Tagline:
No escape. No memory. 90 minutes to live.
Wide Release Date:
May 12, 2021
Directed by:
Alexandre Aja
Written by:
Christie LeBlanc
Produced by:
Alexandre Aja, Grégory Levasseur, Vincent Maraval, Brahim Chioua, Noëmie Devide
Starring:
Mélanie Laurent
Mathieu Amalric
Malik Zidi
PREGAME THOUGHTS
A choice brought about by scanning Netflix again, as it has been lately. I was in the mood for some suspenseful science fiction, and a movie about a woman trapped in a cryogenic chamber for an entire movie sounded immensely entertaining.
And the rest is history.
THE 600(ish)-WORD SYNOPSIS
A woman (Mélanie Laurent) takes a large, gasping breath. She appears to have woken up in some sort of Hefty bag. After scrambling to tear herself loose, she discovers that she’s trapped in a coffin-sized chamber with various IV hookups and connections to the computer panels that surround her cramped space. She doesn’t know who she is, where she is, or how she got there. The computer, an A.I. being named M.I.L.O. (voiced by Mathieu Amalric) is her only companion. He provides assistance as long as the woman’s commands are possible and/or make sense. Most are not possible.
You know what? It’s actually kinda cozy in here.
Making matters worse, upon awakening her oxygen levels are down to ~35% and rapidly declining. Most of the movie covers her attempts to take control of her situation, throwing commands at M.I.L.O. to try to pinpoint her whereabouts, escape the chamber, make outside contact with anyone who can rescue her, and even learn who she is. Along the way, she learns her name is Elizabeth Hansen (Liz), she is trapped in a cryogenic chamber, and she herself is a doctor of cryogenics. Most attempts to escape prove to be fruitless. The police can’t figure out where she is. Her chamber is reported to have been destroyed three years prior. M.I.L.O. is unable to perform certain commands and answer certain questions, warning of security clearance codes and/or the impossibility of requests. Research into her own identity reveals a man named Léo Ferguson (Malik Zidi) who seems to be both a romantic partner and the key to her situation.
She finds the residence of Léo, but a woman on the other end of the connection claims he is dead. The woman then calls her back and gives her very cryptic information about her situation, that she will die if she leaves the chamber, and that she needs to “find Léo”. The woman then instructs Liz to disable centrifuge controls, which causes her to float in zero-gravity. Liz’s chamber is located in outer space. Humankind on Earth will be completely eradicated by a virus, the same virus that has killed Liz’s husband Léo, and she is part of a mission to relocate to an distant planet and repopulate the species. She is one among 10,000 other chambers together on a one-way trip. About 500 have been destroyed, along with their inhabitants, by a rogue asteroid and are considered lost. Liz’s chamber is the only undamaged, but “lost” chamber, with a conscious inhabitant.
Yo, how do I get Minesweeper on this bitch?
Oxygen continues to decrease. Liz tries to call her aging mother, but she seems very confused before the connection is lost. Her attempts to reroute processors and disable non-essential functions are unsuccessful. She briefly prepares for jettisoned suicide, but has the idea to search other chambers for Léo. Liz’s memories of her years of cryogenic experimentation reveals Léo’s pod number, and she discovers pod-Léo’s forehead is without the Harry Potter scar she remembers him having. Through this revelation and a discovered video of an elderly Elizabeth Hansen giving a presentation on genetic replication, pod-Liz concludes correctly that she, and everyone else she’s with, is a clone with implanted personalities and memories. This news, as you may assume, is unspeakably devastating for her.
When the oxygen levels drop below 2%, M.I.L.O. initiates a lethal injection protocol. Liz barely escapes it.
With barely 1% of oxygen left, Liz is told that she will be able to divert oxygen from the ruined pods to hers as long as she’s in hypersleep. Otherwise, the process takes too long to survive awake. With the final thousandths of a percent dwindling, she manages to reattach all her tubes and hookups before hypersleep.
The movie ends with Liz and Léo on a beach, enjoying lives on the new planet. Such a happy ending.
You know what? I changed my mind. Cremation sounds like the way to go.
TOM’S DISCUSSION CORNER
TOPIC 1 — The Plot Progression and Laurent’s Acting
The plot progression was absolutely brilliant. This is not a movie to go into with any prior knowledge. The whole fun of the movie is that you’re trapped in the box with Liz and you know everything that she knows from the very beginning. She even needs to relearn her own name! You experience everything she experiences… except all the tubes and hookups and the various large needles. That, and unlike her you don’t have to worry about is dying — unless someone shoots you in the head John Wilkes Booth-style while you’re watching. Liz is stuck in this box for the entire movie and there’s never a lull. The audience learns piece by piece what is happening, why it’s happening, and the last thing left is learning what the hell she can do about it before her time is out and she’s flopping around like a fish.
