In Robert Altman’s The Player, a man pitches a film for studio executive Griffin Mill and asks Mill whether political films scare him, to which he answers, “Political doesn’t scare me, radical political scares me. Political political scares me.” Franklin J. Schaffner’s Planet of the Apes, a politely radical political film, walks a fine line between Griffin Mill’s greenlighting and straightforward rejection. A film about apes with strong personalities and political will ruling over a planet could easily be seen as preposterous and plain dumb had the plot thickened to a fault, but thankfully it didn’t and we have now this deliriously entertaining sci-fi adventure. In my opinion, it manages to look fresher than the majority of its sequels, remakes and reboots (I still haven’t seen Dawn of the Planet of the Apes), especially because in its first-chapter nature the original Planet is very playful with its themes and it preserves a sense of discovery and surprise.
One could easily skip the bland, pretentious prologue, when Taylor (Charlton Heston) rambles about his space mission that is bound to be over as he goes in deep hibernation and wait until he reaches Earth, because it just looks plain pointless and expository, especially if you consider the depth of other science fiction films of the period ( 1968’s 2001 in particular). As soon as the ship crashes in an unknown planet and Taylor’s crew is left helpless in the film’s first few minutes, the film picks itself up and runs smoothly to its very end. The twist of the film is that Taylor, Landon (Robert Gunner) and Dodge (Jeff Burton) find out that the unknown planet is environmentally rich and sustained, but the rulers, instead of humans (who have evolved somewhat backwards), are intellectually developed apes, mainly chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas.
The way this role switch plays is indeed very silly; there are all sorts of clichés: “man see, man do”, “to apes, all men look the same”, “men cannot be tamed”. This simplistic approach to the issue is faulty, especially when applied to Taylor, who’s arguably the dumbest astronaut I have ever seen and does much for its own harm in its erratic behavior. It is so, there’s no denying it, and that leads to a very head-scratching plot that easily paves the way for nitpickers, much due to its reconstructed social policies for the ape society and for its irregular treatment to Taylor and vice versa. In general, it’s a movie with a rather silly surface.
But the movie is so enjoyable and so secretly powerful that this doesn’t kill the fun and the validity of its premise: rather, this simply removes it from higher pantheons of science fiction. There’s an everlasting sense of Planet of the Apes’ groundbreaking features, and they’re everywhere. Jerry Goldsmith’s experimental score, full of dissonant strings, fast-paced tunes and monkey grunts, gives a foreign touch to the film’s set, which, after all, is supposed to be an unknown planet. The ape costumes, while still funny, have an acceptable quirkiness that never get in the way, and the ape performances from actor like Kim Hunter (Hey STELLAAAAA!), Maurice Evans and James Whitmore are very satisfactory.
Perhaps what stands out the most in Planet of the Apes is the way it subverts regular social politics by giving them to non-human beings, and yet manages to keep it strikingly familiar in its ancient logic and basic anachronisms. In this reprogramming of the philosophy of ancient times, science is once again an enemy of the state (the minister of science is also surprisingly the chief defender of the faith), the scriptures mechanically stipulate class systems, and humans, deemed inferior by the ruling classes, are thought to be worthless trash. As simple as it is, such system fits in many labels and can be expanded as an allegory to practically anything (Taylor’s dumb reference to Animal Farm in one key scene is an interesting start).
And then the film comes to its ending sequence, which is still effectively shocking and may very well be one of the finest finales I can remember seeing. The catastrophes it implies are so simple and yet so shocking and mournful. It relates not only to the film or to the concealing explanation to the plot, but also to the simple fact that humankind simply cannot cooperate with itself and is inherently violent. That alone is powerful enough and makes you think over everything the movie provides you, and that’s why the franchise has been so prolific.
Planet of the Apes
Year: 1968
Director: Franklin J. Schaffner
Cast: Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter, Maurice Evans, James Whitmore
Academy Awards: Honorary Academy Award for “outstanding make-up achievement”; Best Costume Design (nominated); Best Original Score (nominated)
The Hand Grenade 