2009 is officially the International Year of Science. At a time when scientific research is developing faster than ever but scientific literacy is in decline, creative minds around the globe are coming together to try and restore public enthusiasm for discovery, invention and the pursuit of knowledge. Everyone knows that the movies make a big contribution to shaping attitudes about what's cool, but what's their attitude to science, how do they portray it and just how seriously should we take them?
Back in the early days of film-making, when cinema itself was an exciting new technology, there was a lot of enthusiasm for science among movie makers, but this was tempered by the cautionary attitudes of early science fiction writers like Mary Shelley and HG Wells. The warnings they gave were echoed in tales like Metropolis and James Whale's Frankenstein, which suggested that experimentation undertaken with good intentions might easily go too far.
In the Forties the boom in pulp fiction led to an explosion of low budget science fiction films exploiting popular concerns, with titles like Drums Of The Congo, Return Of The Ape Man and The Mad Monster. These films did much to develop the image of the mad scientist as we know it today, with wild hair, flapping lab coat and crazy eyes. But during the Fifties and Sixties scientists came to be presented as heroes too, as with the learned Professor Quatermass, and they were frequently called upon to help defend the Earth from alien monsters, as in Earth Vs The Flying Saucers and Zombies From The Stratosphere - even if everyone knew the monsters were really standing in for International Communism.
Perhaps one of the most famous portrayals of a scientist with noble intentions was in the 1956 classic Forbidden Planet, but it was not entirely a positive one. In this updating of Shakespeare's The Tempest, Walter Pidgeon played the ageing gentleman researcher too caught up in his work to understand the risks it posed in combination with his own human foibles.
Bringing things a bit more down to Earth, Seventies science fiction films tended to be grounded in reality. Movies such as The Andromeda Strain explored how the scientific establishment might cope with real world problems, and asked questions about the ethical complications raised by advances in technology, whilst movies like Solaris introduced more remote environments but applied a traditional scientific approach toward them. This was something which would continue in later films like 2001: A Space Odyssey, and which would inspire many people to become scientists, though such positive representations continued to be outnumbered by sensationalist ones.
So where does that leave the scientist hero of today?He can be difficult to find. An interesting recent example can be found in M Night Shyamalan's The Happening, in which Mark Wahlberg plays a teacher who takes the time to explain the scientific method to his students (and hence to viewers) before attempting to apply it in dealing with a catastrophic natural event. Unfortunately the science at the core of the film's story is so unrealistic as to make it difficult to take this effort at education seriously. The same might be said of its predecessor The Day After Tomorrow, in which Dennis Quaid's Antarctic researcher pitted his academic training and field skills against a scenario so overblown that it couldn't help but make him look ridiculous.
To find more impressive examples, it's necessary to look outside the mainstream. Ghost Busters may not be realistic in its basic premise but it's unusually so in its depiction of scientist characters and their relationships with academia and business. Among the independents, Primer stands out as a smart and well researched story about two scientists setting up in business, even if the basis of their research is rather unusual.
Setting fiction aside, there's a strong tradition of science documentaries which began with the popular short films of the early 20th Century and which has continued to this day, impressive recent contributions including Phie Ambo's Mechanical Love and Werner Herzog's Encounters At The End Of The World. As documentaries in general enjoy a surge in popularity, we can only hope that work like this reaches a wider audience.
Contributing to a positive portrayal of science in film is not without its rewards. Each year at Sundance a special effort is made to promote movies with scientific and technological themes, and the Alfred P Sloan Foundation award is presented to the 'writer and director of an outstanding feature film focusing on science or technology as a theme, or depicting a scientist, engineer, or mathematician as a major character'. The foundation also provides prizes at other events, and for documentary makers, there's a whole film festival devoted to science held in Athens in May. Members of the public can attend for free! So why don't you celebrate this special year with a trip to the cinema to see something that broadens your horizons?
