Savannah Electric That Surrenders a What Might Be

- • F I L M R E v I E w 5 • sertion of individualism in a totalitarian Perry Mark Stratychuk's context is presented as a minor but por. tentous victory: while the Benefactor remains in firm control at film's end Savannah (he's still narrating, after all), he inter prets even this small, personal gesture of Electric revolt as a potentially contagious one: with a worldweary (and decidedly human) sigh, he acknowledges that he's presided over the beginning of his own demise. There will be more renegades. here's never been much room ( or Canadian as this measured, hesitant need) in Canadian culture for the conclusion may be (this has never been Tconception of alternative worlds. a nation comfortable with the idea of re Chiefly . a nation of naturalists and volt - an American film would have re documentarists, Canadians are more lished the spectacle of The Benefactor'S likely to put their arts in the service of final defeat), it is not the only aspect of what is than to allow them to ponder Savannah Electric that surrenders a what might be. As such, fantasy and sci certain cultural particularity. Alternat ence fiction are relatively anomalous ing constantly between confined, indus genres in Canadian fiction and filmmak trial settings or expansive, establishing ing (David Cronenberg comprising a long shots (highlighted by Stratychuk's classically rule-proving exception), and brilliant convincing miniature models), have not developed even the renegade the film seems actually more interested literary status they enjoy in countries in documenting oppression than revolt like Britain, Japan, the U.S.S.R. and the against it. Although the opening chase United States. sequence (in which the bounty hunter Interestingly, those few examples of tracks a renegade to an abandoned farm- . Canadian science fiction that do exist • Documenting alienation in science fiction Savannah house) is an exquisitely rendered (if a offer ironic testimony as to why the tad overlong), bargain basement hom genre just doesn't come naturally to tion techniques that -would become in when men labour under machine rule age to Sergio Leone, it's actually the doc corporeally-centred Canucks. If this fine stnIment:iI to the realization of films like on the production of life-sustaining umentation of drudgery which is Savan fictional hair can be split, there appear 2001 : A Space Odyssey and Star Wars, chemicals, Savannah Electric can be nah Electric's strongest suit. to be two identifiable strands of Cana ventured to the heavens only to find even more precisely situated in terms of Stratychuk's rendering of The Be dian SF: first there are the inevitable, cosmic vindication of our national in SF sub-genres. The story of one drone's nefactor's steam-choked chemical plant, commercially-generated products of feriority complex_ Consider Peter Mor rebellion against the omnipotent rule of with its hissing valves, droidlike Drones imitation - those films, (such as Def ris's description in The Film Compan a computer called The Benefactor and omnipresent thugs, is easily the con-4 or The Last Chase, or a 1V series ion: " ... this literally awe-inspiring film (who, significantly enough, is also the film's most convincingly concep like Starlost), which by their very awk makes extraordinary use of animation to film's narrator), Stratychuk's film is tualized element. Reminiscent of David wardness - and commercial failure, de present an image of the universe and hu firmly of the assertion-of-individual-will Lynch's epochal conflations in Dune, monstrate the genre's (ahem) alien manity's insignificance in the face ofit. " type. In this popular, usually cautionary Stratychuk's desert-bound chemical fac status in terms of predominant Canadian (pp. 304-4) No wonder Canadians have strain of speculative literature and film, tory is like a 19th century sweatshop fictional tendencies. avoided the potential for interplanetary an individual (or group of individuals) chugging away in a bleak, distant future. Then there are those films, like frontierism offered by speculative fic rises up against a confortnist, totalitarian And while the presentation of character Cronenberg's and Perry Mark Straty tional forms : why travel to other planets regime. Within generic parameters, that would barely qualify as minimal (no chuk's Savannah Electric, which for proof of our ultimate puniness?). regime can be represented by people doubt due to the dramatically debilitat mobilize the generic conventions of SF like Cronenberg, though with radi (the crypto-fascist regimes of 1984, ing budgetary necessity of using post to cast some perennial and deepseated cally different formal means and in Things to Come and Metropolis), synched sound), the reasons for revolt Canadian cultural concerns in a new terests, Winnipeg's Perry Mark Straty aliens (the Star Wars trilogy, Waro/the are never less than obvious: drone life is