Cinema's Soothsayer

Many feel that this is the golden age for the true film buff. DVD, HD, and digital projection are making the image more immediate and life-like than ever before. As we abandon stories in favour of special effects, technology influences public tastes like never before. In the 1950s when formats such as 3-D and Cinemascope were introduced to entice audiences away from the new medium of television, the motivation was to elevate visual storytelling by altering the nature of the frame. These were finite improvements that depended on the artistic innovation of the directors in order to make them last longer than the latest fad. As a result a new visual language was created and filmmakers advanced their method of expression. We are now at the dawn of a purely digital age when perishable celluloid is about to be replaced by the passionless intangibility of pixels and hard-drives. The question is whether these impersonal tools can cultivate new film artists, or is the technology a literal dead-end, where the soul of the film itself is buried under so much digital artifice that the physical connection to the humanity of its creators is lost. As recently as this year, prominent directors such as Steven Spielberg and Paul Thomas Anderson have expressed their desire to continue working in the old film strip tradition, but many other respected auteurs such as David Fincher and Michael Mann have already relinquished this approach, embracing an image so digitally malleable that it threatens the very fabric of cinematic reality. What happens when these very technologies evolve to the point when they themselves can create without the need for human input? When do the tools of a civilization become its masters? Novelist and filmmaker Michael Crichton has been exploring these and other similar issues for nearly forty years. His films, often adapted from his own well-researched fiction, are sometimes startlingly augural works that are the type of canary-in-a-coal mine warnings that western society so desperately needs to heed. With virtually all of his movies on DVD, the following are a sample of the most prescient of his oeuvre.

The Andromeda Strain (1971)

Based on a novel Crichton wrote while still in medical school, this story of a small group of scientists combating
a virulent space organism that the military wishes to use for nefarious purposes, became the template for most of Crichton's subsequent work. With its dire vision of cold science helpless in the face of that which it cannot comprehend, Crichton gets to the heart of human frailty and exposes the hubris that ultimately leads to ecological disasters. Although stylishly made by veteran director-producer Robert Wise, Crichton was unhappy with the methodical pacing of the film and vowed to maintain more hands-on control of any future film versions of his work. The DVD extras contain an informative profile of the author as well as a making-of that includes footage of a surprisingly young Crichton talking about the film and its themes.

Pursuit (1972) a.k.a. Binary

Crichton himself stepped behind the camera to direct this made-for-television adaptation of his own novel. Instead of the extraterrestrial threat posed by the previous film, the scenario is now one of urban terror, as a group of right-wing extremists utilize sophisticated nerve gas technology to further their own political agenda while threatening mass extermination. Well crafted, with a nail-biting climax, this freshman effort from Crichton demonstrated that his directorial talents were more than equal to his literary gifts. It would however be his next film that finally proved his critical as well as box office success as a feature filmmaker.

Westworld (1973)

An instant sci-fi classic written specifically for the big screen, this was Crichton's obvious first draft of the Jurassic Park formula. It was conceived as his warning to a public mesmerized by the latest robot and computer technology introduced by Disney in its theme parks. Crichton posits the horrifying possibility of a malfunction at one of these holiday destinations that transmutes the safe movie-like atmosphere into one of deadly survival. Featuring a bravura fifteen minute chase finale with Yul Brynner as a lethal robotic version of his Maginificent Seven persona, this tightly constructed low-budget gem established Crichton as a formidable talent with much to say about the entertainment-craving "ME" generation of the 1970s.

Looker (1981)

After being passed over to direct the adaptation of his novel The Terminal Man, Crichton furthered his film career by helming the hugely popular medical thriller Coma, based on the book by Robin Cook. He followed that up with a distinct change-of-era film, adapted from his Victorian heist novel The Great Train Robbery. Its commercial failure made him return to more familiar thematic territory of the impact computer technology was having on commercial media. Looker was originally written as an all-out comedy, but studio executives wanted a thriller, so Crichton reluctantly complied with the result being a unique hybrid of black comedy and futuristic suspense. Completely misread at the time of its release, this is a film of surfaces, satirizing plastic surgery, computer generated imagery and slick politics with an often astoundingly prophetic eye to their eventual abuse in the following decades. Crichton's imaginative casting continued to serve him well, with his dumpy plastic surgeon hero played by Albert Finney, up against the polished presence of ruthless entrepreneur James Coburn. Crichton, demoralized by the compromises required to get the film made, originally disowned the finished product when it failed to find an audience. In the years since, he has come to endorse this singularly entertaining piece of cinematic divination. The DVD contains an informative director's commentary and a beautiful wide-screen transfer of this very witty film.

To date Crichton has directed only two more films, Runaway (1984), a slight but imaginative sci-fi cop movie with robotics once again the focus, and Physical Evidence (1989), a boring court-room thriller. Since then he has concentrated on his career as a novelist, selling his books to the big screen for exorbitant fees with often middling results. For his fans, the wait continues for his next foray as a filmmaker. With the world technologically dominated more than ever, visionaries like Michael Crichton are a resource we cannot afford to lose.