Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Alex Sharp, Gillian Anderson, Ella Purnell, Benjamin Beatty, Cece Abbey, Davis Strathairn, Ken Early, Brian Bowman, Rick Chambers, Lu Parker, Khrys Styles, Ted J. Weil, A.J. Ransom, Katie Eichler, Sara Welch, David Heckel, Chauncey Ragland, Bradley Thomas.
We either fear the possibility of life on another planet and the concerns that might raise should they find a way to visit us, or we feel the pull of trepidation that exists because we suspect that we are alone in the universe; no matter which one that pulls your own strings more, it cannot be dismissed that there are an abundance of possible sightings of U.F.O.s, scorned and rejected by Government and official sources, and yet caught in camera by millions.
The concerns that are raised by such occurrences dig deep into the D.N.A. of our imagination, we want to believe as the tag line of the popular X-Files openly declared, but we are nervous, uneasy for what this means should the visitor be one that is hostile, that sees us, as in so many science fiction stories, as a species, as a world, to be conquered and subjugated.
What cinema and writers tend to overlook is that initial moment before contact, that the point of the story is not the aftermath, but the search, ours and theirs, the hope for a reply for a species intelligent enough to understand our own worries, our demands, our often out of control ego and the match that would see our species learn from those that have mastered the art of travelling in space.
It is a moment that Ryan Eslinger explores, and with the availability of a phenomenon at Chicago’s O’ Hare airport in 2006 where many reliable witness saw or heard something otherworldly, UFO finds a way to interact between fear and the hoped for inevitable meeting of species.
Centred on the mathematical genius Derek and his fraught but admiring relationship between him and his tutor, Professor Hendricks, played with superb poise by Gillian Anderson, Ryan Eslinger’s script offers more to the enjoyment and fundamental properties of Mathematics than anything that could arguably be learned in the environment of the classroom; even to those who find the subject a chore. The application of the science and the investigational procedure implemented raises questions that might have forever been lost within the mind of the average viewer.
A film about U.F.O.s but which doesn’t hang upon it as a central theme is to be admired, and one to which adds a different way of looking at the larger scope of the universe and our own place within it. UFO is a film about the science of the problem and one that makes the subject even more intriguing to anyone who catches this particular offering by Ryan Eslinger.
Ian D. Hall