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Literature states that Sun Ra was born in Birmingham, Alabama, but the smart money says that he was actually conceived somewhere between Saturn and Pluto, born to a mother hooked on moon juice and a father who played piano in the best lunar wedding band around. Anyone who's ever heard The Nubians of Plutonia or Fate in a Pleasant Mood can attest to their otherworldly strangeness and supernatural brilliance. If ever there were a jazz musician (besides Miles Davis) screaming to be pressed to celluloid, it was Ra; his radical politics, fringe-bating compositions and outlandish behavior made him a film waiting to happen, as well as the butt of many bad jokes.
Despite its near-legendary status, Space is the Place is, frankly, little more than a low-budget sci-fi film that indulges in each and every one of the genre's clichés, and concordantly, its shortcomings. Hokey special effects, cheesy dialogue, scantily-clad women -- this film had it all, and depending on your vision of cinematic perfection, it'll either be the worst thing you've ever seen or the greatest spectacle in all the galaxy. Director Coney insists that the film's cheapness was an homage to sci-fi films of the fifties and sixties, though I wonder whether simple lack of funds was truly to blame.
Like many of the great blaxploitation films of the era -- Coffy, Darktown Strutters and Trick Baby in particular -- Space is the Place ornaments its social commentary with loads of gruff slang, slapdash funk pyrotechnics (a bit more free-jazz in Ra's case) and fabulously garish costumes. Ra and his cohorts remained firmly entrenched in the era's/style's strong belief that, if you're gonna change the world, you may as well look good doing it.
Unlike many sci-fi films throughout history, Space is the Place did not portray the interstellar unknown in terrifying terms; Ra had often questioned why so many filmmakers depicted space as a black hole filled with monsters and impossibilities, and in response he filled his film with imagery intended to glorify the infinite beauty and possibilities of space. Clearly, Ra envisioned space as a land untainted by the "progress" of man, and in many ways, the embodiment of the spirit world he had always envisioned, in both his mind and his music. However, the reactions of many of the film's characters (The Overseer, Jimmy Fey and the schoolchildren in particular) toward Ra and his Arkestra echoed society's prevailing notions of fearfulness -- toward the unknown in terms of lunar landings, and toward social, race-related upheaval.
Plexifilm's deluxe DVD reissue restores the film to director John Coney's original vision. An additional storyline involving a pimp and his hos has been added, though it was originally removed at Ra's badgering, as he felt it was an unnecessary codicil to the original tale. With Ra back on his home planet, director Coney has finally been given free reign to cut the film as he sees fit; much like Paul McCartney's labor on Let it Be...Naked, Coney's "definitive" version has come to pass because there's nobody left to question his motives or the concept's merit.
Included as a bonus, Richard Wilkinson's "lost footage" of the Arkestra is intensely odd, a gritty, document of their journeys through the fields of Egypt, the streets of Philadelphia and parts unknown. Some raw performance footage is also included, though it only serves to further confuse the issue. Ra and the Arkestra don't really "do" anything -- they merely wander around in trip-the-light-fantastic robes and Martian headgear, looking at graffitti, pyramids, tombstones or whatever they happen to pass in their travels. The inclusion of this material serves no purpose on the cinematic front, though it provides some insight into the bizarre and familial world-outside-the-world that the Arkestra inhabited.
Space is the Place is occasionally hard to stomach, especially for those unwitting, or simply unfamiliar with Ra's explorations on the musical frontier. That said, it remains the only real insight into who Herman Sonny Blount was as a person, as opposed to the myth he portrayed as Sun Ra. Many viewers won't be able to connect with the film on any level due to its content, age, politics, etcetera, but those who can appreciate it, on one level or another, will be whisked away to a dimension of possibilities that only Ra and the Arkestra were capable of delivering.
-- Jason Jackowiak
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