Planet of the Apes (1968)

 

SYNOPSIS: A team of astronauts led by Taylor (Charlton Heston) leave Earth in the 1970s and crash on a planet at a time far in Earth's future due to the relativity of time. Forced to leave their space capsule, they struggle to survive and explore the barren alien terrain until they stumble upon what look like other humans. But those humans are swiftly hunted and captured by apes, clothed and riding horses. Taylor is captured and placed in a sort of human zoo for medical testing. When the apes learn that unlike the other humans on their world Taylor can speak, he threatens their society sparking a trial that explores the nature of ape evolution. Meanwhile, an ape scientist has made some fascinating archaeological discoveries near the Forbidden Zone where Taylor was found. Are all parties involved ready for what truths may be uncovered?

Planet of the Apes is unquestionably a science-fiction classic. It is perhaps overshadowed by that other film of 1968, a little project called 2001: A Space Odyssey, which unfortunately steals a bit of its thunder. But truly, Planet of the Apes is a well-made and important film in the genre that stands up against a lot of the other great science-fiction of its era. If you've never seen it because you don't care about some monkey planet, I recommend giving it a watch. There's more going on in this movie than you've heard about, and I only touched on little bits in the synopsis. Also, this is a movie that is best viewed with no knowledge of the ending. Sadly, it's so famous that it's become a casual part of our popular culture. It's so often parodied that it's difficult to go into this movie unspoiled. However, even if you think you know the end, it's worth seeing for the rest of the story. Based on a French novel, Planet of the Apes was originally adapted for the screen by Rod Serling, creator of The Twilight Zone. His original script would have proved too expensive, as it followed the book with the apes having a very technologically advanced society. The script was rewritten to scale this back and make the movie affordable, but Serling's fingerprints are all over this. There's a very good argument to be made for Planet of the Apes as a kind of big-screen version of The Twilight Zone (before that lousy one in the 1980s).

The first 30 minutes of the movie have nothing to do with the apes at all, focusing on the astronauts struggling on this foreign world. There's solid, classic science fiction here, with hibernation sleep in the ship, emergency evactuation, struggling to find plant life. The cinematography of the movie is striking. I noticed the use of lens flares, which were very new at the time. For decades, cameramen had worked to eliminate the flaring of light in the lens. But in 1967, Cool Hand Luke began a new trend in cinematography and I had forgotten that this film was part of that. Because that sort of thing was so new on film, it lends a kind of alien element to the look of the vistas. Knowing all this was shot on location, the movie is shot in such a way to make familiar American desert look alien. The science is treated seriously enough for its time, with discussion of time dilation due to space travel. Even the fact that they walk around without helmets is something I buy in this instance because they had to evacuate quickly. The story is cleverly crafted to explain how they are mistaken for the other humans on this world. The slow burn of the first third of the movie sets things up without undermining the weirdness of the proceedings.

Watching the movie again after viewing the prequel trilogy, I'm struck by how many elements were played for reverse in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, making me appreciate that film's script even more. Thematically, the movie is based around reversals: animals in charge over human captives. And ultimately this leads to a kind of reverse Scopes Trial that explores the nature of science and religion and man's place in evolution. But if you think that this movie is just a meditation on faith vs. religion and that its message is that science trumps superstition, you would be wrong. Watching it several times, I actually come away thinking that neither party is entirely correct. So it's not a promotion of scientism, or at the very least that is not the only thing at play in this movie. One side argues the scriptures are true and there must be other explanations for the archaeological discoveries. The other side argues that Taylor is proof of humanity's place in ape evolution and is a missing link. But of course, both sides are seeing what they want to see and both are partially wrong. If Taylor has indeed crashed here from another world, it's entirely possible that he is not proof of anything regarding evolution there. So as much as the movie favors scientific discovery and discourages conspiratorial sweep-ups that obscure the truth, I look at it and say a reasonable person can draw new conclusions without throwing everything away. But I may be bringing my own biases to that.

The movie is very much a product of the late 1960s and toys with lesser themes like the youth rebellion and matters of race. The racial element was very apparent to me on this most recent viewing. The one black astronaut is killed in the hunt, and it's hard to not see racial connotations when people are running through fields being caught in nets, dragged away to be slaves, given new names (Taylor is called Bright Eyes), and having fire hoses turned on them. Given that there were and are racists that equate black people with apes, the reversal at play here is striking. The indignity and inhumanity onscreen I think certainly is making statements about civil rights in America. The humans in the film are used for medical experimentation and one of them is lobotomized. Certainly this speaks to the question of ethical treatment of animals, but I was also reminded of the Tuskeegee experiments.

