This year, NASA found snow on Mars. The Flaming Lips found vaginas. Lots of them. Vaginas in rock formations, vaginas in space equipment, hallucinogenic vaginas; the Flaming Lips also seem to be the first to notice that a constellation surrounding Mars perfectly depicts the Red Planet lying between a woman’s spread-eagle legs. NASA definitely missed that one.
The Flaming Lips’ Christmas on Mars has existed in legend for years now. Started back in 2001, Lips’ front man Wayne Coyne has been famously building makeshift sets on his Oklahoma property and in abandoned buildings throughout his home state. The DIY ethic is noticeable in many of the scenes; most memorably when a gutted General Electric oven is opened to reveal the wiring of the space station. But it is this scaled-back approach to movie making that makes this movie work. Like most sci-fi B-movies the plot is spotty and the characters are largely interchangeable; but these somehow are only minor details in this movie as a whole. Yes, the Flaming Lips have achieved that Radiohead-plateau in their career where fans take everything they do as gospel, but this is not a Flaming Lips movie; it is a movie that happens to have the Flaming Lips in it. The cinematography is incredible and the sets are perfect for the grainy black-and-white quality of the film. The interior of the space station is cramped and claustrophobic while the panoramic outdoor shots go on well beyond the back of the movie screen. The exterior of the space station is looming and cold; a perfect setting for men to lose their mind to confinement and introspection.
The plot of the film pivots around Major Syrtis (Lips’ Steven Drozd), and his desperation for Christmas on Mars to go off without a hitch. His fellow colonizers have been falling prey to insanity and suicide, and Syrtis believes Christmas is the last chance for any humanity to be salvaged. Furthermore, a baby has been artificially inseminated inside the station’s only woman (Michelle Martin-Coyne) and will be delivered exactly at midnight on Christmas Eve. With hours to go before the dawn of Christmas, the station’s Santa Claus loses his mind and kills himself, leaving Syrtis to believe the colony no longer has the humanity to recognize Christmas. He begins to have graphic hallucinations of bloody fetuses appearing under knives and in the hands of astronaut vaginas.
But even with such a dark plot, the charm of the Flaming Lips is what comes through in the end. Brief insertions of bright scenes contrast dynamically with the otherwise shadowy film and the subtle soundtrack matches every scene flawlessly. There is no question that this movie was a labor of love for writer/director/green Martian/composer Wayne Coyne. Christmas on Mars is not only another milestone in the Flaming Lips’ landmark career, but is also able to stand as something all its own.
by Brian Loeper
