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Reviews (books, DVDs etc)

ON DVD

Reviewer:

David Lynton

February 2006

War of the Worlds

Directed by Steven Spielberg Cast: Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning
Paramount
2004; Rated M
AUD$30.95
112 minutes
War of the Worlds

Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise) is expecting no more than a weekend with his children when a freak and violent storm strikes his city. As Ray and his neighbours go to investigate, they discover a hole in their street, from which climbs a three-legged alien machine. As the startled crowd reacts, runs or just stands and looks in awe, the machine's death ray begins firing, and all hell breaks loose. The Martians are here (and have been for quite some time, we discover), and they want us dead.

This is an invasion from one family's perspective. There are no television broadcasts of what else is occurring in the world, no CGI enhanced destruction of famous landmarks à la Independence Day; the viewer feels isolated and uncertain, as does the Ferrier family (Dakota Fanning gives an exceptional performance as the terrified daughter, Rachel). All they can do is run and try to survive. For once, Tom Cruise does not save the day; his is not even a particularly heroic character. There are a few plot holes and handy coincidences throughout the storyline, but the special effects are truly amazing, and I suppose something had to suffer.

Spielberg's film is a modern recasting of H.G. Wells's story, and while the constant threat of attack is common to book and film, the origins of the threat are treated differently. At one point, Rachel asks if the attacks are caused by terrorists, and the urge to dissect the story's subtexts suddenly increases.

The death rays are particularly fearsome. As they strike, the bodies of their victims crumble into clouds of dust, leaving only empty clothes and white ash to mark their destruction, and terrifying survivors.

Perhaps Spielberg was here referencing both the Holocaust and 11 September 2001; the images of people covered in the dust of others and of clothes fl uttering to the ground are powerful ones. In an interview on the second of the two discs in this presentation, the director cites the attack on the twin towers as an influence on the way the film was made.

Wells's most compelling point survives the Spielberg translation - that humanity's sophisticated technology of destruction is unable to defeat the invaders. Instead, a part of life on the planet widely deemed insignificant in Wells's day and prone to be overlooked even now succeeds where humans fail.


About the man

Herbert George Wells lived from 1866 to 1946, but his science fiction books have not dated, and they are still being adapted for the screen. In his own time, Wells was famous for being a realistic novelist, an annoying controversialist (famous for his quarrels with other famous people), a sexually amoral cad (he was tubby and had a squeaky voice, so nobody now knows how he got away with his lively sex life), and a socialist who believed that only intelligent people could run the world.

To science fiction readers and writers, H. G. Wells is, quite simply, the true inventor of science fiction.

In other words, he is the Conan- Doyle and Tolkien of the field.

British writers mainly came from the upper classes when Wells was trying to make a career in late 19th-century Britain. His father was a shopkeeper, so Wells had very little money at the time he won a scholarship to study biology in the 1880s. One of his teachers was T. H. Huxley, a great supporter of Darwinian evolution.

Wells was therefore one of the first British writers with a forward looking scientific education instead of a backward-looking classical education. He became a journalist, then made his name as an author with The Time Machine (1895): a fast-paced adventure story about the ride of a time traveller into the remote future, which is also a speculation about where humanity might be headed. Wells's vision of the beach at the end of time is still the greatest science fiction image of them all.

Wells's 'scientific romances' showed that writers should not merely predict the future, but make exciting scientific speculations.

Wells was the first person to suggest that extraterrestrials might be waiting to invade our planet (in The War of the Worlds, 1898), that human biologists might experiment with the human form, transforming animals into human beings (The Island of Dr Moreau, 1896), or that it might be possible to render humans invisible (The Invisible Man, 1897).

In his short stories, Wells outlined many ideas that are still widely used in science fiction.

Wells also wrote well about characters - the ordinary English working people he knew well. In the novel of The War of the Worlds, we see everything from the viewpoint of an ordinary Englishman. His characters represent the readers, caught up in the worlds of the future.

In his later books Wells became preoccupied with his ideas about the improvement of society, and the need to liberate people from the moral and ideological shackles of the society in which he grew up. He also craved respectability.

On the one hand, he wrote realistic novels, such as The History of Mr Polly (1910), while on the other, he wrote a series of utopian novels, including Men Like Gods (1923).

Wells was an optimist, but two world wars drove him to despair.

His last book was Mind at the End of Its Tether (1945).

Bruce Gillespie