 The musical score is also worth mentioning. It is very percussive, lending a feel that is strange and primitive, but with a kind of sophistication. It definitely lends the movie that otherwordly feel early on, but subtly recalls the jungle and the sort of thing we might associate with apes.

Now, I have to talk about the ending and the can of worms that it opens, but if you have not seen this movie or somehow do not know the ending, I implore you to STOP READING HERE! This movie is best viewed when unspoiled. You have been warned.

In the final scene, we see the remains of the Statue of Liberty and learn that this planet was in fact Earth the whole time, just thousands of years in the future. We are told that humanity destroyed themselves and Taylor is left pounding his fist in the sand shouting, "You maniacs! You blew it up!" As a twist, this is great because the movie has done a good job trying to convince us it's another planet. What I love about the twist though is how it validates some of the sillier sci-fi movie tropes. For example, in lesser films you'd go to another planet and there would be beings who look just like humans and everyone speaks English. Astronauts would walk around without helmets and not comment at all about the atmosphere. Plant life would look the same, etc. It's actually brilliant that the movie's secret conceit makes this all that much more reasonable. The desert vistas of the location shoot end up being fine because it's Earth! The only lingering curiosity is the moon. One of the astronauts says early on there was no moon at night. Knowing the ending, what implications this has! Did the humans blow up the moon? Was it just a new moon that night? Was the atmosphere so altered that the moon was no longer visible?

The time scales involved also interest me. This movie is set roughly 2000 years in the future. This means that mankind went mute and devolved while apes gained intelligence and took over in the span of a few thousand years. I like that because on the one hand it's a long enough span of time that things like human dolls and a lot of things about our society could be lost, but at the same time it calls into question hand-wavy statements like "it takes millions of years!" I can now explore a little more the themes I was hinting at with my Rise review. If we take the prequels as the history here, then I find the whole faith vs. evolution debate even more fascinating since arguably it was intelligent design that made the ape society! It didn't just happen. While there were unintended consequences that led to how things evolved (humans becoming mute through viral mutation, apes becoming smarter and creating society organically themselves), the thing that kicked it off wasn't random chance, it was purposeful experimentation. I just find that kind of hilarious in light of some of the things at play here. I would also note that while there has certainly been evolutionary change on display in these 2000 years in the film, gorillas are still gorillas, orangutans are still orangutans and chimps are still chimps. They have grown intelligent, but haven't changed species. (But of course, that takes "millions of years!") I say this only because to take a simplistic message from this movie regarding the science vs. faith debate is to ignore facts in evidence. I see nothing wrong with both accepting data as data and not immediately questioning an entire belief system. I don't believe science and religion need to be at odds or that one paradigm must be entirely abandoned for another. Fossils and evidence do not scare me. As Scully said, "Nothing happens in contradiction to nature, only in contradiction to what we know of it." I might disagree slightly in that the miraculous would be definition be supernatural, but I think the underlying point is important. This movie tells us that knowledge can be dangerous. That does not mean we bury it, but neither does it mean we must embrace the first new explanation to the abandonment of all else.

The final moments turn the microscope hard on humanity, seeing us as savages who kill each other and ultimately destroyed ourselves. It's yet another big 1960s theme about the dangers of global war. When I look at the movie as a whole, it is so much more than a scientific debate, or a clever reversal of tropes. It would be easy to think it's just a big allegory about evolution but as I indicated earlier I think that reading misses the point. That's part of it, but the themes at play are bigger. Ultimately I think the point of the movie is holding up a mirror to humanity and exposing our barbarism. It asks us to look at ourselves and see if we are behaving like men or like beasts. How have we treated the young people? How have they treated their elders? How are we treating others that we might view as inferior even though they are human too? And ultimately, will this kind of thinking lead us to destroy ourselves? Because there is so much richness underlying this movie, it is elevated to the upper level of science-fiction on film. Planet of the Apes is more than a weird and wacky reverse world, and more than a heavy-handed allegory; it is a smartly-crafted story with many themes at play and remains just as relevant and interesting today as it was fifty years ago.