Millennium
(1989)
(SPOILERS) Michael Anderson picked up the directorial reins
of time travel tale Millennium after
it had gone through numerous hands, and screenwriter John Varley’s perseverance
and ultimate chagrin, over the course of a decade of development hell. The finished
feature, equipped with C-list leads (Kris Kristofferson and Cheryl Ladd were
hardly dynamite at the beginning of the ‘80s let alone the close, so one
assumes untold swathes of names turned it down first), came out at the end of
August 1989 in the US, the traditional late summer dumping ground for unloved
projects, where it failed to even dent the Top 10. It’s a picture with an
arresting premise, one that front-ends its apparent literacy regarding the
theoretical complexities of time travel. Which makes it all the more
disappointing that it proceeds to fall apart so resoundingly as it proceeds and
progressively ignores all its groundwork.
Watching Millennium,
one can’t help but think of some of the more extreme conspiracy theories
regarding Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 (the ones regarding it actually being
actually spirited away by mysterious forces). More specifically, the abduction,
replacement of passengers’ bodies and subsequent return is redolent of the
theory that Flight 370 was “repackaged” and ended up as Flight MH17 downed in
the Ukraine. Despite the dubious merits of the movie as a whole, the premise of
Millennium remains a consistently
evocative one; when Lost first
arrived this was a movie that instantly came to mind for many (well, those who
had seen it), and one could easily imagine it reworked for an episode of Fringe, or indeed forming the basis of
an entirely new JJ Abrams TV show.
I’m sure John Varley would be pleased to see it done right.
He commented, "I ended up writing it six times.
There were four different directors, and each time a new director came in I
went over the whole thing with him and rewrote it. Each new director had his
own ideas, and sometimes you'd gain something from that, but each time
something's always lost in the process, so that by the time it went in front of
the cameras, a lot of the vision was lost."
The parts of the finished movie Varley thought were okay were
pretty much those involving the present day material with Kristofferson’s crash
investigator Bill Smith as he learns of the anomalies surrounding the crashed
Boeing 747. The flight recorder reveals the flight engineer exclaiming of the
passengers “They’re dead! All of them!
They’re burned up!” before the
crash. And then there are the watches that tell the time in reverse. And what
is physicist Dr Arnold Mayer (Daniel J Travanti) doing at the site and why is
he asking all these strange questions, “looking
for the inexplicable”?
Varely didn’t like the future material, relating to those
responsible for the anomalies (It didn't
really hang together. A lot of it didn't make sense."). He’s right, partly. Millennium only really falls apart when it starts to reveal its
inner workings, but there’s good elements mixed in with this mess of a future
too.
Since Varley, who furnished the screenplay, washes his hands of
the movie’s problems, one ends up looking to Michael Anderson, and it’s fairly easy
to believe the blame rests with him. Charitably, he was a journeyman, with
scores for The Dambusters and Around the World in 80 Days (in that it
was garlanded with Best Picture, rather than because it was a particularly good
movie) and a run of disappointments in the ‘70s including Orca, Logan’s Run (I
know, it has its stalwart defenders, mostly Jenny Agutter fans) and Doc Savage: Man of Bronze (I wish Shane
Black would hurry up and get started on his remake). Anderson’s work on Millennium is serviceable but bland,
which rather reflects his choice of leads. The most curious aspect is that a
picture with such an arresting idea behind it should be end up so profoundly
mediocre.
For example, there’s inventiveness on display in the
narrative structure, such that the first time Louise Baltimore (Ladd) meets
Smith is the second time he has met her. Yet their relationship is as utterly
devoid of spark or chemistry as you’d expect from Kristofferson and Ladd (and
the picture devotes far too much time to this aspect, rather than getting to
grips with the main thrust of the story). Then there’s Mayer’s impressively
persuasive lecture on why “It’s the
possibility of paradoxes that make most people rule out time travel by human
beings”. But not movie studios making movies that are never able to coherently
get to grips with these paradoxes, it seems.
The future society we see is falling apart (a millennium
away, hence Louise’s enormously corny “You’re
the best thing in a thousand years, Bill”), where humanity has succumbed to
invasive pollution, increasing incapacity and an inability to reproduce. Some
of the imagery is quite striking (the spokesperson for the ruling Council
resembles a piece of plastic surgery out of Gilliam’s Brazil, while Sherman the Robot has a tantalisingly flesh and blood
aspect), even if the future never looks anything other than a single set, but
the whys and wherefores are, as Varley suggests, mangled and borderline
incoherent. Defenders will claim all the answers are in Varley’s short story
and novelisation, but that doesn’t help the picture as a stand-alone entity.
