The Earth Abides

I’m a big fan of the “last man left on Earth” genre. I guess I like the minimalism style and the solitude subject matter. Anyway I’ve been reading The Earth Abides by George R. Stewart which is a book where a disease kills off most of the people. Recently I found a film from 1985 called The Quiet Earth. It was a New Zealand indie film and something that when I heard about it sounded like full exploration into that whole type of movie. No zombies or anything like that in this one most of the people are just gone vanished. There is a sci-fi twist but the most interesting part about this movie which I’ve had around for awhile is that it was the same movie that I saw the last 10 minutes of over 10 years ago. Like a song you fancy on the radio but never get the name of this movie was something that looked very strange, if you see just the last 10 minutes you’d probably have the same feeling, but was also something that I wanted to understand for what it was worth. When I watched this movie last night from the first few seconds I was very certain that this was in actuality the movie that I had been looking for and that after all these years I would get some sense of closure. It wasn’t a spectacular movie but as indie New Zealand films from the 1980’s go this one did have some funny and cinematic moments that only a film of this genre can have. Well now I have the closure; only for me the last 10 minutes still hold more questions than answers but some of the final pieces of imagery, like some dime sci-fi novel from the past, contain an elucidating exploration into a new world that I think cinema can do well, sometimes.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089869/