Nothing focuses the critical eye like expectation. Fantasia 2009’s ‘Vers les étoiles’ shines a spotlight on science fiction with films that offer a more cerebral counterpoint to the model of massive budgets, special effects and overly-simplistic narratives. 8th Wonderland, from French writer/directors Nicolas Alberny and Jean Mach, represents the aims of the Fantasia programmers and the huge ambitions of its creators. The project packs an impossibly complex set of social and political themes into a vehicle that may not be sturdy enough for the load.
8th Wonderland is not merely a multicultural web community: it purports to be a real country. It has a constitution; its citizens are dedicated to perpetuating its principles of world peace, justice and security; it functions as a democracy yet lacks a distinct hierarchical power structure. With these goals in mind, the citizens of 8th Wonderland concoct various strategies to capture the attention of the world’s powerful nations. Its actions rapidly escalate from political pranks to assassination and truly frightening acts of sabotage in a sweeping arc of narrative that provokes one to consider whether the end really does justify the means.
The film’s narrative is recounted chiefly through news casts, talk shows and sound bytes. The camera routinely cuts from the perspective of a spectator to the filming of the spectacle itself, perpetually shifting between the ‘real’ world and cyberspace. The filmmakers take the audience through so many layers of perception as to cause the distinctions between physical space and cyberspace to disappear. Particularly effective are the rapid shifts among the various realities, which the characters occupy.
The film peels away the layers of artifice in the news and talk show sets where ‘reality’ is recorded and broadcast. This results in a creeping feeling that the world is constantly being reconstituted by those who control the flow of information. More unnerving is Alberny and Mach’s all-too-real portrayal of a world in which mass media outlets actually engineer reality — a point reinforced in 8th Wonderland’s reliance on the media to disseminate news of its action, thereby guaranteeing its actuality in the public consciousness.
The compelling story unfortunately suffers from an uncomfortable yet undeniable didacticism. Many dialogues — though thinly wrapped in the gauze of character and plot development — come across as overly pointed. The narrative flow becomes much too measured and all too convenient, adding little excitement and drama to the various performances in which characters devolve into mouthpieces for the film’s intellectual preoccupations.
Scripted more as an action movie with conspiracy undertones, 8th Wonderland nevertheless holds a degree of allure for the science fiction hound. By proposing a range of possibilities that are plausible with current technology, the film does justice to its genre and is worth seeing if only for the density of its layers of meaning. Despite its misses, Alberny and Mach have done a tremendous job of incorporating current geo-political realities as well as presenting the absurdity of the unceasing 24-hour news cycles that generate public opinion. One can only hope that they continue to develop their talents and explore the various themes in 8th Wonderland in future projects.
Other films of ‘Vers les étoiles’ include, the stark and brooding Japanese production, Clone Returns Home (already screened) and La possibilité d’une île, Michel Houellebecq’s film adaptation of his own novel by the same name. Both films explore the implications related to human cloning. Canary, an American production by independent filmmaker Alejandro Adams, is about an organ-redistribution company behind whose overt dedication to improve the lives of those in need lies a more sinister reality.
Log into 8th Wonderland at the Hall Theatre on Tuesday, July 21 at 22:10; Canary screens at the de Sève Theatre July 21st and 23rd at 19:35 and 17:00 respectively; La possibilité d’une île screens at de Sève Theatre on July 23rd and 28th at 22:00 and 21:45 respectively. For further information go to the Fantasia site.
