Spaceship Earth (2020)

Director: Matt Wolf

A documentary about the then-hyped Biosphere 2 project that ran from 1991 to 1993. It was just OK.

Those of us born before 1980 or so probably remember the Biosphere 2 project, staged in Arizona in the early 1990s. Seven "biospherian" specialists locked themselves in a large, airtight structure for two years, to see if they could survive in a simulation of what might be a life station used to live on and explore other planets in the future. The biosphere was filled with various terrain types, plants, and even animals, to replicate small-scale versions of Earth's real landforms, structures, and ecosystems. It was billed as an exciting leap forward in scientific discovery - one which would provide invaluable data to future scientists who would be designing life-sustaining environments for space explorers. What Biosphere 2 ended up being, though, was mostly a failure that many ultimately saw as a fraud, conceived and executed in bad faith by a controversial, cult-like figure.

There was actually the material here for a much more fascinating documentary. In going back to trace the origins of Biosphere 2, some intriguing questions are raised. It mostly went back to a man named John Allen, a charismatic, endlessly energetic man who built a community around himself in the late 1960s. Allen, trained as a machinist in the Army Corps of Engineers and educated in anthropology and business in several places including Stanford, had grand ideas about melding multiple scientific and humanistic disciplines in order to create a better society. This society would bring together scientists, tradesmen, and artists to cooperate in order to build whatever they felt they might need to survive, thrive, and fulfil their survival and creative needs as humans. They set up a commune-like area in New Mexico. They actually built their own large ship that successfully launched from a port off the California coast. They traveled to different cities around the world and constructed buildings as contractors. And all the while, they would engage in free-flowing artistic performances, such as original plays, improvisational activities, primal screaming, interpretive dances, or whatever else they dreamed up. All of this was under the eye of founder John Allen. Early on, they had actually come into contact with famed American architect R. Buckminster Fuller. Fuller had conceived of the concept of a "geodome," in which humans could survive without any contact from the outside world. Allen's group toyed with this over the years, and eventually found the financial backing to bring it to life. Hence, Biosphere 2's construction and the media storm around it in the early 1990s.

John Allen's "Merry Pranksters"-style
group of devotees doing one of their stage
productions. This was a rather odd crew
of folks who I had far more questions
about than the film answered.

Again, there's a lot of interesting stuff happening here. The problem for me was twofold: First, there were so many unanswered questions about John Allen, his close associates, and their projects that are never fully or clearly answered. The documentary never fully explains exactly where or how the various members of the commune learned their trades, and we don't know where the funding for their various and sometimes-large-scale projects came from in their early years. Then there are just questions about what life was like on a daily basis. I think most people, upon hearing the description of Allen and his group will inevitably think "cult," and the show doesn't do a whole lot of close analysis on this question. It is raised a bit later in the movie, but not with enough rigor in my view. Secondly, there is an overall lack of outside perspectives on everything about Allen, his group, and their projects, including Biosphere 2. The overwhelming number of the views expressed are from Allen, his friends or associates, or the actual experts who became the biospherians. In other words, almost all people whose bias is going to lean heavily towards defending the project and the group behind it. Getting some sober, objective viewpoints from credible people who were critical of the project would have helped balance things out more, as any good documentary should do.

In a more general sense, I came away from this documentary sort of shrugging my shoulders and almost asking "so what?" By the show's end, it was clear that too many questions were raised about Biosphere 2's scientific legitimacy for it to feel like any massive loss for humans' knowledge. And not enough evidence is presented to contradict the notion that Biosphere 2 was much more than an ego-driven project for Allen and a few wealthy financial backers. In short, while I was curious about several elements covered in the documentary, I'm never given enough information to care all that much about any of them.

Maybe the simple fact is that the subjects themselves - from Allen to the commune to the Biosphere 2 project itself - just weren't nearly as intriguing as we might be led to believe. But I actually felt that there is probably a more fascinating story to be told; it's just that Spaceship Earth didn't do the best job of telling that story.