Movie Review: Love / Cert: 12A / Director: William Eubank / Screenplay: William Eubank / Starring: Gunner Wright, Corey Richardson, Bradley Horne / Release Date: 7th sept
It would be easy to dismiss Love outright. This is a film produced by Tom DeLonge from rock group Angels and Airwaves who themselves were sometimes viewed as a vanity project after the Blink 182 melt-down. Love is also a science fiction piece with aspirations to be in the same league as 2001 and Solaris. With everything against it, Love surprises completely by being a stunning work of emotional sci-fi.
The plot, what there is of it, starts in the American civil war and finds a soldier sent away from the front line to look for something that has been spotted in a crater. We then find ourselves in the future and on a space station in Earth orbit, astronaut Lee Miller (Gunner Wright) loses contact with mission control on Earth and spends out his lonely existence becoming increasingly paranoid and confused as he suspects that mankind has been wiped out down below him. Interspersed with this is footage of men from all walks of life giving interviews where they express their opinions on the best things in life. If you think this doesn’t make sense, don’t worry it will…. kind of. Much of this is up to your own interpretation much like Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain.
I may be a big wet sap but Love got to me, I was stunned, riveted and unable to shake loose from this hypnotic low budget visual treat. The actual message here, should you choose to hear it, is a simple one and the more cynical and jaded viewer may recoil from what writer and director William Eubank is saying but if you go with it and let the feelings and visuals wash over you then you will find much reward.
What is amazing about this film, more than the feeling it leaves you with, is the fact that it was made for a mere 200k mostly in William Eubank’s back garden. Let me tell you that not once does this feel low budget, during certain scenes Eubank has the same level of visual style and gift for framing that we see in the films of Tarsem Singh. The space scenes are all very convincing and although it may not have the level of technology and flashiness in something like Prometheus, it’s never less than believable. As our anchor to this tale, actor Gunner Wright is superb as the stranded possibly last human in existence. The pain, loneliness and anguish he feels are all perfectly written on the actor’s face and you feel like you are right there in the small craft with him.
Love is the best kind of low budget film there is. Not for everybody sure, but it’s a film packed with ideas, heart and invention that manages to be better than films with ten times the budget.
Showing in London and keys cities from 7th September
