Oblivion

Whenever I enter my childhood bedroom, I have to tread carefully or I'll probably break something.  The room is filled from wall to wall with action figures, books, and old videotapes.  Over there is my old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles VHS.  There's my Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom storybook.  And hey, there's my friend Beary, the stuffed bear.  Pretty ingenious name, right?  I was three, okay?  Beary was the co-pilot of my sweet yellow Big Wheel and we went on some pretty crazy adventures together.  My room is a veritable Marten museum.  If explorers were to find my room in a thousand years, they could probably deduce what kind of life I had led, what my hopes were, and what images filled my imagination.  I hope they don't find those 1990's Playboys under my bed.  I swear they're not mine, Mom.

In Oblivion, Jack Harper (Tom Cruise) has a museum of his own.  In a little self-made shack by a lake, his shelves are bedecked with artifacts of our current age.  There's a baseball.  There's a little teddy bear too, but not quite as cool as Beary.  And, in the background, you can hear the sweet tones of Led Zeppelin and Procol Harum crackling on his antique record player.  Like Wall-E, Harper uses these pieces to, uh, piece together the past.  Through them, he can live in a time before Earth was overtaken by an alien race and human civilization was wiped from the planet.

All these items are tangible and personal.  In his futuristic tower, there is nothing personal.  His work shack, bedroom, and even super-duper flying machine look like they were designed by Apple.  Like an IPod, everything is stream-lined and smooth.  The design is such that form and function are indivisible.  It's very beautiful but also very cold and very sterile.  Harper and director Joseph Kosinski both seem overtaken by nostalgia.  They long for a time before smart phones held our music, movies, photos, and, ultimately, our very identities.  They long for the clutter of a bedroom, filled with personal artifacts.

The film seems to pine for the decade of my birth, the amazing 80s.  Director Kosinski seems especially enamored of the big-budget sci-fi epics of that decade.  In one scene, Julia (the ridiculously attractive Olga Kurylenko) wakes from a deep cryo-sleep.  The scene references the beginning of Aliens, when Ripley wakes from her sleep pod.  Sitting up, Julia begins to puke out a thick fluid.  Don't worry; she still looks good doing it.  We are told this is just breathing fluid, a la The Abyss.  All these homages call to mind the great sci-fi of the 1980s.  Though set in the future, the film feels like it has come from the past.

Kosinski has a clear love for the early films of James Cameron, their mind-blowing special effects and epic storytelling.  While emulating Cameron's style, the director emerges with a clear exciting voice of his own.  The vistas of a desolate Earth are beautifully composed and truly breathtaking.  The special effects are used to tell the story and, though amazing, they do not overshadow the plot.  Nearly all Hollywood films use digital effects today, from Romantic comedies to big-budget action.  Most films use CGI in a lazy way, replacing stunt men with digital performers and real pyrotechnics with computer generated explosions.  Kosinski, like Cameron, does not draw attention to his special effects but seamlessly integrates them into his film, helping to create an immersive experience for his audience.  Though the effects are digital, they feel tangible.  You could almost reach out and touch them, like a stuffed bear on the shelf.

Equally immersive, the action scenes are expertly choreographed and hard hitting. Unlike many directors today, Kosinski does not feel the need to constantly shake the camera and give his audience a vertigo attack.  I almost needed a Dramamine during J.J. Abrams'  Star Trek. Kosinski is confident to leave his camera on the tripod and uses dynamic angles and crisp editing to heighten the tension.  I judge great film action by how long I will wait to go to the bathroom.  I had about a gallon of Diet Coke sloshing around in my bladder, but I didn't leave the theater once.  So, when I say the action scenes almost made me pee my pants, I'm not lying.

Trying not to soak my pants, I sometimes closed my eyes during the film.  I was missing some great action, but I was left alone with the film's ethereal and moody score.  M83's synthetic tones add to the 1980s feel and bring to mind the many film scores of Tangerine Dream.  In one scene, Harper swims with his partner and lover Vicka (Andrea Riseborough).  As the two lovers swim through the night, the manufactured tones soar and create a truly transcendent experience.  I actually had chills.  This wonderful pairing of sound and image made me feel that I was watching a scene from Michael Mann's Manhunter.  Unlike the special effects, the music does draw attention to itself, but this is done to beautiful effect.

The final throwback in this film is the star, Tom Cruise.  Like his character, Jack Harper, he longs for a time long ago.   In one scene, he looks at his collection of artifacts.  He picks up one item and examines it.  It is a pair of sunglasses. These shades call to mind Maverick from Top Gun, his defining role of the 1980s.  Cruise seems to long for those years when he was a heartthrob and action hero, not just an L. Ron Hubbard acolyte jumping on a couch.  I long for those days too.  Cruise always picks great scripts and produces some amazing Hollywood films. It’s really too bad he let crazy out of the bag.

The nostalgia of Oblivion is infectious; it brought to mind all I love about the decade of my birth. I don't remember most of the 1980s, but the films of that decade act as a sort of moving photo album.  Like my bedroom, Oblivion feels like a mosaic of those films, a museum of cinematic memory.  While the film has some sloppy moments with some weak scripting and flat acting, it starts the summer blockbuster season off early and with a bang.  The film feels big and fills the space with bombastic sound and image.  I liked it so much that future explorers may find a copy of Oblivion in my Blu-ray collection.  They can take it, but I hope they don't touch the Playboys.  Seriously.