it one of his favourite science fiction films. [13] The film placed tenth in a 2014 public poll by Stuff.co.nz of the best New Zealand films of all time. [14]
The Quiet Earth is a 1981 science fiction novel by New Zealand writer Craig Harrison. The novel was adapted into a 1985 New Zealand science fiction film of the same name directed by Geoff Murphy.
Duel is a 1971 American action-thriller television film directed by Steven Spielberg in his feature directorial debut. It centers on a traveling salesman driving his car through rural California to meet a client. However, he finds himself chased and terrorized by the mostly unseen driver of a semi-truck. The screenplay by Richard Matheson adapts his own short story of the same name, published in the April 1971 issue of Playboy, and based on an encounter on November 22, 1963, when a trucker dangerously cut him off on a California freeway.
Geoffrey Peter Murphy was a New Zealand filmmaker, producer, director, and screenwriter best known for his work during the renaissance of New Zealand cinema that began in the second half of the 1970s. His second feature Goodbye Pork Pie (1981) was the first New Zealand film to win major commercial success on its soil. Murphy directed several Hollywood features during the 1990s, before returning to New Zealand as second-unit director on The Lord of the Rings film trilogy. Murphy was also a scriptwriter, special effects technician, schoolteacher and trumpet player at different times. He was married to Merata Mita, a film director, actor, writer.
Goodbye Pork Pie is a 1981 New Zealand comedy film directed by Geoff Murphy, co-produced by Murphy and Nigel Hutchinson, and written by Geoff Murphy and Ian Mune. The film was New Zealand's first large-scale local hit. One book described it as Easy Rider meets the Keystone Cops.
Kronos is a 1957 American black-and-white science fiction film from Regal Films, a division of 20th Century-Fox. It was produced by Irving Block, Louis DeWitt, Kurt Neumann, and Jack Rabin, directed by Kurt Neumann, and stars Jeff Morrow and Barbara Lawrence. Kronos was distributed as a double feature with She Devil.
David Charles Lawrence known as Bruno Lawrence was an English-born musician and actor, who was active in the industry in New Zealand and Australia.
Warren Lee Tamahori is a New Zealand film director. He is known for directing the films Once Were Warriors (1994), Along Came a Spider (2001) and Die Another Day (2002).
"In the Flesh?" and "In the Flesh" are two songs by the English rock band Pink Floyd, released on their 1979 album, The Wall. "In the Flesh?" is the opening track, and introduces the story concept of the album. "In the Flesh" is the twenty-first song of the album, and is a reprise of the first with a choir, different verses and more extended instrumentation.
Neil deGrasse Tyson is an American astrophysicist, author, and science communicator. Tyson studied at Harvard University, the University of Texas at Austin, and Columbia University. From 1991 to 1994, he was a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton University. In 1994, he joined the Hayden Planetarium as a staff scientist and the Princeton faculty as a visiting research scientist and lecturer. In 1996, he became director of the planetarium and oversaw its $210 million reconstruction project, which was completed in 2000. Since 1996, he has remained the director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space in New York City. The center is part of the American Museum of Natural History, where Tyson founded the Department of Astrophysics in 1997 and has been a research associate in the department since 2003.
Space Truckers is a 1996 science fiction comedy film directed by Stuart Gordon and starring Dennis Hopper, Stephen Dorff, Debi Mazar and Charles Dance. It was filmed at Ardmore Studios, County Wicklow, Ireland.
The World, the Flesh and the Devil is a 1959 American science fiction doomsday film written and directed by Ranald MacDougall. The film stars Harry Belafonte, who was then at the peak of his film career. The film is set in a post-apocalyptic world with very few human survivors. It is based on two sources: the 1901 novel The Purple Cloud by M. P. Shiel and the story "End of the World" by Ferdinand Reyher.
Sam Pillsbury is an American film director, producer, and winemaker.
Zachary David Alexander Efron is an American actor. He began acting professionally in the early 2000s and rose to prominence as a teen idol for his leading role as Troy Bolton in the High School Musical trilogy (2006–2008). During this time, he also starred in the musical film Hairspray (2007) and the comedy film 17 Again (2009).
Michael J. Horton is a film editor who works primarily in New Zealand. He was nominated for an Academy Award for the 2002 film The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers that was directed by Peter Jackson.
Bobby Ray Simmons Jr., known professionally as B.o.B, is an American rapper. Raised in Decatur, Georgia, Simmons signed with producer Jim Jonsin through his Rebel Rock Entertainment label in 2006. Two years later, he and Jonsin signed a joint venture recording contract with fellow Georgia rapper T.I.'s Grand Hustle Records, an imprint of Atlantic Records. Following his major-label deal, Simmons quickly achieved commercial success when his 2009 debut single, "Nothin' on You", peaked the US Billboard Hot 100 chart and received Grammy Award nominations for Record of the Year, Best Rap Song, and Best Rap/Sung Collaboration at the 53rd Grammy Awards.
The Superman of Kingdom Come is a fictional character, an alternate version of Superman in the DC Comics universe. First introduced in Kingdom Come #1, Kingdom Come Superman was created by Mark Waid and Alex Ross. The character was loosely adapted in the Arrowverse crossover "Crisis on Infinite Earths", portrayed by Brandon Routh.
Martyn Sanderson was a New Zealand actor, director, producer, writer and poet.
"Standing Up in the Milky Way" is the first aired episode of the American documentary television series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. It premiered on March 9, 2014, simultaneously on various Fox television networks, including National Geographic Channel, FX, Fox Life, and others. The episode is presented by the series host astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, directed by Brannon Braga, produced by Livia Hanich and Steven Holtzman, and written by Ann Druyan and Steven Soter.
Anzac Hohepa Wallace, also known as Zac Wallace, was a New Zealand actor and former trade union delegate. He is best known for his role as Te Wheke in the 1983 New Zealand film Utu.
John Charles is a New Zealand film composer, conductor, and orchestrator. He created a number of musical works for the New Zealand cinema of the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, including compositions for films such as Goodbye Pork Pie, Utu, The Quiet Earth, A Soldier's Tale or Spooked.
…it was remade, sans bomb, by a New Zealand filmmaker as The Quiet Earth (Geoff Murphy, 1985).
Murphy's New Zealand–set reworking of The World, the Flesh and the Devil, replete with racial angle…
Infatti, The Quiet Earth è quasi il remake del classico The World, the Flesh and the Devil…
The Quiet Earth is a New Zealand remake of The Night of the Comet and The World, the Flesh and the Devil…