Cinema Wednesdays - Special edition: The coronaretrospective of anticipation cinema - Loris S. Musumeci
Planet of the Apes has become a veritable planet. It is the focus of several film series, comic books, studies, commentaries - in short, a whole literature, a whole culture. But it all started with Pierre Boulle's best-selling novel, published in 1963. Since then, Hollywood has seized on the story, first adapting it freely, but soberly. And then exploited it even further, with sequels and origins. All thanks to the box-office triumph of the first film in the saga. Planet of the Apes (1968) directed by Franklin Schaffner.
«One thing intrigues me. Man, this wonderfully gifted being, this extraordinary paradox that sent me to the stars. Does he still wage war on his brother? Does he always let his neighbor's children starve to death?»
That's a good question. Captain Taylor (Charlton Heston) is in a position to ask it, because although he's only been on a space expedition for a few months, centuries have flown by on Earth, thanks to the theory of relativity. So, what's become of mankind? But what interests him most is finding out if there aren't better worlds out there. This man and his teammates have left everything behind; they've given their lives to science. Even if they return to Earth one day, who knows how they'll be received. Taylor falls asleep in hibernation like the rest of the crew. A full year of flight has passed. Not without difficulty, the ship ditches. A hostile, arid land to explore, with the appearance of a vast desert.
Until the explorers catch sight of primitive men and women. Restless. Panicked cries. We chase them. Hunting game. Monkeys hold the guns. Welcome to the Planet of the Apes. Where man is a beast among beasts, studied in laboratories and distrusted. Man is to the sacred text of the ape religion what the serpent is to our biblical Genesis. Man is a vile, violent, stupid beast who likes to fight and kill. Yes, we are on the planet of the apes.
What if it were true?
The idea is now well known as part of popular culture, but imagine for a moment the hypothesis that there are human beings somewhere in the universe, dominated by a superior species. Imagine that man is not endowed with reason, that he cannot speak. Imagine that the master, the social animal endowed with reason, is the ape. The same monkeys we find in our jungles and zoos. The same monkeys that scream and eat bananas.
The idea may seem banal to you. Sure, why not? After all, it's only science fiction. But what if it were true? What if it were to happen one day on Earth too? That man would no longer be master, that he would lose the power of speech, that he would be dominated by another species, or in any case by a superior entity? If you consider our humanity at all, you'd be scared to death.
And it's when we're cold in the back that we start asking ourselves real questions, by which I mean questions about our nature, our essence, our existence, our view of life, the value we attribute to man, our behavior, our drifts, our future. Even if it often takes a lot more to start asking questions. You have to come face to face with suffering and catastrophe.
I don't wish us any drama, I don't wish us to lose our minds, to become beasts or even to live in a future where we're the pets of apes. So let's take advantage of fiction to approach this feeling of becoming an ape instead of a monkey. To be tortured in a laboratory, to live in a cage, to be walked on a leash. This is Captain Taylor's experiment for us. To ask us the real questions.
Read also | Planet of the Apes: Supremacy
The monkeys are us
Given that the apes in the film are human instead of human, and that we discover their society, their organization, their excesses, their segregations and their inhumanity in the face of humans, As a result, we come to observe apes as humans. Planet of the Apes is the most simian work that speaks most of human beings. Because apes are us. Beyond the questions we've already asked about human nature, there are the questions the film presents to us verbatim, speaking directly of religious obscurantism versus science and discrimination between apes themselves. On this point, the script is not the most subtle. In fact, it has a very strong, even ridiculous, edge.
Let's not forget, however, that this revolutionary film was released in the United States in 1968. The same year that Martin Luther King was assassinated for his anti-segregationist activities. The same year that the U.S. Supreme Court abolished the law prohibiting mixed marriages between people of different colors. Planet of the Apes is thus considered a political film, acclaimed by some, booed by others.
Despite the controversy, the film was a phenomenal success. And not just because of its message of tolerance. To get a message across forcefully, you need a work of art. The work is there; it's complete. In the camera's interplay between wide shots and close-ups to show the condition of mankind on this planet and its environment; in its costumes and ape make-up, a feat for its time; in some of its powerful, unforgettable lines - «It's the future of our people that I've just saved» - and, above all, in its music, which makes us feel all the exoticism of the place, with its sound effects alternating between classical piano and tribal drums. Jerry Goldsmith's music is, in its continuous composition, the story's first narrator.
Music and eerie noises - like the doll screaming «Mama» - guide us through the dizzying discoveries of the two chimpanzee scientists Taylor has befriended. They believe, they even claim, that humans once dominated this planet. What happened, then, to reduce man to a beast on this distant planet? Perhaps not so long ago. Perhaps not so far away at all.
Write to the author: loris.musumeci@leregardlibre.com
Photo credit: © Twentieth Century Fox
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