The Quiet Earth (1985)

 

The Quiet Earth

This is a curious little movie. “Little” I say because it is obviously made on a shoestring budget with clunky and cheap, though effective, special effects, but it also shows that you can get far, very far, on a good idea.

A man, Zac Hobson (Bruno Lawrence), wake up one morning like any other. He is alone. As he is getting to work, he realizes how alone he actually is. There is nobody at the gas station, nobody on the roads, just empty cars left at random. Zac is getting freaked out about it, but wherever he looks it seems that people have just been there and now they are gone.

Zac heads to a research station where he evidently works. We, very gradually, learn that he is a scientist involved with a project called “Flashlight”, to setup some sort of global energy grid to power everything and that it is this project that has evidently gone wrong.

Over the next few weeks, as Zac realizes how truly alone he is, he vacillates between enjoying himself being allowed to do anything he wants, and utter desperate depression and madness. Humans are social creatures and only when truly alone we realize that.

Eventually Zac encounters Joanne (Alison Routledge). Exhilarated that they are not alone, they set out to look for others and Zac starts to seriously look into the cause and effect of the “Effect” as they call the event that made everybody else disappear. Eventually, they also encounter Api (Pete Smith), a Māori who come across as a bit paranoid. They come to the conclusion that they all had just died when the Effect happened and this is why they are left. Zac finds out that the Effect will occur again at a certain time so they must blow up the research facility.

Watching “The Quiet Earth” as a science fiction story is both exciting and frustrating. Exciting because the sense of being left alone in an abandoned world is very powerful. Through dubbing, all external sounds have been removed, and everything looks as if it has just been deserted. A boiler still cooking, water tap still running and so one. People just... vanished. What do you do then? But it is also frustrating because as a science fiction plot, so much is left unexplained and cryptic in a very unsatisfying manner. Especially towards the end, instead of getting some sort of closure, we, the audience, are left with even more questions. Ultimately, I am left with the feeling that the science fiction plot is unimportant and is only there as a setting for the characters.

Accepting that, “The Quiet Earth” works very well. When Zac is alone, we explore how it feels to be completely alone. When he meets Joanne, we are presented with the question, what you would do if this other person was truly the only other man/woman in the world? What are the dynamics in that? And finally, having a third person come in, what does that do to the interpersonal dynamics? It is the old story of two men and one woman is one man too many. This is the true strength and real story of “The Quiet Earth” where the science fiction plot merely creates the stage for it to play out.

As mentioned in the header, working on a shoestring budget forces people to be inventive and creative and this is such a good example. All the good stuff in “The Quiet Earth” was made with more idea than money. A truck barring the road, a baby stroller left alone, or a boiler cooking dry are all simple, cheap but very effective effects. Keeping the cast down to three people is another way. The computer effects look awful, but then again, this is 1985, anything on a computer looked terrible.

Ultimately, this is an unsatisfying science fiction movie, but a very effective and successful study of human nature and that is of course the end purpose of science fiction.