THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL: Jesus In A Spaceship?

One of the benchmark films in the history of the science fiction genre, and one of the most popular films of all time all over the world, is THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL(1951). The title itself is enough to give one pause: What does it mean to say that “the Earth stood still”? After all, the Earth has always moved in some direction, hasn’t it?. And only something of unimaginable power, say, a god-like entity, would even have such a power to make the Earth “stand still”. Such questions flicker over our consciousness and touch on the deepest of our fears. After all, the Earth itself is our celestial home, our vessel of survival, the womb of our collective being. You go messing with the Earth, and you go messing with our survival, and yes, that gets our attention. Right in the gut.

The statement THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL is charged with questions for science as well as grabbing us in our gut, too. Consider, for a moment, the fact that the Earth is really moving in several directions and on several geometric planes at once. It is turning on its axis. It is moving in orbit around the star we call The Sun, or Sol. As a planet of Sol it is moving with its “parent” star along with other stars of the Milky Way Galaxy toward some stars and away from other stars. As a planet of Sol the Earth is moving, along with our star, around the celestial nucleus of the Milky Way Galaxy. The Milky Way Galaxy itself is moving with a collection of nearby galaxies called the "Local Group" toward some axial direction in the universe. And then again, all the galaxies are moving away from the nucleus point of the Big Bang. So the earth is moving all the time in lots of ways, in several directions, even though we don’t notice these movements, and to say that the planet stops and “stands still” moving raises a number of scientific questions.

Actually, in the context of the film THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, however, the planet Earth doesn’t really stop moving in any of these physical dispositions; what the title means, we discover, is that electricity all over the earth is shut down for a while; it is like a huge global blackout meant to prove that an extraterrestrial being has the power to do big-time bad stuff, so we’d better pay attention to him. That’s what it means for the Earth to “Stand Still.”

Whew! What a relief! And yet… the movie never addresses the other moral implication of all this. If you shut off the electrical juice, cardiac pacemakers, electric cars, vital hospital equipment, airplane electrical equipment and other things that human life depend upon would stop functioning without warning and this could result in heart attacks, planes falling from the sky, etc., etc. But in the overall scheme of things, these few “problems” (unless it’s your pacemaker or your plane, right?) that a brief loss of electricity would result in are miniscule compared to World Peace For All Nations. As an aside, this is something of what the message of Jesus of Nazareth, as well as some other notable human beings, is all about. Curiously, some viewers have picked up more than a coincidental parallel between the movie story and a parallel with the story of Jesus. More about that later though.

This movie is a really about this whole idea of World Peace For All Nations and what that would mean. It is this (radical?) message within the stunning newness of such a science fiction film (in 1951) represented by the quality of the film, including the acting, the special effects, and the music, that sets the film apart as a classic.

The movie’s story is really fairly simple: Alien comes to earth, alien gives humankind a message of peace, alien is rejected and killed , alien is resurrected, alien gives humankind a final message, and (finally) alien ascends to the skies (in his spaceship.) Run that one by the plot outline of the story of Jesus of Nazareth as given in the Christian Bible, and you probably have a close match. Christ-figure comes to earth, Christ-figure gives humankind a message of peace, Christ-figure is rejected and killed , Christ-figure is resurrected, Christ-figure gives humankind a final message, and (finally) Christ-figure ascends to the skies. Hmmm. So you can see how some might see a parallel here. But let’s set the (possible) Christian parallel concept aside for a moment and look at the movie proper.

A key question that arises from the story of an alien landing on Earth and confronting humankind with his superior technology and working peace philosophy is: How will humans react to that which they cannot immediately comprehend?

We have had at least 50 years to become acclimatized to that idea (think The Roswell Incident, etc.), but my hunch is that if an alien really landed on earth as in this movie, it would send a tremor of fear through the human race such as has never been seen before in recorded history. It would mean that we just have a problem with neighbors, except in this case it’s neighbors from Another World. That is one reason why the movie is so fascinating and has such a universal appeal: we wonder what it would be like to go through such an experience.

And then there is that message about world peace. Most people, when you ask them what blessing they would love to bestow upon humanity if they had the power will cheerily smile and say: “World Peace” (the same message as in the movie.)

Yet in reality every nation wants to be ready for war, as do its citizens (us), because deep inside we suspect World Peace is really just an illusion. As a consequence, in the Real World everyone wants to have the biggest and best war machine, or at least have some kind of an alliance with the nation(s) that does have the biggest and best war machine.

When THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL was being filmed back in 1950, the film makers asked the American War Department to let it use some military hardware as props for the film. The War Department never had a problem letting Hollywood use its weapons and soldiers for pro-war movies before. But when the War Department read the script for THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL and saw that it was about peace, they turned the film makers down on the military hardware. Presumably, since the Korean War was going on then, a movie about “peace” may have been thought to be “unpatriotic.” So the film makers went to the Virginia National Guard and got the jeeps and guns and equipment they needed (Virginia, presumably, was not at war with anyone at that time.) Peace has always been a tough sell, I suppose, in spite of what most people say about wanting “World Peace.”

So where did the story for the movie come from? Screenwriter Edmund North adapted a short story to give the movie a script. Robert Wise was chosen to be the director, and a relatively unknown actor, Michael Rennie was chosen (according to the tradition by Daryl F. Zanuck himself) to play Klaatu/Carpenter, the “Main Alien” in The Day. A 7ֻ” tall man who worked at Graumann’s Chinese Theatre, Lock Martin, got the “big” role of playing Gort the Robot. Lovely Patricia Neal played Helen, the sympathetic woman who tries to understand Carpenter…and then Klaatu. Billy Gray, a young actor who wound up in the TV series Father Knows Best plays the boy who befriends Carpenter and learns that he is Klaatu.

The director, Robert Wise, got terrific performances from all these actors and the others that were with them. While there are a few cheesy moments in the film (such as you find in just about every sci-fi flick from the early 1950s), most of the acting is excellent and a tribute to the integrity of the ideas within the script, and also Wise’s skill as a director. He was out to make a story about people in a science fiction world, not just a “science fiction movie with people in it,” and the difference shows—and holds up over time.

One of the standout features about THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL is that haunting, eerie, brooding musical score by Bernard Hermann. Many people (myself included) can hear that music playing every time we think about this movie. It gives you a creepy feeling through almost all of the movie, and truly elevates the plot in the same way that John Williams’ music enhanced STAR WARS a quarter-of-a-century later. The music made the movie particularly memorable.

Ah, let’s re-examine the “Christian Parallel” idea about the movie. Forgive me, but in some ways this idea reminds me of people who see the face of Jesus in a cloud or in a crack in the wall and those kinds of “miracle appearance” stories. People often see what they want to see in something. I suppose people can read this “Christian Parallel” idea into the movie if they choose to, but I really think it’s a stretch. When asked about it, the director Robert Wise said that he had no clue that there was anything of a “Christian Parallel” between the movie story and that of Jesus of Nazareth until someone pointed it out after the movie was out in the theaters. So it (probably) wasn’t planned in---at least consciously or intentionally. But it is curious that the plot seems to bear a resemblance to the plot-line of the Christian Gospels. Furthermore you have that “resurrection” scene for Klaatu----and also his name: “Carpenter.” Hmm. Well, maybe. But then again, maybe not. At any rate, if you consider the Christian Gospel story to be archetypal, then I believe one could say that the plot of this movie roughly parallels the same Christian archetype, but it is, finally, a matter of what you read into the story, not what North and Wise intended. Even so, it’s interesting to look at and to think about.

It would probably also be inappropriate to leave a discussion about THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL without a word about Klaatu’s message. Paraphrased, it goes like this: “Stop having wars and join the interplanetary peace society or you and your planet Earth will be destroyed.”

This is actually a somewhat Orwellian solution to World Peace but it seems a plausible one. The idea is: give up ultimate freedom so that you can have ultimate peace.

If a Klaatu came to earth in Real Life with such a message, how would we humans react? I suspect that some people would react the way they do about gun control: “I ain’t buyin’ it, and I’ll only give up my war machine when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.” Others might say, “Let’s go for it. It sounds great. Peace and love everywhere.” But assuming we were to go along with such a “Klaatu”, would it be real? Or an alien trick? Could the aliens be trusted? It will be interesting if and when we ever truly do have to try to entertain such a message. And we may at that some day in the future.

Oh, one last thing we learn from the movie: When confronted by what may be a hostile alien robot, face it bravely and try using the phrase: ”Klaatu barada nikto!” It could save your (human) life. Then again the robot might reply, “No, I eat all my humans with ketchup, thank you.” Just a thought.

Ah, but what a great story THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL is. 50+ years have not hurt this film a bit. It is a retro look into the United States of the 1950s, and it may also help us take a look at a couple of questions we will be facing for some time in the future: “Is world peace truly possible?” and “What is our place as a human race among the stars?” Let’s hope that our real world does not have to stand still for us to come to an answer about such questions. Klaatu may show the way.


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