Movie Review – Love (2011)

After losing contact with Earth, astronaut Lee Miller becomes stranded in orbit alone aboard the International Space Station. As time passes and life support systems dwindle, Lee battles to maintain his sanity – and simply stay alive. His world is a claustrophobic and lonely existence, until he makes a strange discovery aboard the ship.

•To get my new site rolling, I’ve taken the liberty of copying a couple of reviews from my archives, just incase anyone thinks I’m plagiarising work. This review was originally posted on headinavice in February 2013•

Love is a 2011 science fiction film produced and scored by the rock band Angels & Airwaves. The film is the directorial debut of filmmaker William Eubank and stars Gunner Wright as the astronaut Lee Miller. It took over 4 years to complete and the actual space station was built in the directors parents back yard to cut down on costs. Please don’t let the low-budget approach put you off, Love is visually incredible to look at as I hope some of the pictures throughout this review show.

To use the directors quote in his summary for the film:

Love portrays the personal-psychological effects of isolation and loneliness when an astronaut becomes stranded in space and through this, emphasizes the importance of human connection and love. Additionally, it touches on the fragility of humankind’s existence (explored through a dying Earth-apocalyptic doomsday scenario) inspired by the cautions of Carl Sagan in Pale Blue Dot and considers the importance of memories and stories as humanity’s legacy.

Love starts during an 1864 battle of the American Civil War. We are introduced to a lone Union soldier, Captain Lee Briggs (Bradley Horne), who is dispatched on a mission to investigate a mysterious object which has been reported to Union forces. We then cut to 175 years later, in the year 2039, and we meet United States astronaut Lee Miller (Gunner Wright) who has been sent to the International Space Station (or the ISS) as a one-man skeleton crew. His mission is to examine whether or not it is safe for use and to perform the necessary modifications after it had been abandoned two decades earlier.

Shortly after arriving on-board, something happens on Earth, which eventually results in Miller losing all human contact back home. Miller struggles to maintain his sanity while in isolation by interacting with Polaroid pictures of former ISS crew members left aboard the ship. When the station has some power glitches, Miller journeys into a different module of the space station to perform repairs and discovers the 1864 journal of Briggs (the Union soldier). Miller reads Brigg’s account of the war and becomes enthralled by the mysterious object he is searching for, not realizing he will soon become more familiar with the very same object, and not by accident. The astronaut begins to feel the connection to the civil war soldier, and this is where the objective of the whole narrative as a circular storytelling mechanism comes into full view.

Visually as I mentioned earlier, Love is aesthetically beautiful. The war scenes look very realistic, the space station looks great and you couldn’t tell it was made for next to nothing. The highlights for me were awe-inspiring views of the mountains and the final slow-mo shot of Earth. It genuinely gave me goosebumps at times, looking at something so spectacular and the music was perfectly done. The director has truly made an epic film.

It truly is a work of art and a brilliant piece of cinema. I’m not claiming it is perfect but films like this that are made on a budget with unique stories are criminally overlooked in favour of remakes and sequels.

• 2011
• 4 stars
• love
• love movie review
• movie
• movie review
• review
• tom delonge
• william eubank