The Sky Calls - CLASSICS

Original title: Nebo Zovyot

Directed by Mikhail Karyukov, Aleksandr Kozyr

Country: USSR

Length: 77 min.

Year: 1959 (1963 for the Coppola version)

Availability: USSR version, US version

Synopsis (USSR version): in a future where space stations are a daily reality, two competing countries launch their missions to reach Mars - but a series of accidents will lead them to decide between collaborating or failing.

RATING: 2.5/5 (RECOMMENDED)

THE FUTURE OF SPACE EXPLORATION

With the first ever man-made object in space, the Sputnik Satellite, launching in 1957, it is perfectly clear that The Sky Calls is a film that banks on this very recent achievement of the Soviet Union, to suggest audiences the future implications. Thus, the film does not refrain from demonstrating a range of experiences in a colonised space reality, as well as some future prospects in further exploration of the cosmos. Interestingly, the film's primary suggestions of a reality of life in space are very reminiscent for contemporary western audiences of what Kubrick will present a decade later again in 2001: A Space Odyssey - civil launches to space similar to plane flights, space stations with rotational systems to provide gravity. Surely, The Sky Calls does have the limitations of not having any source for certain aspects of spaceship design or zero gravity's effects (at least officially, no man had ever been to space yet), but it is suprisingly accurate in its portrayal of a viable future. A glaring example is the re-entry scene, often put in comparison with the Space X re-entry experiments, with which it shows glaring resemblances.

SPACE RACE, PEACE OR PROPAGANDA

The Sky Calls imagines a space race to Mars, somewhat predicting the race to the Moon that would start just a few years later. No country names are uttered, but it is obvious that the Ukrainan cosmonaut Eugene Kornev and the foreign Roger Clark represent the two superpowers in their efforts. The film does feature ultimately a message of collaboration, in an adherence to the Krushchev era's openness to diplomacy, it also hides an elaborate suggestion of superiority of the Soviet Union over the United States. This becomes extremely evident in the two scenes that feature the announcement to the respective countries of the two space mission's departures, with the american announcement ridden with advertisements and the chaotic neon signs of Time Square and the soviet one more solemn, on the backdrop of the Kremlin. The whole storyline also implicates a concept that depict the russian-ukrainan space crew as more measured, precise and meticulous than the american one, as they decide to save the yankee counterparts after their reckless use of fuel - prompted by the ground control's insistence to departure sooner. 

 

BATTLE BEYOND THE SUN

When Roger Corman bought the rights to the film, he had a young UCLA graduate re-edit and re-dub the film to make it more appeasing to an american audience. That young filmmaker was Francis Ford Coppola, who supervised this rebrand under the name of Thomas Colchart, with the film renamed as Battle Beyond the Sun. The changes are severe, with the storyline completely changes, and no longer featuring a reference to USA and USSR. An iconic addition to the film was that of two space monsters, that replace an oniric dream of a peaceful alien ecnounter. The Coppola edit also rebalances the depiction of the two crews, and fastens the film's pacing considerably. This complete transformation of the film has the inadvertent effect of proving the Kuleshov effect, which suggests that meaning is conveyed in the juxtaposition of images rather than their separate existence, as Coppola continously re-employs frames to transform their collective meaning entirely. Which version is better? Hard to say. Even with the propagandistic tendencies of The Sky Calls, it does feel more inspired and focused, but Coppola's edit fixes some of the stagnant pacing of the original version.

SIGNIFICANCE TODAY

Aside from the curiosity that might emerge from the comparison with the Coppola edit, or the visions of the future of space exploration that did remain somewhat unaltered since 1959, The Sky Calls is really not a masterpiece. It is a film that employs all the basic techniques of narrative fiction that has propagandistic purposes in a subtle but still perceptible way. The narrative of Russia being the "meek, reasonable" counterpart to a "reckless and provocative" west is certainly something that has permained after the fall of the USSR, and while in this film it did have more of an aim to inspire something more peaceful, such as a focus of joint space exploration, it is now often used as a casus belli instead. With this awareness, still it is hard not to see the sequence of the initial interview, with Yuliy Meitus's beautiful score, and not be in awe at a vision of a future in which humans would explore space together, instead of fighting one another - which, ultimately, is what The Sky Calls is about.