'Species' -- Is there anybody out there?
'Species' -- Is there anybody out there?
By Jane Freebury
JAKARTA (JP): Director Roger Donaldson's latest film Species opens with a sequence which introduces a chilling proposition -- that you will be witness to an execution. As onlookers implicated in ghastly events, with a shudder you reach for explanations as cylinders of cyanide are set in place. But then, with a single bound, the adolescent female in the chamber, suddenly finding extraordinary strength within, springs through the glass walls, escaping the gassing that is to exterminate her, liberating you from your growing sense of horror.
This is the world of science fiction cinema, where anything is possible -- from monsters and extraterrestrials to future scenarios. As soon as we learn the young girl is a scientific experiment going wrong and that she carries in her the potential to destroy the human race, we can relax about the extermination since it is a question of either her survival or ours, nothing less.
Events are quick to explain: a reply has been received to a message beamed twenty years ago into deep space. The original message contained information about the human race, including specifications of its DNA code. The reply received contains an alien DNA sequence together with instructions, deemed friendly, on how it could be combined with our own. They are followed and the outcome is an apparently normal female child, whom the scientists call Sil.
Excepting that her development has been extraordinarily accelerated, she seems an apparently normal 13-year-old, until spines are noticed growing out of her back during sleep and her makers determine that she is something more than a budding teenager.
It is time to terminate the six-week-old experiment. It's too late, for she has already surpassed them. Crashing out of her glass bubble, with instincts for self-preservation uppermost, she jumps onto a train and roars out of the Utah desert, away from the compound where she was hatched.
Tracking her down becomes the plot line imperative.
In science fiction, tradition has it that wherever there is a bizarre experiment there is a mad scientist behind it with something to answer for. In Species, the suggestion is that it is chief scientist Ben Kingsley's Xavier Fitch, with features reassembled to look like the masterful and objective face of science. He is the team-leader responsible for creating Sil. His responsibility quickly switches to eliminating her and he heads a team of experts brought together to help track her down.
The team drawn to track Sil down are easier to relate to. They are Michael Madsen as a former Marine specialist in extermination, with Alfred Molina as a gentle anthropology professor and authority in cross-cultural behavior, Marg Helgenberger as a molecular biologist and the Forest Whitaker character as a psychic or "empathy" with the intuitive ability to understand other people, including those who are only half-human.
Sil is an ambiguous enemy, predatory but sometimes having the appearance of the prey, not entirely the monster easy to fear and hate. Whether she is precisely a cyborg -- in science fiction generic terms, this is the combination of man and machine, like our good friend Arnold Schwarzenegger's Terminator, or the "replicants" in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner -- she is precisely the result of human manipulation in reproduction technology.
Her ambiguity as a creature half-human and half-other challenges the boundaries that we thought existed between ourselves and the alien. It is Species' paradox that Sil is hard to hate, the team members agree, and easy to feel some sympathy for the young creature being hunted down.
When Sil has finally been put to rest (or has she?), how can we account for such mayhem? Fear of the future, fear of the unknown and fear of ourselves and our capabilities? A tradition of many science fiction films is to critique science and technology, and sure enough, it is here too. Science has been at it again, flouting the natural laws and tampering with life's precious balance. On this occasion it is not disturbing the natural environment but disturbing natural process by conducting experiments in reproductive technology. The critique is at least as established as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
Under New Zealander Donaldson's direction, Species barrels along with all the energy of an action drama. No waltz in space this one, Stanley Kubrick style! And thank heavens there is little sentiment, Spielberg style. The screenplay is a bit disappointing; so much more could have been drawn from this interesting idea. What if communication is received from other life in space? How will we respond? And some of the parts are underwritten -- Ben Kingsley's in particular, is a potentially interesting character, from whom we have very little indeed.
However, Species is to be recommended. It is held tightly together, is nimble and sure-footed. Looks good too. Even if Species is somewhat derivative and you have seen it all already -- all the terminators, the aliens and the blade runners -- Species should still get under your skin.