It’s a mystery how this society comes up with the
significant resources to produce the bodies used in the crash (they can “make the bodies but not souls” but their
science rather selectively cannot solve problems such as fertility or the ravaged
environment), and the whole subject is brushed aside almost with embarrassment.
Perhaps no one wanted to address the ethical implications of their actions in a
PG movie. And, while I quite like the audacity of their mid-air hijacks, it’s
difficult to conceive that the problems they encounter on the 1963 and 1989
flights wouldn’t have occurred pretty much every time out. Paradoxes just will
happen, and the notion that they could ever localise their intrusions has a
butterfly effect-like implausibility.
Then there’s the grand plan; “I steal people from the past to send them somewhere else to start over”.
Which is pretty vague. Just like the “We
can only go back to a specific moment once and then never again” (is this
because of potential paradoxes, or is it a built in Blinovitch Limitation
Effect – see Doctor Who’s Day of the Daleks for a purpose-built
rule restricting the causal disruption of time travel; elements of the
passengers’ abduction also resemble the 1967 story The Faceless Ones, but with reverse intent), robot Sherman tells
Louise “None of us can go. Only you”.
Which breaks down to a self-imposed rule, by the sound of it (“There is no place for me where you are going”).
Why not devote themselves to improving their genetic lot and
absconding there? They clearly capable of up-keeping (“pampering”) Cheryl and her colleagues so they can fulfil missions
(that she has to chug away in 1989 in order to maintain her complex
hydrocarbons leads one to wonder how she will survive in a presumably clean
environment; the movie’s funniest moment has her throw a cigarette away,
landing on who knows whom, in a crowded restaurant when Bill notes “I’ve never seen anyone eat and smoke at the
same time”). And as for the revelation that she is pregnant, despite it not
being possible, well, it’s a miracle!
Then there’s the business with time quakes and paradoxes
potentially destroying the future; these are ideas that really ought to be manifested
in a more traditional winking out of existence manner, rather than of the
ploddingly literal explosive sort we see. The grip on the paradox element is also
pretty slack. Self-righteous Coventry (Brent Carver) blames Bill for the
destruction (“If you had left this alone,
none of this would have happened”) but the same might be said of his
tampering with time in the first place.
Earlier, and most bafflingly, a significant chunk of the
movie is given over to Cheryl’s first meeting with Bill (the other side of his first meeting with her). This is at
the behest of the Council, cogently noting that she “did go back, must go back” yet they bizarrely direct her to
dissuade Bill from investigating further and preventing further paradoxes.
Surely they must know this can’t succeed, because it hasn’t succeeded (Bill is
still investigating after he has met her for his first time, and her second
time)? Particularly if they’re always observing Bill (“And now they’re watching me. I can feel it. They can go anywhere, look
anywhere”; it would be a more potent idea if their society had much heft). I suppose it could just be muddled delivery, that the Council are merely indicating Louise needs to go through the motions (by effectively prostituting herself as a distraction!), but shouldn't she be sufficiently versed in temporal theory to be told straight out that's all she'll be doing?
Kristofferson has always struck me as a snoozerific version
of Jeff Bridges, and he’s in an eternal living slumber here. Ladd did well to
actually make it into a feature, I guess, and full marks on her ultra-Roxette
future hair (all their resources must be tied up in providing her with a steady
supply of gell and hairspray). The support is much rewarding, though.
Travanti, I’m not familiar with (I never watched Hill Street Blues), but he’s great,
particularly in his mysterious earlier scenes. It’s a bit bizarre that Smith is
revealed as the kid aboard the 1963 flight, as everything seems to be pointing
to Mayer (his obsession, how he gets hold of the stun weapon left aboard the
plane). I don’t know Joy or Carver’s work either, but they also make strong
impressions as robot and decayed director respectively.
Millennium can currently be seen on YouTube (with Spanish subtitles). It’s a picture with a
series of really strong, arresting central ideas, and they see it through to
about the halfway mark, but eventually its overtaken by the sheer passivity of
its production, the inconsistency of its all-important time travel conceit, and
the lack of engagement generated by the leads. But it’s never less than an
interesting failure. Time travel movies very rarely stand up to even cursory inspection,
but at least this one has the will to be interrogated.
