SYDNEY FILM FESTIVAL: Swiss documentarian Christian Frei captures lots of memorable images but fails to provide a compelling focus in Space Tourists, his account of the current state of the once-mighty Russian space program.
The film attempts to cover all aspects of the cash-strapped sector as it exists today and many viewers will be grateful for the rare glimpses provided of Soviet aeronautical technology, albeit outdated in many cases. But Frei’s methodology of intercutting his subjects fails to build any narrative momentum or impart all but the most obvious wisdoms.
Russian rockets and their highly-trained cosmonaut pilots are now at the service of capitalism, acting as outer-space babysitters for rich people who want to experience the wonders of life on a space station. The initial focus of the film is Anousheh Ansari, an Iranian-American millionaire who has spent US$20million on becoming an astronaut. To Frei’s credit, he does not begrudge Ansari’s lifelong passion for space travel; she may represent the new crass face of the space program’s rockets-for-rubels existence, but it is not her fault that things have reached this point.
Over the course of the film’s often meandering 98 minutes, we meet a range of Soviets for whom the space race has yielded mixed results: the photographer Jonas Bendiksen, who snaps the barren landscapes and rusting technology that is the only reminder of a bygone era; the ragtag group of scrap-metal merchants, who gaze at the sky waiting for the jettisoned fuel tanks to fall back to Earth so that they may recycle their worth; and middle-aged would-be cosmonaut Charles Simonyi, whose journey reveals the antiquated training methods still being employed.
The most effective sequence is in the final five minutes of the film, when a silent, nameless shepherd creates a makeshift hut from the discarded metal casing of a rocket.
Frei’s determinedly objective style of factual filmmaking peaked in 2001, when his fly-on-the-wall classic War Photographer earned him an Oscar nomination. With Space Tourists, he is equally determined but the subject matter yearns for a more heartfelt exploration; the highs (Ansari’s lift-off) and lows (evidence of disease outbreaks in villages where rocket-fuel remnants fall) are frustratingly inert occurrences, as if Frei was concerned an occasional indulgence in emotion might distract from his big-picture focus.
Nothing should detract from some of the wondrous images captured in this documentary: the terrific footage of Ansari’s stay aboard the orbital space station and the media circus that follows her flight; the team of metal merchants tilting their necks skyward at the sonic boom when the discarded rocket – its smoking fuselage cutting a swathe across the sky – re-enters the atmosphere. Frei’s location work and access to former Soviet facilities indicates that much behind-the-scenes work had been done to ensure authenticity (it also explains Frei’s less-than-prolific output, this being only his fifth film since his 1997 debut, Ricardo, Miriam y Fidel). But the detachment from the humanity of his subjects is frustrating and mars a technically fine piece of filmmaking.