light. If the dominant strains of Canadian chuk has found in certain SF conven Worlds, the V 1V series), machines vividly presented as a cycle of exhaust cultural practice have been thematically tions a profoundly versatile medium for (though usually, as in Westworld, Col ing labour and electronically-induced (indeed obsessively) drawn to a condi the representation of certain dyed-in ossus: The Forbin Project or 2001 : A narcosis, so that while our revolutionary tion of profound alienation - be it indi the-flannel Canadian concerns. A post Space Odyssey it's machines doing the hero coheres as a psychological pre vidual, social, psychological, political or apocalyptic survival fable ( d la A Boy revolting), or any number of assorted sence, his function as a moral and politi sexual - this kind of film permits the ex and His Dog, Defcon-4, Le Dernier Significant Others (Planet of the Apes cal force is perfectly clear. Besides, the pression of this alienation to shift from combat, Planet of the Apes, Road and its successors). In the political revolt itself seems of less interest to the the level of the literal (or at least Warrior and Stalker, to name a select terms these films set, the greatest threat film than the documentation of the con naturalistic) to the metaphOric. Com few), Stratychuk's film occupies a SF faced by contemporary SOCiety is the ditions that necessitate it. If there's any mercially viable and internationally sub-genre that usually offers two threat to individualism and free will, and aspect of ~vannah Electric that qual celebrated as they are, the thematic con metaphoriC alternatives : the post: the films present a dramatic assertion of ifies it as Canuck SF, this is it: not only is cerns of the films of Cronenberg, with apocalyptic world as an opportunity for individual free will in a world which has it too grounded in political practicality their constant and obsessive return to the reconstruction of a better SOCiety suppressed it. So does Savannah Elec to indulge cathartic fantasies of full the metaphoric site of the mind's sep from scratch, or the deterministic pre 'tric: inspired by a fellow 'Drone' who scale revolt and social upheaval, it has a aration from the body, couldn't be more sentation of that world as a logical but has lost his life in an attempt to escape documentarist's fascination with the Canadian. In the generic confines of sci extreme projection of contemporary so the computer's control, another drone minutiae of social and behavioural pro ence fiction and horror, Cronenberg has cial ills onto a future canvas. Following 'goes renegade' and is pursued into the cess: strange as it seems, it qualifies as found as inexhaustably fertile cinematic the latter route, the decidedly Canadian desert by a human bounty hunter dis sort of SF verite_ discourse for the expression of the same, Savannah Electric conjures a future patched by the none-too-happy Be But realistically, it is precisely this re kind of (if slightly more extreme) alien- world where certain negative national nefactor. fusal to indulge the more kinetic con . ation that has haunted practically the characteristics have run rather amok. In In these human rebellion SF films, the ventions of SF that will probably ensure entire history of postwar Canadian fea fascinating ways, it suggests the future - degree of faith in free will as a revolutio low visibility for Savannah Electric. ture filmmaking. oppressive and industrial - as Don nary force is usually expressed in the Lean on plot and psychology, paced (Not that this is without precedent. Shebib might once have imagined it. outcome of the revolt itself: in 1984, the with a Tarkovskian fidelity to.ennui and Significally enough, one of the most Made for a miniscule $30,000, and set hero's poetic insurrection is quashed indeciSion, Stratychuk's film is both un highly-awarded Canadian films ever, the in an indeterminate future of equal like so much fudge, in the Star Wars tril likely to please mainstream SF zealots 1960 'speculative documentary' Uni economic and ecological blight (with ogy the evil regime is triumphantly (who will find it deadly, short-oo-FX verse, which introduced model anima- prairie dunes evoking global drought), dumped. In Savannah Electric the as- bore), and unlikely to reach those artier ./Cinema Canada - February 1988 • F I L M R E v I E w 5 • types most likely to applaud its ambiti dow by way of Blow-Up and The Con from the sparse audience I saw the frlm ous, homemade modernism. And versation. It borrows rather too much with. Gruber's other relationship, with Stavros C. Stravides' frankly, it is too long. Given the slight from the latter, but shows little of the Adele (Lolita David), the aspiring exotic and ultimately vague nature of Savan brilliance of Hitchcock, Antonioni or dancer, is handled better, but fails to nah Electric's political campaign (the Coppola.

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