DIRECTOR:
Lennart Ruff LEAD CAST: Sam Worthington,
Taylor Schilling, Tom Wilkinson, Agyness Deyn
SCREENWRITER: Max Hurwitz
PRODUCER: Arash Amel, Fred Berger, Leon Clarance, Brian Kavanaugh-Jones,
Ben Pugh EDITOR: Ann-Carolin Biesenbach MUSICAL DIRECTOR: Fil Eisler GENRE: Sci Fi, Fantasy, Drama
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Jan-Marcello Kahl
DISTRIBUTOR: Digi-Optic Films
LOCATION: Spain RUNNING TIME: 97
minutes
Technical assessment: 3
Moral assessment: 3
CINEMA rating: V13
MTRCB rating: PG
Earth
will soon become inhabitable, man will become extinct. Professor Martin
Collingwood (Tom Wilkinson) leads a military experiment to create a super being
that can survive the harsh conditions in Titan, a moon of the planet Saturn.
The plan is to relocate humanity there to avoid extinction. Rick Janssen (Sam
Worthington) volunteers to be part of the experiment, and he survives the battery
of chemicals and foreign matter introduced in his body. Other volunteers are
not as lucky. They become rabid, some implode, others slaughter their own
family and are subsequently exterminated by the military. Rick’s wife Dr. Abigail
Janssen (Taylor Schilling) finds out why: she discovers that Professor
Collingwood is not just enhancing the human species, he is transforming it into
some other species. Abigail attempts to extricate her husband—who by now no
longer looks human—from the experiment.
The Titan is one of those
movies that can hold the suspense as it shows you the gradual (read that, slow)
transformation of Rick’s face and body into something other than human. It’s a
combination of music, special effects, a play of lights, and a camera that
understands how to guide our path of vision. The Rick here is the same Sam
Worthington of James Cameron’s blockbuster Avatar.
Here again, we see his human face only at the beginning, and for the rest of
the movie, he is transformed into an alien. He seems to have mastered acting
with prosthetic makeup because he does deliver better characterization as a half-human.
As to Tom Wilkinson’s Professor Collingwood, he does not interest us enough, we
don’t see the depth nor the mania of his conviction to create a super being. Agyness
Deyn as the professor’s assistant puzzles us with her sudden change of
allegiance, and it took us some time to figure out why she was fleeing alongside
Dr. Janssen.
Arash
Amel who wrote the story describes The
Titan as a love story, revolving
around Rick’s devotion to his son, reading to him at night, hoping the experiment
would ensure that his son would have a future—these are family values we hold
dear in our culture. More so is Rick’s devotion to his wife and their intimate understanding
of each other, connecting without speaking, and believing in the infinite
goodness of each other—both Worthington and Schilling deliver these messages
quite effectively. But more than the love story, what stands out is the representation
of the two faces of science: a science that upholds humanity and a science that
kills it. Rick is dying and he needs to be transported to Titan where he can
survive with his now evolved biological makeup. But Rick is resisting it
because his mind tells him he is first and foremost a father and a husband. Professor
Collingwood wants to inject Rick with a chemical that would erase Rick’s memory.
Abigail knows that if she allows Collingwood to do that, Rick will lose his only
link to her and their son, and to his own humanity. What a good message from a
movie that, although not as amazing and grand as Avatar, is nevertheless illuminating.
(ME)
