Movies: The Vast of Night

The Vast of Night served well to someone like me, who isn’t the biggest consumer of the sci-fi genre, in that it isn’t here to bombard you with the complexities of science fiction, or take you out of the real world.

The setting is a small town in New Mexico in the 1950s, opening with town folk gearing up for a Friday night high school basketball game. Long tracking shots glide through groups of high schoolers, players, staff and spectators, primarily focussing on main character Everett, a young radio DJ who seems to be at the beck and call of everyone for his technical expertise. He is also mentoring a hopeful young woman, Fay, who he introduces to his new tape recorder and verses her in the techniques of conducting a successful interview. They wade through the school car park, practising recording and interviewing locals who oblige with their mundane stories. Soon, Everett and Fay will part ways, him venturing to his radio station and her to work at a switchboard, where she experiences some unusual calls of inexplicable noises and what appears to be a distress call. After too many strange occurrences, she enlists the help of Everett to broadcast the odd sound, which prompts an anonymous caller to get in touch and whose familiarity with the sound exposes top secret tales of his experience involving classified military work and extra-terrestrial activity. As the night goes on, word gets around town of an unidentified object in the sky. Everett and Fay work together to solve the mystery of the interference and phenomenon, rushing over town investigating.

For a film that is by all accounts low budget and seemingly unremarkable, it is extraordinarily well crafted. There is a subtle eeriness throughout that leaves you with the feeling that you’re watching a horror film, with the low lighting and long tracking shots being reminiscent of It Follows, but it is less deliberate in its attempt to scare, or unnerve the audience. It is set at night time with the streets barely lit, the only moments of any light source coming from the high school gym.

You really get the sense of being an observer of the characters, particularly Everett and Fay, as their rapid continuous dialogue flows lyrically, whilst they conduct their casual interviews.

Sound is of particular importance, either from those inexplicable transmissions through the phone lines, or those projected on the radio.

Much like the camerawork, the cinematography provides a glacial flow to the narrative, as we see Fay flit between houses and buildings, running, cycling, or as a passenger in Everett’s car. Neither are ever particularly far away from each other and overall the film gives you a sense that the town itself is particularly small and close knit, with everyone familiar with one another. This also plays well into the events of the evening going mostly unobserved, as anyone who’s anyone is spending the night indoors watching a high school basketball game.

Some additional, playful touches involve the setting, between segments of the film shown through the screen of a black and white 50s television set. The costuming, set designs and props have been paid great attention to, from a switchboard headset to those thick, square framed glasses, a heavy duty bicycle and exquisite cars.

The majority of the film relies less on visual effects and alien aesthetics, as you might expect, but instead wants to create an atmosphere and a sense of mystery. Again, our characters like to talk in quick succession, but you hang on their every word with a certain mesmerisation.

It is certainly apt that a film like this would appear in the last few years, given conspiracy theories, technological unknowns and scepticism being rife, and general otherworldly threats dominating the media, infecting the minds of us mere mortals.

At one point, Fay is reciting an article about a future device, not unlike a smart phone, that people will one day have on their person at all times and with which they can communicate far and wide. The ever sceptic Everett remarks: “… tiny TV telephones? That’s cuckoo.”

With figures like Billy and Mabel, we hear their stories recited in a way that represents an older generation fearing a future of innovation and science. Their experiences of government, or religious upbringing has caused a festering in their minds, likely due to long periods of loneliness and isolation. These are people that have lived through extraordinary change, from infrastructure, transportation, to invention and culture shifts, as well as the horrors and disruption of war. Mabel’s story in particular has undertones of religious guilt and perhaps Everett’s disbelief is further fuelled by her mention of having lived a long, lonely life by which she’s had plenty of time to think.

The purpose of this film isn’t to dazzle you with an extravagant alien invasion concept, but to showcase emerging change and discovery during a period of Cold War influenced paranoia among society. Whilst it doesn’t aim to insist we are not alone, it does want to explore the possibility, but also what it takes to both convince the unconvinced and what can lead a person to fear and conspiratorialism.