Viking Night: Planet of the Apes
By Bruce Hall
November 20, 2012
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Taylor and his crew are aboard an experimental NASA spacecraft designed to test whether it's safe to smoke cigars in a pure oxygen environment at the speed of light (it is). In space they will age only six months while back on Earth, 700 years will pass. They awake to find themselves crashed on a desolate planet and find that one of the life pods has failed, taking a crew member with it. They're also over a thousand years off course. Also, they seem to be the worst prepared astronauts ever, lacking any apparent understanding of basic astronomy. You almost get the idea they weren’t all entirely clear on what they signed up for.
You also get the idea that their mission - give four clueless people cigars, strap them inside the most expensive thing ever built, send it on a one way trip into the distant future for no real reason - might be the dumbest setup ever.
Thankfully, there isn’t a lot of time to think about that. They encounter life, which seems be human - but none of them can speak, and they’re not the ones in charge on this planet anyway. That role belongs to the howling apes on horseback who appear to round up everyone like cattle. Taylor takes a wound to the throat, and is robbed of the ability to speak. He's mistaken for one of the locals and separated from his friends. He awakes in a kind of zoo, in a world where apes are the highest form of intelligent life. Humans are used medical experiments and even hunted for sport. All Taylor can do is watch in horror as it all unfolds around him.
He’s nursed to health by Zira (Kim Hunter), an animal psychologist who suspects that humans are intelligent, and worthy of respect. But she and her fiancée Cornelius (Roddy McDowall) are alone in their opinion and are treated with contempt, particularly by their boss, Dr. Zaius (Maurice Evans). Still unable to speak, Taylor is eventually able to prove to his benefactors that he’s got marbles, writing them detailed notes describing his incredible journey. Unfortunately the very idea of human intelligence is heresy, enforceable by Zaius and his minions - who seem to know more about the issue than they're willing to say. Set to be placed on trial for his life, Taylor must regain his voice and find a way to escape or defend himself.
His presence has opened a long simmering ideological rift in ape society, one that threatens to tear it apart at the seams.
Of course, some of the parallels are obvious. In our world humans do experiment on animals, use them as a source of labor, hunt them for sport, and some sick people even torture them for fun. Before he regains his ability to speak and therefore overact, Taylor's relationship with Zira is not unlike that of an especially clever ape and his zookeeper. And watching apes mug for photographs over a pile of human bodies is meant to be as disturbing to us as it is to Taylor. These are the conspicuous issues you'd expect a film called Planet of the Apes to address, but this isn't an animal rights film, or an environmental drive by.
The guts of the script are from a screenplay by Twilight Zone honcho Rod Serling. So despite the unfortunate addition of some self serving dialogue, the story remains credible and ripe with parable.
The impact a speaking human has on ape society is as profound as it might be the other way around, an effect actually amplified by the film's low budget atmosphere. Pesky archetypes that they are, Zira and Cornelius raise some compelling arguments that shake both the theological and philosophical pillars of apedom. And shockingly, none of their peers are ready to embrace the annoying way science makes it harder to stay afraid of everything we can't understand. It's solid storytelling that works surprisingly well. More than once you'll be astonished to find yourself unnaturally absorbed in a philosophical discussion between two overly emotive people in monkey suits.
But if all you're thinking is that it takes some pretty good writing to make all this believable, you'd only be half right. It also takes a pretty good performance from the cast, most of whom are indeed behind some pretty heavy makeup. You don’t hear Franklin J. Schaffner’s name often, but the director had a knack for getting great performances out of a variety of people, and he certainly does so here.
So I'll give Heston and his Shatneresque preening a pass, even though George Taylor seems perfectly aware that he is a fictional character in a movie who is in no actual danger. The real story here is anybody who has to be in an ape suit. Good use is made of the actors' natural features, which gives them each a distinctive appearance. And they were clearly trained how to move like our hairy cousins and emote believably behind all that latex. Despite the occasional double pair of lips or quad row of teeth, the apes, even after all this time, are also credible. The costumes aren’t bulletproof, but considering the film is over 40 years old, the fact it still holds up as well as it does makes it a towering achievement.
Planet of the Apes is vintage ‘60s sci-fi, full of obvious allegory, bristling with social awareness and shot mostly on locations that suspiciously resemble southern California. But if - for the sake of parable - you can forgive a rather conservative budget and see the story through the eyes of its characters, you’ll come away with a lot to think about. If you can look past some incredible early leaps of logic, you’ll find this a quaint but well structured story that’s told imaginatively and with legitimate passion. Mostly.
And then there’s that ending. A great ending cannot exist except as payoff to a legitimate emotional investment, and it only truly succeeds when (unlike the Sixth Sense) it works more than once. In my opinion Planet of the Apes is a very worthwhile investment that pays off very well - each and every time.