Getting up close and personal with a black hole"

1979 was an eventful year. The U.K. got a female Prime Minister, Sid Vicious died and I discovered a love of movies.

Actually, I should clarify, a love of some movies. It’s not a huge list, what I’m watching needs to be fairly easy to follow, not have any extraneous sex scenes, have at least one character I can try to relate with and character motivations have to be obvious or at least spelled out for me.

Basically, I like films made for children and horror films, there is though a special place in my heart for Science Fiction.

A Black Hole

Discovering this love, as ever, was not without some trauma. The night I discovered cinema I was woken up and dragged out of bed to go on a ‘magical mystery tour’ (literally! Those were the exact words used and I really didn’t want to go), put into the car half asleep, still in my pyjamas and then driven away into the night. Once there I found myself somewhere that I had never been to before that was bright, loud and full of people I didn’t know, even now I find situations like that overwhelming.

This was not usual, this was unusual, I’ve never been a fan of unusual.

Once in my seat though, I was able to settle a little. The auditorium lighting was much more muted, and the noise had lessened to an acceptable level. The terror fuelled adrenaline was keeping me awake but it wouldn’t last forever, what I needed now was something to focus on.

The black hole.

Full disclosure, the film I saw that night was actually Star Trek: The Motion Picture. I sometimes think that I might be the only person alive that actually enjoyed watching it, and it precipitated an obsession with space that ultimately led me to a degree in physics.

It also led me to another film I saw as a child, which came out only a few weeks later, and is still one of my all-time favourites.

The set up

The Palomino, an inexplicably tiny exploration vessel, and it’s plucky crew of four plus, for some reason, Ernest Borgnine, stumble upon a vast black hole in space, and with it the Cygnus, a ship thought lost for decades, now seemingly dead.

It’s a great premise. And also, Ernest Borgnine!

The execution

The visual design is stunning throughout. The sets are clean, minimal and beautifully paired with some of the best matte painting in the business, from the brush of a by-then retired Peter Ellenshaw. He and his team of visionaries were responsible for the entire look of the film, and their work was nominated for an Oscar.

That sense of space and grandeur are complimented by both the cinematography of Frank Phillips, which was also Oscar nominated, and the John Barry score, which wasn’t, but is still every bit as epic as the subject matter itself.

The biggest flaws with the production are, paradoxically, the reasons I love it.

The acting, and the direction.

I rely on exposition to make things clear, I can generally follow one thread and I like characters that speak clearly, and one at a time. Lots of people all talking over each other makes me anxious. It’s why I still like kids T.V. and film, even in my old age. That, and I’m obviously a bit weird.

Same thing applies to horror films. The plots are either super simple or require constant explanation, and everyone is either scared or horny. Got their clothes on, it’s scared, clothes of? Horny. Also, eww!

Here, pretty much all of the performances are phoned in. Because of this, the human characters appear almost as robotic as the comedy relief droids, V.I.N.CENT. and B.O.B. (possibly the worst backronyms in history) and thanks to the glacial pacing I know exactly what everyone’s doing and why. At least until the ending, anyway.

It’s an audio book with extravagant visuals.

There is unfortunately another fly in this otherwise great looking soup..

Buyers remorse

So it looks good, it sounds good, and I can understand it without having to read any non-verbal cues, but ultimately, if the story is a huge sack of excrement it’s just not going to hold anybody’s interest. There are a few issues here that some may find inexcusable.

• Why does the Cygnus need an army of sentry robots? Early on it very much appears that Maximilian Schell’s Dr. Reinhardt is alone on the ship - with only robot company.
• Ernest Borgnine!
• ..No, seriously, why do they have a reporter with them?
• Where the f**k did that meteor storm come from?
• This scene..

• ..Actually, most of the ending, which confused me as a little boy and still confuses me now.
• That’s not how black holes work. At all.

These issues are, luckily, mostly superficial. There is little in the way of sub-plot to muddy the progress of our protagonists, the antagonists, combined with the awe-inspiring locations, are suitably menacing and I still feel a genuine sense of excitement.

So?

Is it perfect? No, it isn’t the fastest or most action packed film, even of its era, but the characters stay true to their motives and with only a few exceptions everything that happens does so for a reason. I liked the robots because I identified heavily with V.I.N.CENT. since when I was nine I thought he sounded a bit like I did but, I am reliably informed, they are actually quite annoying (just like me when I was nine!) Visually it’s a real treat and the score, complete with overture, is amazing.

So, is it worth an hour-and-a-half of your time?

Absolutely.

‘The Black Hole’ is currently available to stream on Disney+

All ratings are out of five. Poster and still images ©1979 Walt Disney Productions. Cover image by Johnson Martin from Pixabay.

• movies
• sci-fi
• childhood
• reviews