George R. R. Martin is a Santa Fe
based writer who recently bought the Jean Cocteau Cinema in Santa Fe and used
his own money to refurbish and open it.
It had closed in 2006. Best known
for his science fiction and fantasy works, Martin wrote “A Song of Ice and Fire,” which HBO made into the television series
“Game of Thrones.” Martin has been
recognized in many ways, including half a dozen Hugo Awards and several Nebula
Awards.
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| The Jean Cocteau Cinema in Santa Fe, New Mexico |
I was lured into the Jean Cocteau
Cinema to view the film “Europa Report”,
since in my novel “Icy Moon. Murder in the Astronomy Department,” the moon
referred to is the ice-covered Europa that orbits the planet Jupiter. The film “Europa
Report” is unabashed sci-fi.
My novel “Icy Moon” is
not. In any murder mystery there has to
be something worth killing for, and in this case it’s a message from space
that’s come from the icy moon Europa.
Clearly this is something of major importance—but the scientist in the
astronomy department who recorded the message (in a very surprising way) is
murdered.
The Cocteau cinema has only 120
seats, and most of these were empty on the Saturday afternoon I went to see “Europa Report.” Directed by Sebastian Cordero, the Ecuadorian
director, it’s a relatively low budget production that lacks over-the-top
special effects and uses a documentary-style format. It succeeds in conveying the feeling of a manned
space ship on its way through space and the inevitable problems faced by the
astronauts. I found a few aspects
unrealistic, like the huge size of the spacecraft launched by a rather small-looking
rocket. It also seemed unreasonable that
all of the crew would descend to the icy moon’s surface in the landing module. (Even on the Apollo moon landing one of the astronauts stayed in orbit.) But I did like the fact they discovered
bioluminescent organisms.
As a species we’re very visual: our
eyes and our ability to see are critical.
This is true of most other multicellular organisms and many types of
eyes have evolved independently throughout the geologic record. The first compound eyes appeared in the
so-called “Cambrian Explosion”, the Big Bang of evolution, about 530 million
years ago. But to use eyes to see, you
need light. Also, for life as we know it
water is critical, and Europa has the largest ocean in the solar system. However, this hidden ocean is capped by a
thick layer of ice, which means the water’s probably dark. So, if some critter has eyes and wants to
see, then light has to be made. There
are chemical reactions that give off light, and when organisms do this it’s
called bioluminescence. On earth,
fireflies are a good example, but a lot of deep ocean animals also make their
own light. Anything that needs to see in
the deep Europa ocean will have to generate light. Bioluminescence will be crucial.
But back to the film. I was very disappointed by the final scenes
which were so chaotic it was difficult to know what was going on and what they
were trying to achieve. This, of course,
made it difficult to feel any sense of tension since you couldn’t figure out
what they were struggling to do, and so didn’t know if they were succeeding or
not. The film critic in our local
newspaper has a rating system of one to four chilies—four being the hottest and
best. “Europe Report” got two and a half, and to me that seemed about
right.
Said in the early 1400’s by Prince Henry (of Portugal), known as “Henry the Navigator”
Trivia
The budget
for the asteroid movie Armageddon was
more than the U.S. spent hunting for real asteroids over the previous fifteen
years. The potential danger of asteroids
was well illustrated by the Chelyabinsk meteor that blazed across the Siberian
sky in February 2013.
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