The Silent Planet

An aging convict serving out a life sentence alone on a distant planet is forced to confront his past when a new prisoner shows up and pushes him to remember his life on earth.

The idea of escaping alone to another planet has always held an allure for me. As a child, I used to tell people I was from a planet called Zeyox that I would one day return to. Heading to a distant world and letting everything I’ve ever known fade away behind me felt like true freedom. It was a nice fantasy to escape into. The question of whether it is possible is central to this film. Can we rewrite our past if there is nothing around to remind us of who we were? Are memories real if they have no connection to the world we are now living in? Can we leave it all behind? To situate us on this desolate planet, light years from earth, it was important that the world feel tactile and real. Shooting on location in the tablelands of Newfoundland gave us this sense of actually being in an alien land rather than one created on greenscreen or an LED wall. Allowing for quiet moments where we hear the sounds of the planet helped as well. Mostly though, it is about the human face. Lingering on expressions and reactions and really trying to be with these characters was very important to feeling like we are there, far away from the earth with these two people. It was also important to me that the film feel at times like a strange dream – as if reality, fantasy, and memory are all blurred. (An alternate title of the film was actually “The sad dreams of earthlings”.) We imbued it with whimsical, retro touches, influenced by 80s Soviet sci-fi so it felt more playful. We didn’t have the budget to make it look like Dune, so embracing a relatively lo-fi aesthetic that worked for our tone was important. As the film is something of a fever dream, I didn’t feel bound to make it scientifically sound. Elements like the alien gas that records your thoughts raise the question – is this real, or some subconscious tool manifested by these characters to force them to deal with their past? In his performance, Elias decided for himself that his character died the moment he took his monitor out of this chest and that the rest of the film is his journey through purgatory to a final release. I really like this interpretation and I like it being open to interpretation. The emotional and psychological journeys of the characters are grounded, but the reality and function of the world is up for debate.