Christmas on Mars
Yesterday I saw Christmas on Mars, the Flaming Lips‘ film which has finally been released after a seven year gestation period. Going on my experience of the Lips’ music and shows I was expecting a piece of gentle psychedelic whimsy but this was altogether much darker.
The story focuses on a group of astronauts on a space station on Mars in 2055. The station is starting to disintegrate as are the minds of most of its crew. Then a stranger arrives (Wayne Coyne, complete with antennae) and things start to change…
Wayne Coyne was present at the screening and did a Q and A after the film in which he explained the ideas behind the film. Apparently he was influenced by some of the stories he’d heard in childhood about a failed mission to Mars which had been covered up (learned from from his dope-smoking elder brother, unsuprisingly).
Shot mainly in black and white and featuring shots of dead babies and marching bands of men with the heads of female genitalia, plus a matching disorientating soundtrack, Christmas on Mars easily earns its place in a year from winter’s canon of disconcerting art.
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