Spaceship Earth (2020)
dir. Matt Wolf
Rated: N/A
image: ©2020 Neon
Just about every person who participated in the Biosphere 2 experiment -- and subsequently the new documentary about it, called Spaceship Earth -- talks about the scientific goals of their undertaking. As noble as these scientific aspirations were for the project, it’s pretty clear that they were secondary to more emotional and psychological interests. One of the eight members who volunteered to live inside an airlock-sealed facility for two years -- they called themselves biospherians -- recalls her first thoughts just after the door to the outside world was shut and locked on day one. She describes turning on the rain in the vegetation section of the biosphere and gaining a sense of peacefulness. She wanted to wash the air, to wash out the impurities of the world she left behind and "begin anew." She soon discovers, as do we, that it's not easy to begin anew when messy interpersonal human dynamics are involved.
Filmmaker Matt Wolf paints in a sympathetic light the oddball collective who made the 1991 Biosphere 2 project a reality, but he also digs deeper into their unique approach to life. Spaceship Earth is a fascinating study of both recent history and the most eclectic group of people you're likely ever to meet.
The film begins its story with a woman named Kathelin Gray in the only place (considering where we end up) that makes sense: the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco in the late 1960s. Gray was a 17-year-old living the hippie lifestyle, when she met a charismatic man in his late thirties named John Allen. The two made a strong connection over living life to the fullest and continually challenging themselves through learning-by-doing. They quickly became the center of a movement, pulling in a cast of characters every bit as eccentric as they were.
This group formed a sort of commune/avant-garde performance collective called the "Theatre of All Possibilities." Spaceship Earth uses each member's alias within the group as a sort of short hand to relay their eccentric nature -- Wolf never explores these names beyond putting them on the screen -- so I'll do the same. John Allen was known as Johnny Dolphin. Other members had nicknames like Firefly, Flash, and even Horse Shit.
It's a testament to how fascinating this group and their achievements were that the first act of Spaceship Earth could easily have been its own documentary. When the "Theatre of All Possibilities" got bored with the hippie scene of San Francisco, they bought a ranch in New Mexico where they built their own compound, raised their own food, and continued to perform their own unique brand of theater. One member taught herself filmmaking in order to document the group's art on 16mm film. This archival footage makes up a good portion of the early part of Spaceship Earth.
John Allen, the de facto leader of the group, pushed the members of his collective to always keep growing and exploring. When they had achieved everything they thought they could on their commune, they decided to build a ship and sail the seas to see as much of the world as possible. And they did just that. During the late 1970s, in a Wes Anderson movie come to life -- think The Life Aquatic -- the collective built by hand a ship they dubbed "The Heraclitus", named for the ancient Greek philosopher. They then proceeded to visit every continent, setting up "enterprises" along the way that would help fund their work. They built a hotel in Nepal; opened an art gallery in London; bought and maintained land in the Australian outback.
By the mid-1980s, Allen and the group were looking for their next great challenge. They knew that humanity was ultimately destined to explore the stars, perhaps first setting up a base on the moon, then Mars. Explorers would need a completely self-contained living environment in which to work. So, Allen and his group began contemplating Biosphere 2 (Earth itself is, of course, Biosphere 1) as an experiment to find out if it was possible to create such a self-sustaining environment. They brought in scientists for technical advice and recruited eight volunteers to be the biospherians. Their biggest benefactor for the 200 million dollar budget was Ed Bass, a billionaire with ecological interests who inherited part of a Texas oil empire.
The section of Spaceship Earth that covers the Biosphere 2 experiment makes up the bulk of the film. Wolf at this point subtly shifts the picture's perspective on the group he's been chronicling. The most striking point this shift makes is to highlight the infinitesimal difference between a group collaborative with a shared vision and a cult. Wolf highlights this best in his use of the footage of the theater exercises that John Allen led. These exercises were often experimental in nature, focusing on wild movements and spontaneous interactions between members.
In the early part of the film, Wolf uses the 16mm footage taken of the exercises back in the 1960s and '70s. It notably doesn't have a soundtrack. The same sort of exercises shown later in the film, made in the mid-1980s, and filmed on videotape with sound, is a much different experience. The members' incomprehensible shouting and odd noises included on the soundtrack in these clips convey an entirely different message.
Wolf does the same thing with clips from a play that the collective wrote and performed on the eve of the Biosphere 2 experiment. It was called The Wrong Stuff, and it was a way for the group to envision -- and hopefully exorcise -- any problems Biosphere 2 might encounter. When Wolf includes the soundtrack from this performance, just like with the theater exercises, the footage takes on a more cult-like feel.
It didn't help that the media frenzy surrounding the Biosphere 2 experiment also focused on the strange dynamics between Allen and the other members of the collective. Wolf uses copious amounts of news coverage from the time, and several of the biospherians acknowledge that the pressure from the media interest was too much to bear. Members of the mainstream scientific community also voiced their concerns that Biosphere 2 was more performance entertainment than hard science, which the group didn't help dispel when it was discovered that they were forced to pump fresh oxygen into the biosphere because of alarming levels of carbon dioxide buildup.
Some of these late developments in the film are glossed over a little too quickly. Wolf compacts the narrative in a "things were good inside the biosphere, then they were bad, then they were good again" summation that probably undercuts the way it really happened. Spaceship Earth also rushes through its conclusion on what ultimately killed further research -- short answer, Steve Bannon; slightly longer answer, capitalism -- after the two year experiment ended.
All that doesn't diminish the captivating tale he's telling, though. Spaceship Earth is a compelling rumination on human interaction, scientific discovery, and performance art. The group and people it focuses on are unlike anyone you've ever heard of; Wolf did an admirable job of capturing, and adding complicated nuance to, their story.
Why it got 4 stars:
- The totality of this story is so much crazier than I ever thought it could be before I sat down to watch Spaceship Earth. Matt Wolf is an expert at spinning a tale that’s engaging and fresh.
Things I forgot to mention in my review, because, well, I'm the Forgetful Film Critic:
- In my notes, I tried to connect the theater exercises that I mention in the review to the therapy sessions that Don Draper attends in the last episode of Mad Men, but I couldn’t find any clips of wild dancing and shouting in that episode. Did I just imagine them? Me thinks it’s been too long since I took a spin through Mad Men…
- The biggest laugh line of the movie is a contemporaneous news clip covering the start of the Biosphere 2 project. At one point the reporter says, “It’s an ethnically diverse group.” Um, it certainly is not. The group had gender parity, but rest assured, the biospherians were all very white.
- There’s a great vintage clip in here of Rue McClanahan hosting some sort of news special about Biosphere 2.
- I really do regret that Wolf sped over Steve Bannon taking over the financial side of Biosphere 2, which resulted in the end of the project. His sole focus was monetizing a scientific venture. I would like to see more analysis of that. One of the biospherians has a great quote about it: “What happened to Biosphere 2 is what’s happening to the world.” Amen, sister.
Close encounters with people in movie theaters:
- Week eleven. I was very excited to see Spaceship Earth available on Hulu. But, damn, I miss movie theaters.