Whatever else you might say about the work of Alex Proyas it would be hard to deny that his films (The Crow (1994), Dark City (1998), I, Robot (2004)) look stunning. A product of 80s music videos (he directed promos for the likes of INXS, Yes, Mike Oldfield and Crowded House among others), Proyas was different to the majority of his contemporaries, preferring a beautifully lit and framed image over the editing frenzy that many former promo directors unleashed on their feature projects. His feature debut, Spirits of the Sky, Gremlins of the Air is a slow-moving, almost art-house post-apocalyptic drama packed to the rafters with arresting images.
It begins with a lone figure wandering slowly through the desert, passing a forest of huge, ornately decorated crucifixes (the film overflows with Christian iconography), a decaying billboard, strange structures that could just as easily be sculptures as abandoned buildings and a monument of rusting cars buried nose down in the sand. We’re in the wake of some never specified apocalypse and the stranger is Smith (Norman Boyd, credited as The Norm). He stumbles upon the remote shack that plays home to siblings Felix (Michael Lake, later a producer of films like Fortress (1992), Trapped in Space (1994), Meteorites! 1998) and Alien Cargo (1999)) and Betty Crabtree (Rhys Davis). He’s confined to a wheelchair by an accident caused by his obsession with building a glider that can help them escape over the impenetrable mountains to the north and she’s dangerously unhinged, a religious maniac who believes that Smith is a demon and determines to get rid of him. Smith is initially sceptical of Felix’s plans to build a working glider but as the pursuers that have followed him from the south get ever closer to the homestead, he finds himself drawn in Felix’s ambitious but crackpot schemes.
Spirits of the Sky, Gremlins of the Air often feels like the quieter bits that must have taken place between Mad Max films, a surreal, beautiful and haunting film that won’t be for those in search of a snappy pace or a traditional narrative but will amply reward those who stick with its sometimes alienating pace and oddball characters. Imagine Alejandro Jodorowsky tackling the next Mad Max film and you’re part way there. There are hints too of Andrei Tarkovsky and Serio Leone here with a dash of Robert Altman’s Brewster McCloud (1970) thrown in for good measure.
There are only three characters in the film, all varying degrees of nuts. Smith is the sanest of the three but he has a dark past – he’s on the run from something that we never really learn that much about though at the climax, a trio of figures that we assume have been pursuing him appear on the horizon. Michael Lake does much of the acting
heavy lifting as Felix, pursuing the dream of flight that has crippled him while trying to deal with the insanity of his sister Betty, an off-the-wall performance from Rhys Davis (actually Melissa Davis from Dead End Drive-in (1986) under a pseudonym) that will irritate as much as it captivates.
One might question whether there’s much substance beneath the surface flash of Proyas and director of photography David Knaus’s gorgeous imagery. There are hints of a vaguely formed allegory about the clash between religious faith and technology that threatens to surface from time to time but Proya’s script isn’t all that bothered about it. Nor is it overly concerned about asking nagging questions like where do all the candles come from and where do Felix and Betty get their food and water? It’s not really a film for thinking about, but just for drinking in the extraordinary images and going with the flow.
Like a lot of “artier” genre films, Spirits of the Sky, Gremlins of the Air would have made a fine short film. It looks stunning but after twenty minutes of artfully lit and framed images the need for something meatier to sink our teeth into starts to wear the film down. It’s certainly ambitious and Proyas gets an awful lot for us A$500,000, but a more engaging story would have been nice.
But it’s such a ravishing looking film that it’s hard to pick on it too much. It’s very clearly the work of a talented director with a painterly eye for texture and detail stretching his wings. Like Felix, Proyas and Spirits of the Sky, Gremlins of the Air don’t always get off the ground but, like Smith, when they do the result is simply glorious.
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