Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Q is for: The Quiet Earth



The Quiet Earth (1985)
Director: Geoff Murphy
Writer: Sam Pillsbury, Bruno Lawrence, Bill Baer
Producer: Don Reynolds, Sam Pillsbury
Stars: Bruno Lawrence, Anzac Wallace, Alison Routledge, Pete Smith

The film opens with Bruno, as Zac Hobson, waking up with one hell of a hangover. It comes to light that he’d actually been trying to commit suicide, and what he’s waking up from is an overdose of pills, not a hard night on the town. He’s not entirely with it, so it takes a while for him to realize that he is all alone in the world. There are no people or even animals around.

It’s not until he arrives at the laboratory where he works and finds the dead body of his project director that the truth begins to sink in. He uses a dictaphone to announce his discovery: a malfunction in the project he was working on has resulted in a massive electrical wave that has either killed the entire population of earth or thrown them into another dimension.

Zac realizes he is alone.

The first half of the film explores Zac’s solitude and the way it drives him slowly mad - he winds up in a pink petticoat running around a football field. Once other people show up (it turns out that if you were dying at the moment the pulse hit, you survived), they try to overcome their myriad differences to work together. Zac’s scientific mind figures out that the pulse that destroyed the world may happen again soon, and if they manage to destroy the equipment in the lab, they may be able to save what’s left of the earth.
I know I've used this film before during the A-Z, but I have a renewed appreciation for it now after having seen a beautiful new digitized version in a cinema last year, and heard Geoff Murphy talk at length about it.

8 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. I haven't heard of this one before, but I'm adding it to my list of movies to watch.

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  3. I haven't watched this one, but it sounds interesting. I make it a point to avoid dysotpians, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic movies (and books). Too depressing. I've made exceptions and usually after careful decision-making on how I want to spend the next couple hours. I have yet to disappointment myself with my process.

    The Quiet Earth looks like it could be one of those I get a good vibe from. I'll have to see if Netflix has it...which is a slim chance.

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  4. I don't know this one and will look it up on Netflix!

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  5. Wow! That is a fascinating story. I want to see this.

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  6. I was just thinking to myself that this movie sounded familiar. I think you introduced it to me in one of the last go-rounds. :)

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  7. Wow. This sounds like a very cool film. Again. I feel a very interesting film binge watch coming on.

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  8. Can I just watch all these movies now or what???

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