Transcription
On the Silver Globe is a science fiction film directed by Andrzej Żuławski. Three astronauts leave Earth in hopes of finding freedom, a better way to live somewhere else. In the novel from which this was adapted, the implication is that they land on the moon, but in the film, it is not explicit.
The astronauts attempt to build a new civilization. Years pass, and one astronaut is called The Old Man by the new society, revered as a god. Y sends his recordings and findings back to Earth in a rocket. Another astronaut, Merck, receives the recordings and travels to the planet, curious about what's going on. He is welcomed as the Messiah who must free the people from the Zerns, a race of raven or crow aliens. Merck leads an army to battle the Zerns, but the people start to suspect Merck is only a man and not a divine figure.
Approximately 20% of the film does not exist. On the Silver Globe is incomplete. During the stretches of the film that require an explanation about what would have been filmed, narration is spoken over footage of people riding down escalators or walking on the sidewalk. Even the ending is narration rather than a grand finale. Because of this, the audience is forced to pay careful attention to understand the plot.
The gaps in the film have a lot to do with its troubled production. Żuławski originally left his native Poland to shoot an earlier movie in France for fear that his work would be censored by the Polish government. Upon seeing that film, Poland re-evaluated him and asked him to return. When he did, he shot On the Silver Globe, but long into its production, a new Vice Minister of Cultural Affairs interpreted the battle between Merck's army and the Zerns as an allegory for the Polish struggle with totalitarianism. The film was ordered to be destroyed, but the crew saved much of it in their homes. It was released, still incomplete, about a decade later in 1988.
The history of postwar Poland is full of communist influence, rigged elections, and general political strife. It's not hard to see why one would make the connection between what was going on in the country and what happens in the film.
In the beginning, the astronauts speak of freedom. They have come to this new planet to be free, but they speak an abstract philosophy and pontificate in grandiose, complicated language, navel-gazing all the way. At least according to the English subtitles, their vague pronouncements of freedom are actually quite apt, because freedom is a complicated term. In the strictest sense, freedom is the power or right to speak and act as one wants. But freedom as it relates to the government is trickier. Libertarians would say that the only true freedom is lack of government, lack of bureaucracy, lack of control, lack of oversight, and lack of regulation. But this creates a situation in which people can be harmed by this lack of support from their government. If someone is poisoned by something that was not properly regulated by their government, that person is not more free. If someone loses their home because the government did not properly regulate the housing market, this newly homeless person is not more free.
Freedom can be a paradox. Perhaps the astronauts are not talking about the government, though. Maybe the Polish Vice Minister of Cultural Affairs had it wrong. Maybe the astronauts are referring to freedom from social constraints, cultural constraints, religious constraints, and even human constraints.
On the Silver Globe concerns itself with what it means to be fundamentally human, the core of what we are, our central nature that cannot be escaped. The astronauts land on a new planet and say goodbye to the ways of Earth, but immediately afterwards, they have created a new religion that is not unlike the one they left behind. The people see them as gods. The next astronaut, Merck, is seen as the Messiah, the chosen one who will deliver them from their enemies.
If the film is concerned with the foundation of religion, one can't help but determine that On the Silver Globe suggests that theistic religion is founded on ignorance. The astronauts are definitely not gods, not Messiahs, not anything. The people of the planet simply do not understand space travel enough to make a rational, scientific conclusion that the astronauts are mortal and no more or less divine than themselves. When Merck finds the planet, it only needs to vaguely resemble the prophecy of the Messiah in order for the people to believe in him.
Ignorance, the film seems to say, is fundamentally human. Also, the astronauts do not exactly do a lot to dissuade these beliefs. The film condemns them for perpetuating this ignorance. The astronauts want to escape the trappings of Earth, but it is not long after their arrival before a great ignorance has spread and war has broken out. If there is war on Earth and humans leave Earth to escape it, only to create a situation that leads to war, then one could argue from that perspective that violence is also fundamentally human. If the astronauts take their humanity with them, then it is not the systems of Earth, the governments and such, that create these damning qualities. It is humanity. It is the fundamental nature of humanity.
In the face of a rotting Earth, is there a way to restart humanity without inevitably arriving at the worst of our ignorance and aggression? Are these qualities embedded into us, as natural as the feathers on birds or the scales on fish? The film answers yes. Characters in the film scream into the void, damning their own existence as meaningless.
On the Silver Globe might be political, as the Polish government feared. It shows government to be corruptible, after all. But it is far more about the internal workings of people rather than the external governments. Far more about the frightening nature of humankind.
People often believe in what is called human exceptionalism, the idea that humanity is extraordinary in some way compared to other species. In the final part of the film, Merck, mistakenly believed to be the divine savior of the planet, understands that the exceptionalism of humanity is as much a myth as himself. The director had no interest in instilling this exceptionalism in his characters or even giving it to his audience. That is not necessarily a bad thing, though. Exceptionalism often leads to people assuming their alleged importance is tied to the correctness of their actions.
In one scene, a character refers to the end of faith. "Now that the prophetic age is over, all that is left is what has come." This Messiah, a man who can be killed. When the astronauts say they want to be free, what they mean is that they want to be free of humanity, not free of a particular government or a particular religion. The film has a wider scope than that. They want to be free of all humankind in its violent, ignorant ways, but they can't. They can travel to another world, but they will always bring their humanity with them, with all the good and evil that comes with it.
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