Laurent needs to carry the entire thing. Her emotions are realistically all over the place, mainly bouncing between panic, anger and calmness. There’s a scene where she gets extremely pissed off after learning that she’s a clone of the original Liz; fighting against the notion of her own disposability. “I WANT TO LIVE!” she screams, pounding on the ceiling.
Hey! As it turns out, I need oxygen to live!
TOPIC 2 — The Ending
I didn’t like the ending. I understand that this was supposed to be a suspense story, and with a suspense story one gets a release from all the tension. Usually that means a happy ending. I would have preferred an ambiguous ending.
I don’t even want go there yet. How about the final, successful attempt to stay alive? After a whole movie of believable roadblocks in the way of every single idea Liz had, you finally have M.I.L.O. say “oh wait, how about this thing we could’ve done the whole time?” It was his idea! He didn’t need Liz to worm her way through a labyrinth of the correct questions and prompts to get to it. It was just, hey queen, some of these vessels are broken anyway so how about we divert resources? Sorry for making you hyperventilate away all that oxygen for 80 minutes.
Now that we have that out of the way, the movie actually ends showing Liz and Léo embracing on a beach, alive and okay. Not cool, man. Léo alone on the beach would’ve been interesting. Maybe the footsteps or shadow of someone approaching. The suspense of the story would have benefitted from leaving the movie open-ended, akin to the spinning top from Inception. We don’t need to know for sure if Liz is alive! We just need to know that she gained all the important knowledge and slipped into hypersleep with a sense of peace and satisfaction!
Huff.
View from the Roomba.
TOPIC 3 — Clones
I happened to watch Oxygen shortly after watching Moon, with both dealing with the subject of clones learning that they are clones. While Sam Rockwell’s character in Moon has all of his memories implanted, Liz in Oxygen knows absolutely nothing about who she is until she gets clues that jog her memory.
But let’s say she never got those clues. How was this new planet supposed to work with all these clones? Was it supposed to be swarming with full-blown adults ambling around with no memories of any past experiences, or even what their own names are? Were they supposed to figure out, from scratch, their basic proficient skills? Were past doctors and scientists going to grab a broom and be like “I can be a janitor!” Were they just supposed to find one another and fuck and create a normal generation of people who actually had names and childhood memories?
Science Ethique’s swimsuit edition! Check the centerfold.
That’s the only part that I think wasn’t very well-thought out. BUT, take that component out of the logic for cloning and you ruin the entire movie! In short, don’t think too hard about it.
IMDb TRIVIA FUNHOUSE!
Anne Hathaway was originally attached to the project. She later dropped out and was replaced by Noomi Rapace. After the project was put into turnaround, Mélanie Laurent was cast in the lead role when Alexandre Aja came on board.
The French film had cast the American lady, and then cast a Swedish lady after the American lady dropped out, and then cast the French lady for the French film after the Swedish lady dropped out! Hey man, I would’ve done it!
The turntable playing a record at 40′ is an Audio Linear TD-4001, a look-alike of the Transcriptor’s Hydraulic Reference used in A Clockwork Orange (1971).
Scraping the bottom of the barrel for trivia again. This movie that’s essentially one big bottle episode about a lady trapped in a coffin-sized capsule didn’t have much to contribute as trivia, did it? Here, I got one: Liz Hansen had to pee her pants three times for the duration of her 100+ minutes of consciousness. She enjoyed the sensation.
The destination planet mentioned in the movie, Wolf 1061 c, is an actual super Earth exoplanet discovered in 2015. According to NASA’s website: The planet is 14 light-years from Earth. It has an orbital period of 17.9 days. Its mass is 3.41 Earths with an estimated gravity of 1.66 x Earth.
See, now this is actually interesting! If you’re a casual space nerd like me, you like knowing the stats of various exoplanets! Here’s some additional trivia: with an orbital period of 17.9 days, a 35-year-old loser like me would be ~714 years old on Wolf 1061 c. Bust out the AARP card.
An oxygen therapy tube. How fitting.
IS IT WORTH A WATCH?
Yes. Unless, of course, you read this whole post without seeing the movie and spoiled everything. Literally everything. Then it’s not worth a watch, sorry.
Watch it in French with the subtitles. You have to be some sort of psychopath to watch anything overdubbed if there’s a subtitles option, but since this movie is carried by Laurent’s performance, one should really be in it to watch her… perform. Crazy as that sounds. I imagine overdubs lose a lot of what makes the tension powerful, but what do I know? Is it overdubbed by H. Jon Benjamin? If so, for the love of God, watch it that way instead! His voice is great!
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