[MacBlayne]

THE TERMINATOR

Andrei Tarkovsky had very critical views of the sci-fi genre, even going as far as label 2001 as “cold and sterile,” and his own Solaris as “an artistic failure” due to its focus on dialogue and special effects. Tarkovsky said the genre was an expensive one, and thus was a slave to commercial needs and unable to explore humanity. There was one film that he felt stood out. One that satisfied his intellectual curiosity. In his book, Tarkovsky’s World and Films, Tarkovsky states, “The brutality and low acting skills are unfortunate, but as a vision of the future and the relation between man and his destiny, the film is pushing the frontier of cinema as an art.” The film was James Cameron’s The Terminator.

The Terminator opens with a vision from our future, although it could easily be mistaken for Hell. A future ravaged by nuclear winter. Night is permanent. The cold wind howls through the ruins of Los Angeles. Survivors crawl through debris, hiding while lights seek them out. Collapsed skyscrapers are dwarfed by mechanical monstrosities that prowl the landscape, destroying anything that breathes.

It then cuts to the then present day, 1984. Electrical currents spawns the T-800, a cyborg from the future that resembles Arnold Schwarzenegger. It’s mission: kill the mother of the future resistance leader, Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton). There is something rather interesting to how the cyborg looks like the Teutonic powerhouse that is Arnie. His model was designed to look human, but Arnie doesn’t look like the everyman. Cameron had already intended to have someone like Lance Henriksen as the machine, but a meeting with Arnie changed his mind. That a computer system would see Arnie as the ideal human, gives it an unsettling parallel to the Third Reich, wiping out inferior humans and replacing them with “perfection.”

Even without the subtext, Arnie is perfect as the Terminator. Cameron stated that the film was born from a nightmare of a chrome skeleton rising from flames. Arnie never betrays any emotion. No smirking. No winking. No sideway glances. Arnie plays the part as a true machine. He reads the situation, and responds in the most logical manner. Even the “funny” dialogue is delivered with a cool bluntness that lacks the self-awareness of his later films. His hulking frame is menacing, and his cold stare is bound to give anybody the willies.

While I’m sure Tarkovsky wasn’t referring to Arnie, I do strongly disagree with his labelling the acting as “unfortunate.” The performances are specific to its genre trappings, but they are tremendous. One of the strongest aspects of Cameron’s screenplay is that almost every character is likable. Paul Winfield and Henriksen are some of the most compassionate police officers ever. Dick Miller has a small appearance as a garrulous gun salesman. Bess Motta is a darling as Sarah’s flatmate, Ginger. Even her boyfriend, Matt (Rick Rossovich), is a sweetheart. That these characters are all defined helps sells the ugly atmosphere of The Terminator. They are not bullet fodder, but conscious lives ripped from the world by an uncaring, violent machine.

Hamilton is a gem. I must admit that I’m not exactly a fan of her work. She’s definitely not a bad actor, but she always struck me as one who could say her lines while sounding sad, happy, or angry, but could never fill her characters out. Maybe that is due to her directors, because with Cameron, she is wonderful. She effectively plays Sarah as a confused, scared woman that has many (reasonable) questions, but is never annoying. She and Cameron give Sarah a proper arc – from hopeless in love, to fighting for life with determined grit.

The film’s secret weapon is Michael Biehn as Kyle Reece. Reece is a lost prophet – someone who has witnessed the horrors of the future, but cannot do anything to prevent it. Biehn’s scrawny frame is someone who fights for survival, not justice. He also plays Reece as someone that isn’t without a sense of humour, but incapable of understanding humour. In many scenes, Biehn looks like he has finished crying, whether it being from seeing humanity experience true freedom and taking it for granted, actual greenery in the sunshine, or being next to a woman he has loved for what may have been years, but cannot define it. It’s a stunning, tragic performance, one of the finest of the genre, or even the decade.

I strongly believe Biehn’s acting and “brutality” that propels The Terminator into a film as “a vision of the future and the relation between man and his destiny.” The Terminator is a vicious, cruel film. It is as much a horror film as it is a sci-fi thriller. The action scenes are extremely well staged, but the violence is blunt and without sentiment. The iconic scene in which Arnie shoots up the police station is similar to a tsunami. It cannot be stopped, and it obliterates all before it without any rational thought.

Despite the low budget, Cameron and his effect artists convincingly create the apocalypse. Bones and concrete are crushed together indiscriminately under the tracks of killing machines. Stan Winston's work effectively recreates the chrome skeleton from Cameron's nightmare. That low-frame shot of it chasing Reece and Sarah is enough to ruin my underwear. Cinematographer Adam Greenberg gives the film a grotty, grainy aesthetic – one that oozes evil. Whether it be the towering Hunter Killers, of the future, or the claustrophobic alleyways of present day Los Angeles, Reece is never fully free. Brad Fiedel’s pounding score constantly breathes in the background, refusing to give the audience any escape. The scenes from the future look like footage of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the blasts, and editor Matt Goldblatt wisely only shows snippets. They’re not just Reece’s nightmares, not just Cameron’s, but ours.

Cameron resolves his film in a satisfying manner, he doesn’t provide mankind with a happy conclusion. The Cold War was still rife at the time, and the recent war between Russia and Ukraine shows we still fear nuclear annihilation. The final lines are “There’s a storm coming in.” “I know.” We are hurtling towards our own destruction. Cameron grimly suggests that it is our destiny. The Terminator just doesn’t push the frontiers of cinema as an art. It pushes us to act now, lest we prove Cameron as a lost prophet too.