Incidents in an Expanding Universe

Incidents in an Expanding Universe
Directed by	Richard Stanley
Written by	Richard Stanley
Screenplay by	Richard Stanley
Starring	Charles Helps; Nicola Kench; Anton Beebe; Annette Botha;
Cinematography	Gregory Copeland
Edited by	Gregory Copeland
Production; company	The Shadow Theater
Release date	1985
Running time	45 minutes
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English

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Incidents in an Expanding Universe is a 1985 British 8mm science fiction short film directed by Richard Stanley.

Plot[edit]

The story is told in flashbacks and takes place in the year 2037, in a bleak future plagued by war, nuclear radiation, poverty and overpopulation. Soldier Maxwell "Max" Harrison comes home from deployment to meet his partner, Nicola "Nicky" Scott, a scrap metal sculptor. They met when he – already a war veteran – played the flute in parks and at monorail stations to make ends meet as a street musician. He hopes for a promotion and transfer so that he can live close to home with her, sell the apartment, buy a house together, get married and maybe have children.

One day when Max sees a photo of a stranger in uniform on her wall and asks who it is, she tells him that it was her nice but strange acquaintance named Ralph. Ralph also lived there and told her about the expansion of the universe when she was a teenager. That everything would one day be ripped apart in the Big Rip. That the streets would rip open and the buildings would collapse. That nothing you've done, good or bad, matters because in the end it doesn't matter. Ralph often sat brooding on the balcony until one day he left and never came back.

Summer 2025: Sometime later, Max gets his active duty promotion, earning enough money for the two of them. They euphorically throw a boisterous party at their home, including some extraterrestrial party guests, until the police break them up for disturbing the peace. The next morning he is called by a superior who orders him to submit his report to headquarters and to fly to the war zone that evening. He asks her again to be his wife. She says yes, but will have to wait until he returns from combat and the promotion becomes official. Then they could finally leave the miserable city and live their own lives. Together with his friend and comrade "Shades", the fighter pilot, they fly to the front with their armed flying car.

Fall 2025: Arrived in the southwestern war zone, the two take part together in the United Armed Forces' Operation Damocles against the last surviving resistance fighters of the "Green Army". They penetrate deep into enemy territory with their battle glider and are supposed to carry out hit-and-run attacks behind enemy lines. The setting is the last forest in the free world in the Adressil Province. After taking out a machine gun crew, they fly into a raging battle where their helicopter gunships battle enemy mechs while wildfires rage all around them. When her glider is destroyed, Max makes her own way through the forest and mountains. After measuring high levels of radioactivity in the area with his Geiger counter, a group of primitive mutants ambush him with spears and knock him unconscious with a rock. However, when Shades follows and searches for him, he cannot find Max.

November 2025: Max awakens bandaged in Forest Hill in the Mutant Reservation. There he meets Mandy, who is doing an internship for her studies in social development. She is treated well by the mutants and taught them how to net fish. In addition, she wants to help them to develop agriculture and politics. Max is off duty as a wounded man and is waiting for a supply glider to fly him out. In the meantime, he starts an affair with Mandy and they spend a lot of time together at the beach.

Winter 2026: Max returns home to Nicky. She confronts him with a letter from Mandy, in which she confesses her affair with Max. Angry, she gives him the cold shoulder and throws him out of the apartment. He then drowns his sorrows with Shades in a bar and roams around. After a while, when he calls her on a videophone and begs her forgiveness, she rebuffs him again, but calls him back and tells him she needs him. They make up again.

2037: Max is ordered to head back to the war zone due to an emergency. He has to leave the next morning. Nicky understands, but is concerned for him, in part because he's already lost a hand in a fight that has been replaced with a robotic prosthesis. Max tries to calm her down as it's only for a short time. Soon, with his higher salary, he could take better care of both of them and then finally get married. When he leaves, he gives the flute from his time as a street musician to a poor begging boy in front of the house. Max get killed in the war and the grieving Nicky has been pondering how the universe is expanding, just like Ralph did in his day. She estimates that as you get older, you notice the "cracks" more. Most would only see them when it is too late.

Cast[edit]

Charles Helps as Maxwell "Max" Harrison
Nicola Kench as Nicola "Nicky" Scott
Anton Beebe as "Shades"
Annette Botha as Mandy

Trivia[edit]

The short film and SHOK! Walter's Robo-Tale by Steve MacManus and Kevin O'Neill from the British comic series 2000 AD served as a movie template for his later work Hardware (1990).
In a fight scene, Richard Stanley used a scene from The Empire Strikes Back for a fraction of a second, in which Snowtroopers are shot by the Millennium Falcon's automatic laser cannon.
Also in the fight scenes one hears short cut-in German audio tracks from a war film, so among other things a paramedic is called.
The Bulgarian folk song Izlel je Delyo Haydutin (interpreted by Valya Balkanska), which is used in the film, can also be found on the Voyager Golden Records of the two interstellar space probes Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 launched in 1977.

External links[edit]

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