Angels & Airwaves Presents: “Love” (William Eubanks, 2011): USA

Reviewed by Katie Funk. Viewed at Metro 4, Santa Barbara.

Angels & Airwaves Presents: “Love”, the film debut of director William Eubank is an incredible tale of an astronaut that is lost at space for 7 years. We are all taken on a journey through the mind of a man that loses connection with the only human connection he once had. One second he was communicating with the space station down below and the next there was nothing but static and inaudible sounds. I wondered before entering this film what it would be like to watch one man inside of a space station for 7 years by himself and whether or not I would get bored. However, I experienced quite the opposite while watching this film. I was completely moved every moment that passed and immersed as if I was right there alongside him experiencing his pain and having the same longing for human interactions.

The astronaut Captain Lee Miller is played by actor Gunner Wright who is focused on throughout the entire film as he takes us into his mind and into the world that he has created just to stay sane. He creates characters and fantasies with photographs of other astronauts that were once inside the same station as he. He finds an old journal of another man named Lee that was part of the Civil War and we watch reenactments from that war throughout the film. The reenactments beg us to remember the importance of human interaction whether it be fighting or loving and how it defines who we are as human beings. Other snippets throughout the film are what appear to be old recordings each one giving their impression of the importance of human interaction. Whether life is worth living if you’ve got no-one to share it with. Asking us to question what is our life without other human beings? Who do we become when there is no-one else around?

Eubanks really nails it home with this movie. It was by far the best of the entire festival. I was lucky to listen in on the Q & A after the film and hear Eubanks and Wright themselves describe what it was like to create a film like this. We learned that Eubanks created the entire set in his parents back-yard in the Santa Ynez valley. He used such things as the washing machine door for the window that Captain Miller stared back down at the earth through during the entire film. We also learn that the images of the earth were actually just Eubanks’ TV placed right in front of the washing machine door’s window! Plus we were shared with the fact that this movie took 4 years to make and that Gunner Wright had just seen it for the first time himself at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival’s debut. I gained such a huge appreciation once I learned that this film was created by a mastermind with an idea and a few others that were willing to stand by him to make his dream a reality. It’s incredible to look back after being completely immersed in the film, and actually thinking that I was in a real space station. To see that it was in fact just a set built out of everyday materials by a young and ambitious director such as William Eubanks.