After the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and before Russia’s
ongoing invasion of Ukraine, there was a brief period where Ukrainian
science-fiction director Dmitriy Tomashpolskiy and the rest of the world was
forced to a standstill.In that time,
the writer-director behind such surreal science-fiction/horror fare as Stranger
and the surreal comedy Lol: Rzhaka decided to devise a kind of
snapshot of then-COVID-19 locked-down Ukraine which winds up being a kind of
Eastern European answer to Locked Down, In the Earth or The
Pink Cloud.The result is a film
that’s not really a documentary, not really a webcam film and not really a standard
piece of narrative fiction either, instead functioning as a kind of video
installation in art museums portraying a most unusual spin on ufology.
In lockdown, filmed in 76 locations around Kyiv, Odessa and
Zaporizhia by the actors themselves in quarantine before the footage was sent
over to the director for editing, the largely dialogue-free film cuts between
the nameless ensemble cast of Ukrainian actors going about their day-to-day
routines in isolation.Initially the
film is a kind of Jeanne Dielman documentation of mundanities and/or
boredoms being lived through in lockdown whether its reading or exercising or
building things.But then as we settle
into the film’s slice-of-life tapestry of webcams or iPhone cameras, a
mysterious shared event occurs seeming to be an extraterrestrial alien
encounter and the rest of the film consists of the same characters either
cutting out alien masks or going through some kind of inexplicable
psychological breakdown. An experimental art film, a weird spin on alien abduction, a
metaphor for the anxieties of the lockdown and perhaps even a forecast to the
impending invasion, Space is truly one-of-a-kind whether it works for
people or not.Joining such COVID-19
borne lo-fi fare as Skinamarink or The Outwaters though far more opaque
in intent, this atonal, jagged sci-fi infused docudrama dares to push into some
strange areas with the list of social media cast actors directed online going out
on limbs if not jumping off into the deep end of the insanity pool.Ufologists and/or filmmakers catering to the uptick
in found-footage alien abduction horrors ala Alien Abduction or Phoenix
Forgotten haven’t encountered an extraterrestrial creature quite like this
glimpse of Ukraine in lockdown prior to present events where its actors are
asked to perform outside of their comfort zones.
Given the conditions of the lockdown, the image quality for
this is all over the map. Pretty much
all 67 of the actors filmed everything themselves with the help of some
relatives who were staying with them in lockdown at the time so there’s a bit
of a home-movie or webcam flavor to the proceedings.The film lacks an original score, instead
working off of the sounds captured by the actors with some occasional surreal
editing by director Tomashpolskiy and his producer Alena Demyanenko.Mostly a cacophony of sounds either digitally
captured or rendered with the rarest of exchanges in dialogue, Space intends
over the course of the movie despite being grounded in Ukraine for you the
viewer to be a fish out of water. As the
actors start donning alien masks or costumes or begin decorating their
apartments with alien art ala Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the
film becomes a loosely shared experience of life being turned inside out by an
invisible invader.
Let it be known this is not a conventional alien webcam
horror you’ve seen so many times over in the annals of the V/H/S anthology
series. It is minimalist, avant-garde
experimental filmmaking that openly defies categorization and could only exist
in a particular transitional moment in time for Ukraine. For ufology fans, Space can get a
little tedious and isn’t particularly frightening either but as a pastiche of
then-locked down life in the Eastern European country prior to the war it’s a remarkable
snapshot. Think of it as a unique video
installation to be found in art museums where coming in and out of it free of
context will nevertheless offer viewers something they’ll perhaps never have
the luck of seeing again.
