Through my 30+ year career in journalism, I have seen films that go above and beyond the call of duty as far as quality is concerned. Conversely, I have also seen films that are bottom-of-the-barrel, low-quality shlock. For example, you may have recalled in my review of Norbit where I praised the film's unique mixture of brash and sweet humor and Eddie Murphy's refined self-insult comedy aesthetic that improves on the extremely flawed Dave Chappelle formula. I'm still surprised to see that so many of Norbit's qualities were never exploited in mainstream cinema. People still write down uninspired, flawed, and corny "arthouse" films like Night and Day, Badlands, and Adaptation as amongst the best in cinema. Because of this, I was tempted to announce that this is a reason why the relatively new medium of film has a long way to go before it can be considered art, but last week, while I was sipping on my Taster's Choice (the finest in supermarket coffee) during my morning routine, I stumbled upon a film that impressed me. Before I can introduce you to this specific film, I have to talk about the director.
Coleman Francis, born 1919 in Oklahoma, is what I want to consider the all-American auteur. Surpassing the juvenile and pretentious Orson Welles in terms of artistic importance, Coleman's brief film career helped change cinema in how students of aesthetics see it. Through his use of minimalist plot devices, the concept of paranoia that people like Hideo Kojima and David Fincher have tried to convey with absolutely no success, and the symbolic motif of coffee (the mundane drive of American life), Francis brought the art of film to a new level. His films codified film as an art, not as a medium striving to be an art. Despite most films today being disposable and devoid of art, films like Red Zone Cuba, The Skydivers, and my film of choice, The Beast of Yucca Flats, remind me why I have devoted my life to the wonders of cinema.
"The best shot I have seen in any film," said Orson Welles.
The Beast of Yucca Flats, incorrectly written off as an exploitation film capitalizing on the heightened hysteria of the Cold War, is a very brief film by 1960s standards - 54 minutes - that efficiently communicates the consequences of scientific progress, the eventual decay of humanity from the enlightened ones into non-autonomous animals, and how the everyman factors into this nightmare. If it weren't for cable-television hucksters Michael Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Trace Beaulieu making a total mockery of this masterpiece in their insipidly unfunny and unartistic showcase Mystery Science Theater 3000, then people would recognize it as the masterpiece it was. I've faced opposition suggesting this film to the Sight and Sound poll of 2012 - when I turned in my list, those clinically academic excuses of critics laughed at my proposal that The Beast of Yucca Flats might be one of the highlights of 1960s cinema. However, I should not attack them - critics do not criticize colleagues, after all.
You got what you deserved, Mr. Ebert. How dare you violate the big rule of film critics.
In terms of philosophy, The Beast of Yucca Flats delves into the concept of autonomy and societal progress. The everyman figure, scientist Joseph Javorsky, played in full form by underrated thespian Tor Johnson, tries to keep his sanity within a world embroiled in espionage-related conflict. However, an atomic explosion goes off and strips the scientist of his autonomy, turning him into a mindless beast. The film then focuses on his pained journey as he tries to recapture his intelligence without realizing that he's been stripped of it. The audience relates to Joseph in the sense that they know the pain that he's feeling - all the people he mindlessly kills. They've been there before - they've done things that they couldn't control because they were in the middle of conflict. Where does this conflict stem from? The debilitating throes of scientific progress, states the narrator throughout the film. It's because of the Space Race and the Soviet's "flag on the moon" that Javorsky has no autonomic processes. He has no free will - he mindlessly walks around the minimalist, empty Yucca Flats, becoming more and more animalistic with each passing second.
The start cinematography puts us in his shoes.
Scientific progress is another topic the film excels at exploring throughout its near-hour running time. While the consequences of scientific progress have been explored in modern films, it either comes out heavy-handed like Inception or stereotypical like Moon, a film people only like because David Bowie's mentally challenged son helmed the project. In The Beast of Yucca Flats, Coleman efficiently shows how scientific progress is bad in terms of its impact on society: it's empty, much like the flats featured in the film. It makes you live as if you were in an eternal fantasy, much like the scene where the father figure runs away from a cropduster a la North by Northwest. Most importantly, it turns you into the mindless monster that Javorsky's gifts have turned him into. This film convinced me that scientific progress was debilitating to society. Even though I'm typing my review on a Mac and drinking lemonade I made in my Sodastream, I have decided to pursue Luddism due to Coleman Francis' excellent thesis on the negative consequences of scientific progress.
This is what science does to you.
One of the bigger themes of the film I have noticed is how media influences others - how nobody has no personal identity that they can call their own besides the one they learned from others, from media, or from those agent-provocateurs that I call the Cinematic Nihilists. The ones who hate American culture the most are the ones who undoubtedly make America follow in its footsteps, thereby trying to figure out a new path to take and starting the cycle all over again. People like Tarantino and Fincher who have written a hypernovel's worth of clumsy satire targeting America end up becoming the face of American culture. Francis criticizes that in detail with The Beast of Yucca Flats, showing how horrible the process is to the natural intellectualism of the medium. The fact that cinematic nihilists have turned Javorsky from well-respected scientist to mindless beast saddens me. This happens everywhere within our established American culture. People like Michael Bay turn from innovators of kinetic cinema into these tiresome, racist, and misogynistic filmmakers who make everything for the anti-intellectuals. It's all because of the cinematic nihilism - they couldn't understand Bay's vision, so they made him degenerate into the mindless rapist-beast that Tor Johnson excellently plays.
I have a feeling that Javorsky is a symbol of everything wrong with cinematic nihilism - why having mindless concerns about the medium will turn promising directors into self-parodies. In that case, The Beast of Yucca Flats turns from a cautionary tale about Cold War brinkmanship into a full-on criticism of media in general. The way we mimic everything from the movies to the way we act around others - it's all defined by the media. Give me one media property that has dealt with this crisis of personal identity in a respectful manner. Why I won't choose Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty or its derivative and boggled-down sequel, Snake Eater, is because I find them to be very inefficient properties that sacrifice the depths of their stories for gameplay. I personally believe that video games cannot be art - interacting with art ruins the purpose of art, which is to observe it and to give anything remotely contrarian undying praise. Besides, Japanese people cannot naturally deal with metaphysical issues. They're too busy making propaganda against America, as seen in films like Oldboy and last year's Rashomon.
He doesn't look like he could handle the simplest of complex philosophy.
In conclusion, The Beast of Yucca Flats is an incredible masterpiece that taught me how amazing cinema is and why I should consider it art. Through its excellent themes, it rises above its cheap aesthetic and turns into a masterpiece alongside Casablanca and Detour when it comes to film noir. Double Indemnity? That was directed by a Nazi sympathizer! Something like The Beast of Yucca Flats is truly objective when it comes to hard-hitting cinema of the 1960s. Now, if you'll excuse, I'm off to have dinner with Piero Scaruffi, Doug Walker, and Phil Fish. We're eating at the most respected of American institutions: Arby's.