For some time now, I have had the nagging feeling we, as a species, are becoming less inspired and are losing our imagination. It doesn’t help that artificial intelligence could possibly create every potential variation on every story trope known, and do so in a short span of time. Not that human screenwriters seem capable of doing much better as of late, given how much cinema I have seen of recent years has felt like a regurgitation of previous works. Even the life goals of most people feel horribly pathetic, with such formerly pedestrian goals as a Bachelor’s degree and owning a home seeming unrealistic in the current era where such much money is held by a few, with only a bit of that accessible to those of the strata below them. Trickle-down economics has once again proven how little actually trickles down, and the tap is being tightened all the time.
Looking to the past and its science fiction often leaves me feeling more inspired and hopeful than the works of our modern world. I suppose it is because it used to feel like there was more potential for growth and change than the various cul de sacs in which humanity finds itself in our present age. And no era of the past felt more desperate for life improvement than works from behind the Iron Curtain. A good example of such a film is East German’s Eolomea from 1972. That was a place and time where pretty much nothing was trickling down to the workers.
The title translates to “eternal spring”. That is the romantic description a scientist has given to the titular planet, a body orbiting a star a journey of over 100 years away. As for myself, if I had known the translation of the title when starting the film, I would have thought the initial imagery was more appropriate. As it stands, I was deeply confused as we watch Ivan Andonov run on a beach and deserts of what I can only assume is the stated location of the Galapagos Islands. Even without knowing the title references spring, I was imagining a narrator in a Jacques Cousteau voice saying, “Ahhh, ze wonders of nature. Eeech spring, ze Communist returns to ze sea to spawn…”
The spawning doesn’t take place in the sea, but I’m guessing he engaged in some romantic couplings with Cox Habbema in their rooms back at the resort in which they are both vacationing independently before meeting and immediately falling for each other. There is much frolicking, usually in montages, until she tells him his next assignment as a cosmonaut will be an extended tour of duty on an asteroid where he will only have a much older fellow space veteran (Vsevolod Sanaev) for company.
I realize absence makes the heart grow fonder, but something seems exceptionally cold about this transfer she’s giving him. He won’t even be with her on New Year’s Eve, when she watches fireworks while wearing an costume nearly as outlandish and revealing as what Carrie Fisher wears in the Sarlac pit scene in Return of the Jedi. And yet, Andonov will be simultaneously launching flares from his base on the asteroid, so they have a shared moment while very far apart.
Sanaev is also desperately longing to see somebody. That would be the son he has who was born on the space station Margot—a name which never stopped amusing me. He dreams of taking his now adult son to the surface of Earth as his progeny has spent the entirely of his life in space. In a sad montage, we see Sanaev’s imaginings of such a trip, with the now-adult son as an idealized and anachronistic version of a young boy.
Something that seems cold to me is this elderly man has not even seen an image of his son, which seems especially cruel when we later learn they apparently could have communicated by video call the entire time.
These various montages are shoehorned into the movie at awkward points, in a narrative that is far from straightforward. The central plot is supposed to be the mystery of spaceships that have suddenly lost radio contact and gone missing as they approach space station Margot (see, I told you the name was funny). As the head of an organization that looks like a space U.N., Habbema leads a panel to investigate these disappearances. I get the feeling there is a history of contention with fellow scientist Rolf Hoppe, and his speculation the ships collided with anti-matter is countered by her saying, “I don’t have an explanation, but that doesn’t make yours any more believable.” That is more or less my reply to anybody who tries to convince me of the existence of the paranormal.
It is no surprise Hoppe knows more than he’s telling and it has to do with that mysterious planet dubbed “Eternal Spring”. To say more about the mystery would be a betrayal to those who have yet to see the film, though I will say I felt my patience was rewarded. Others may not feel so, and it doesn’t help that there are so many seemingly unrelated tangents along the way, some of which are revealed to be important either as plot points or simply philosophical musings. But the convoluted and clumsy storytelling does not help make the case for the movie.
And some tangents still felt unnecessary by the end of the runtime. I still don’t fully understand the importance of Petar Slabakov’s character. Andonov and Sanaev visit this guy, who is on a different asteroid than the one on which they are stationed. He has some sort of hitherto unknown disease and is fearful of transmitting it to others. I don’t know if this was supposed to a metaphor. If so, I don’t know what it stood for. If it isn’t, it doesn’t seem to serve any purpose. I guess he wasn’t so worried about transmission that he isn’t concerned about a container and its contents he gives to the visiting men. And the piece of paper in that container is a preposterous MacGuffin, the contents of which could seem to be transmitted electronically, though that option is never explored here.
As with any sci-fi, the effects are a key part of the experience, though this is more focused on concepts than any “wow” factor. The model work is solid when viewed from a distance. Up closer, not so much. Some wires are visible in the odd shot in which actors are supposed to be in zero gravity, but that doesn’t bother me. If it bothers you, consider yourself forewarned.
The performances are interesting and I believed these characters even when I couldn’t fully get my bearings on who they were or even what was going on. Habbema is given a particularly interesting role as the head of that space agency. Her character is intelligent and driven, but also not afraid to reveal a more sexual side of herself. This portrayal is different from most other empowered women of sci-fi, West or East, of the time and earlier—that bizarre role I think of as “can’t she be a scientist and a woman, too?”
Another modern touch is the undercurrents of dissatisfaction with the ineptitude that resulted from the highly-bureaucratic communist society in which this movie was made. Andonov has a good speech about how he is on an asteroid with a hole in his sock and glue was sent to mend it, except it was the wrong kind of glue. And that sock will still have a hole in the toe at the end of the runtime. Humanity, however flawed, will always find a way to survive and spread its reach as far as possible.
Similarly, the environments seen in the film are largely grungy and look lived-in. It is odd that same year’s Solaris has a similar look. There is also a similar vibe between the two films, a feeling of loneliness and a sense of pointlessness regarding space exploration. Even early on in Eolomea, Habbema looks at a map of the stars and asks aloud where Andonov is, saying how she feels alone. Well, she knows where he is, because she assigned him to that space rock and she’d probably be a lot less alone if she’s hadn’t done that.
But that sense of melancholia is one of the attributes of Eolomea which nudges it into the win column for me. There is a bittersweet tinge to such moments as Andonov looking at the sun from the surface of a tiny rock in space which doesn’t even have an atmosphere. There’s even a bit of sadness to the isolation of ships as they glide through the cosmos to yet another new horizon. And they do that because that’s what humans do, and it makes our existence seem moot when we don’t have new goals to reach towards. It is a concept succinctly encapsulated in this conversation between Hoppe and Habbema: “I considered everything within the limits of human knowledge. But what’s beyond it?” “Other limits.”
Dir: Herrmann Zschoche
Starring Cox Habbema, Ivan Andonov,Rolf Hoppe
Watched as part of the Eurkea UK blu-ray box set (region B) Strange New Worlds: Science Fiction at DEFA