Film Review
In 1933, the renowned English writer H.G. Wells published a book entitled
The
Shape of Things to Come in which he made some startling predictions about the future
of mankind. Although dismayed by the prospect of another unavoidable world war, Wells
had an unshaken belief that ultimately science would redeem mankind, effectively replacing
religion, politics and personal self-interest as the supreme guiding force. Science
would determine the future destiny of mankind and lead to the creation of a "World State",
Wells' concept of a unified socialist empire run by men of intelligence and learning for
the betterment of all.
The Shape of Things to Come doesn't get
everything right (planet Earth is still, alas, governed by self-serving idiots who like
playing soldiers) but it is remarkable how accurate some of Wells' predictions were.
His estimate for the start of WWII was out by one year, and his foretelling of the devastation
wrought by that conflict is chillingly prescient. More interesting is the
author's prediction that science would grow to dominate mankind's affairs.
When he wrote the book, Wells saw this as a good thing. A decade later, he would
have second thoughts. By the time of his death in 1946, Wells had persuaded
himself that humanity was heading for extinction - a consequence of man's psychological
development not keeping up with his intellectual progress. Instead of Utopia, mankind
appeared to be destined for obliteration, beneath the mushroom clouds of a global atomic
firework display.
In
Things to Come,
we see Wells' most optimistic vision of mankind's future - his film adaptation of his
book, with ideas taken from some of his other future-gazing writings (of which there were
many). A few years earlier, Wells had seen Fritz Lang's silent film
Metropolis (1927) and was appalled by its
apparent naivety and sentimentality. The thing that most offended Wells was that
the film made no serious attempt to construct a logical or plausible account of the future
- Lang's vision was a woolly romantic fantasy, not scientifically-based conjecture.
Things to Come was effectively Wells' attempt
to counter the perceived failings of
Metropolis,
where he used his uncanny knack of extrapolating from the present to the future to paint
a credible picture of how things may be over the next few hundred years.
Like
Metropolis,
Things
to Come offers a visually striking representation of the future - vast art deco
cityscapes populated by untold numbers of perfect, toga-wearing humans, with monolithic
machines in abundance, allowing civilisation to grow and prosper at an ever increasing
rate. However, Wells is not merely concerned with speculating on what the future
may look like - he wants to show the trajectory by which man may get there from where
he is now.
First, the film shows the world as we know it being ravaged by war.
We then see the aftermath of the war - a return to the Dark Ages, a time of scavenging,
plague and disgustingly bad hairdos. Next, the film shows the rebirth of civilisation
- from a small community of wise men in Basra, Iraq (the site of one of the earliest known
civilisations, now known to us all for other reasons, an emblem of human folly at its
most abject). It is then Science that takes possession of mankind, nurturing
him and allowing him to achieve the potential that Nature has invested in him. The
film ends with a question mark - does man ever turn his back on progress and live purely
to satisfy his animal needs, or does he go on making bold strides in knowledge and technology
to satisfy an insatiable hunger for understanding....?
Whilst it doesn't attain
the cohesion and artistic brilliance of Lang's
Metropolis
,
Things to Come is a sincere and inspired
attempt at predicting mankind's future, a film which deserves to be considered one of
the most important examples of science-fiction in British cinema. Admittedly, there
are one or two flaws - some of the dialogue is laughably stilted, few of the characters
have any real depth, and the middle-section (depicting mankind's decline into barbarism)
feels aimless and unconvincing, looking like a B movie that ran out of money half-way
through filming. However, irksome as these deficiencies are, they are made up for
by some truly stunning visionary sequences - the outbreak of the world war at the
start of the film (including a horribly prophetic depiction of a London laid waste by
airborne bombers - with some shots that closely resemble real footage of the Blitz)
and the rapid rebirth of civilisation in the final third of the film, both using model
shots and montage to great effect.
Although H.G. Wells contributed to the screenplay
of
Things to Come, his influence on the end product
was diminished thanks to a series of drastic cuts that reduced the runtime of the film
by around forty minutes. The author's anxieties and hopes do emerge clearly, however,
even in this truncated form.
Things to Come
is a daring vision of the future - and it's surprising how much of what Wells predicted
has come about. Science
has taken control of mankind's destiny and governs
virtually every aspect of our lives, enabling technological advances that would have amazed
even Wells. Whether we achieve the kind of golden Utopia the writer envisaged in
the mid 1930s or end up destroying everything as result of our inability to manage this
unleashed science remains to be seen. Much is yet to come...
© James Travers 2007
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