Love

Overview

Shunning the usual sci-fi stereotypes of aliens and laser guns in favour of an emotional journey that is as powerful and thought provoking as it is really quite horrifying, William Eubank's debut feature Love is an opus on a celestial scale.

Orbiting Earth in a one-man space station, astronaut Lee Miller (Gunner Wright) loses contact with Houston, quickly and painfully becoming all too aware of what it is to be truly alone. As time passes, life support systems begin to fade, and the loneliest man in the known universe has to battle to maintain his sanity. The film, led by a truly engaging score provided by Angels and Airwaves, asks the question, is a life without someone to share it with really a life at all?

With interviews and sequences from across history popping up throughout the movie, it can be easy to lose track of what is actually going on, meaning that to really get the best out of this picture you have to be prepared to think. If you can handle that, then you're in for a ride that'll paint an immersive and highly evolved picture of resilience in the human condition, one that will leave you in thoughtful silence as you leave the theatre.

Four years in the making, the project appeared from the ashes of another's failure — namely, Tom DeLonge's ill-fated idea of creating a music video for each track on one of Angels and Airwaves' albums, an idea that was abandoned because the videos just weren't interesting enough.

Produced on a miniscule budget (the space station was actually built in the driveway of the director's parents), Love is an impressive feat. With little to no character interaction throughout, Miller's surroundings become a secondary character themselves, with every flashing light and shining white surface becoming an ever shifting, breathing wall in a claustrophobic prison.

Love is a movie with a striking message that really needed to be delivered, but on the whole it fails to perform its purpose. Visually striking and painstakingly crafted, it is a credit to all involved, but really it's just like a Russian Doll — filled with many layers and surprises but ultimately empty.