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‘Europa Report’ is as taut and real as sci-fi gets

‘Europa Report’ is as taut and real as sci-fi gets

EUROPA REPORT poster

Europa Report
USA, 2013
Written by Philip Gelatt
Directed by Sebastian Cordero

The new independent science-fiction release Europa Report is very much a product of the market it’s being released into. It is shot in the “found footage” style, which is both cheaper to make and easier to market (“it’s like Paranormal Activity in space!”). It received a lengthy release on iTunes and other video-on-demand services before being judged worthy of theatrical release, as many indies do nowadays. But the market does not do it justice, for rarely does the market deliver a film so focused and fully realized in its intentions.

The film purports to be the on-board camera footage from a manned mission to the Juptier moon of Europa, from which unusual emissions have been detected underneath its icy surface. Within the first ten minutes of the movie it is made clear that the international crew of the mission, which includes Sharlto Copely (District 9), Michael Nyquist (the Swedish Girl With the Dragon Tattoo trilogy) and Anamaria Marinca (4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days), was lost. However, it’s also made clear that they were willing to be lost if they could make some kind of discovery, and that will be their biggest challenge.

The scientific community’s interest in Europa is real: footage from an actual press conference by famed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson is repurposed for use in the movie. However, as with most found-footage films, the storytelling is too artificial for an audience to believe for one moment that it actually resembles found footage. As with just about every found-footage film ever made, there’s the question of who is editing this material, and why, and what kind of a sick person he or she might be for delivering such a suspenseful edit of these “real” events.

However, director Sebastian Cordero makes up for the artificial storytelling by attempting to deliver as scientifically realistic a sci-fi film as has ever been made. Every detail has been considered, both for practical purposes and also to make the thriller elements more intense. The confines of the ship are just claustrophobic enough to remind us that there is a lifeless, infinite void beyond every viewport. When things go wrong, they go wrong as in Danny Boyle’s film Sunshine: not because any one character is lazy or a screwup, but simply because space travel is the most difficult and dangerous thing that living humans have ever done. The actors similarly display a terrific combination of grace and stress under pressure, particularly Nyquist, who gets the meaty role of the astronaut who comes closest to cracking.

In fact, the only real problem with Europa Report is that Sunshine exists, and also features some top-notch work from actors cracking under the pressure of space travel. This is not a serious problem, since Cordero obviously had a much smaller budget, and anyway the world of film is easily big enough to tolerate two movies with similar approaches to similar subject matter. But it’s impossible to see Europa Report and not think that it would be even better if it dropped the found-footage gimmick and tried to be as big and epic as Sunshine did. Both films want to depict the amount of badass heroism involved in science and space travel, and both films succeed. Cordero’s only flaw is that his film is not quite as good as it could have been.

-Mark Young

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