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August 1, 2005

Definitely Let The Island Go Til The Sixth Day

In which my plans for a fun juxtaposition of Never Let Me Go and The Island are scuttled by the massive brainlessness of the latter

This was the plan: I would go to see the new Michael Bay wannabe-blockbuster "The Island" and then write up a comparison of the film to Kazuo Ishiguro's novel Never Let Me Go. Both tackle the implications of human cloning, but in wildly different ways -- "The Island" as a FX-laden popcorn movie and Never Let Me Go as a fancy-pants piece of literary fiction -- and so I thought the juxtaposition thereof would make for a fun column. After all, cloning is one of those extra-juicy AND topical sci-fi subjects, loaded with all sorts of meaty thematic possibilities. I thought I was set up for a killer piece: high and low culture, Hollywood verus the publishing business, all centered around a soon-to-be-very-real bioethical debate.

Then I saw "The Island" and realized my piece was sunk. It isn't that I was shocked to find out it was a over-the-top action movie (in fact, I tend to enjoy the heck out of over-the-top action movies), it's just that the film didn't really seem to care (much less embrace) very much about its subject matter. With so much juicy thematic material available to prop up your sci-fi narrative, you would think that "The Island" could have managed to ask an interesting question or two. Are clones real people? Should they have the same rights as the person from whom they were cloned? What does it feel like to be a copy of another person? Nope. Apparently there was no time for interesting questions; too many bills to pay.

[Speaking of bills to pay, I counted the following corporate promotional partners -- and by no means am I confident that this list is comprehensive -- featured during "The Island": GM/ Cadillac/ Chevy (GM must have really shelled out), Puma, Adidas, Reebok (guess they weren't selling an exclusive on the athletic apparel), Cisco IP Phone, Nokia (no exclusives for the telecom boys either!), Ben and Jerry's, American Express (used to purchase said Ben and Jerry's), Amtrak (giant electromagnetic trains running from Tucson to LA by 2019? Can I get odds on that?), Terminix (tiny, but it's on the Amtrak when they sit down), XBox (though if the people in the cloning facility don't know anything about the outside world, I have no idea why XBox needs to advertise their brand there), MSN Search (yes yes, no more Google in the future, of course), Aquafina (see complaint in re: Xbox above), Budwesier (a bunch of times), Michelob Light (AB again), and Jack Daniel's.]

The only commentary offered by "The Island" on cloning was that (a) cloning will be illegal in the future and (b) it's bad, or at least quite insensitive, to kill clones to harvest their organs. I mean, I didn't expect anything too complicated, but I was hoping for something to think about. Or at least to give me an excuse to talk about Never Let Me Go, which I really-really enjoyed.

As a guy who reads a lot of science fiction (err, ahem, looking at my shoes uncomfortably), I'll admit that Never Let Me Go started with two strikes against it. We sci-fi book geeks guard our turf fiercely, and we don't like it when highbrow literary types show up and think they've discovered themes and ideas that the sci-fi nerds have been chewing on for 40 years. Shows a degree of disrespect for the genre and whatnot (we also feel this way when dumb sci-fi ideas get made into movies; it's not like there's a shortage of good sci-fi stories out there...anyhoo). But I have to hand it to Kazuo Ishiguro -- Never Let Me Go is brilliant like mayo on bacon. Instead of a technobabble-laden soap opera where the characters debate Big Ideas (sometimes with intelligent robots, sometimes without) and stumble through a narrative that serves only to reveal whatever cockamamie speculations the author has cooked up (the sad curse of the sci-fi genre), Never Let Me Go engages a sci-fi topic without dwelling on the sci part. No acronyms. No maverick scientists in secret labs. No invented science. It's just fiction that happens to have clones as the characters.

Never Let Me Go doesn't really spend any time talking about how you make a clone. It just hands us the clones, and explores what it would feel like to live as a clone who exists only as first a caretaker for other clones and then later as an organ donor for the regular (non-clone) people. And that's it. There's no talk of revolution; the clones hold out hope that a childhood rumor about avoiding their inevitable "donations" might be true, but that's about it.

Like most good science fiction (though we shan't dare officially call it that and bury it in the genre section of the bookshop), Never Let Me Go is allegorical. And although clones will likely be very real in the years to come (assuming that Kid A isn't already toddling around a distant nursery school), we don't yet have to engage them in public life. The clones in Never Let Me Go are the have-nots we already ignore, the folks who have it pretty crappy and really can't expect much more than a diseased/ distressed/ oppressed/ just-hoping-for-some-clean-drinking-water-from-time-to-time couple decades from Planet Earth. We hang out with them and learn that, unlike clams, clones have feelings too. And while it could all get a bit maudlin and sentimental (watch the clones fall in love, watch them laugh, watch them nurse their friends towards the organ-donation deaths), the sparseness of the prose and the overall style keeps it honest. The world of Never Let Me Go is distant and a bit fuzzy and is just weird enough to feel orthogonal to our actual experiences.

Like I said, I really-really liked it.

And that's probably why I was so cheesed off about "The Island." It's not that I didn't find the car chases to be satisfactory (they were quite excellent, in fact). I just wanted a little more to think about between the car chases. If you're going to make the Big Loud Movie about clones, then seize the opportunity to ask some questions about the subject (and thus hand me some fodder for some fun high-v-low-culture comparisons).

Essentially, I think I'm bummed because "The Island" wasn't nearly as solid as "The Sixth Day." "The Sixth Day" was one of those under-the-radar-sneaky-good Big Loud Movies (inasmuch as movies starring the Governator and a digital replica of himself can be under-the-radar) that actually managed to engage the topic of cloning in a competent way. Sure, it had some silly moments (the whole syncording machine should have just been called a Plot Device by Robert Duvall), but it slipped a healthy helping of interesting questions into the gaps between the car chases. Are clones alive? Is it worth playing God if it means feeding/ healing millions of people? Can two beings share the same identity? I mean, it wasn't rocket science, but unlike "The Island," "The Sixth Day" had some thought behind it, and just enough self-deprecating humor (I mean, Arnold interrupts a discussion of the ethics of cloning with his clone self by exclaiming, "Eenuff Feelahsofy!") to keep the whole thing above water. Also, it had perfectly exciting car chases and shootouts and tons of fun futuristic props (football of the future AND a digital girlfriend for Michael Rappaport? You betcha!).

Or, more succintly, Mr. "The Island," I have seen "The Sixth Day," and you sir, are no "Sixth Day."

Author's Note...been a little slow on the updates lately, sorry about that. Lots of transitions these days, etc etc, but I'm hoping to get some Big Changes up and running in the next couple weeks.

Posted by thatkid at August 1, 2005 3:06 PM under Stuff To Buy

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Posted by: Ronald at March 27, 2006 5:37 AM

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