Operation Ganymed 2
| Operation Ganymed | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Rainer Erler |
| Written by | Rainer Erler |
| Starring |
|
| Music by | Eugen Thomass |
| Cinematography | Wolfgang Grasshoff |
| Edited by | Hilwa von Boro |
Release date | 1977 |
Running time | 118 |
| Country | Germany |
| Language | German |
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Operation Ganymed is a German dystopian science fiction film directed by Rainer Erler in 1977. The film was produced by Pentagramma for the German broadcaster ZDF. It first aired on television on December 11, 1977. Operation Ganymed was later released in theaters starting May 30, 1980. On video it was also released under the title Heroes – Lost in the Dust of the Stars.
Plot
In the year 1991, the surviving astronauts of a multi-year international UN “peace mission” return to Earth only to discover that no one is responding to their radio signals.
Their spacecraft, Ganymed II, was one of three ships on a mission to Jupiter. Two burned up in Jupiter’s atmosphere during a faulty gravity assist maneuver, and the remaining ship lost part of its crew during an unauthorized descent ordered by the commander to a crater lake on Jupiter’s moon Ganymede. Nevertheless, the crew managed to discover primitive life there and collect samples.
The last survivors—three Americans, one Western European, and one Russian—are approaching Earth orbit after more than 1,500 days in space. The crew attempts to reestablish contact with mission control, which had been lost more than two and a half years earlier. This is because the UN had already officially declared the mission a failure several years earlier, so no one expects any survivors.
As their energy and oxygen reserves are nearly exhausted, Commander Mac decides to attempt an emergency landing by detonating the control capsule free from the ship, leaving the main portion of the spacecraft in orbit. The landing capsule successfully splashes down in the ocean, but the inflatable life raft washes ashore on an uninhabited coastline backed by a barren, desert-like landscape. With only emergency rations and almost no drinking water, the astronauts set out to find inhabited areas. Their exhausting trek eventually leads them to an abandoned settlement where, using maps and newspapers left behind, they deduce that they are on the west coast of Baja California.
The other four astronauts also discover that Don has actually been carrying samples from the crater lake in what he claimed was his “medical bag,” which leads them to beat him. Eventually they decide to continue toward the road to San Diego, but it turns out to be buried in sand and apparently abandoned. When they discover a deserted airplane wreck, Oss begins to suspect that humanity may have been decimated by a nuclear war and that they are walking toward the fallout zone.
Doug, an American who has become unstable after years of confinement and the hardships of the mission and the landing, snaps under the strain of heat and thirst. In his paranoia he kills the Russian, Oss, believing that only the Russians could have started the nuclear war. Doug is then shot by Commander Mac. That night, already near the end of his strength, Mac fires their last signal flare in a desperate hope of rescue. The next morning he stumbles upon the exobiologist Don, who had wandered away from camp and fallen asleep while tormented by visions of nuclear war.
Mac drags him back to the airplane wreck, where Steve had remained with the last water supplies. Starving, Steve has turned to cannibalism and eaten from the bodies of the dead. When Mac and Don return, Steve flees in shame and fear and is found dead in the desert the next morning.
Mac and Don continue onward until Mac dies from exhaustion. The final scene shows the sole survivor of the entire mission: Don, already severely weakened by dehydration and hallucinations, stumbling with his last strength into the outskirts of a Mexican slum. Whether his perception of reality is still intact remains unclear; the crater-lake samples he had carried for so long appear to have been abandoned somewhere in the desert.
Miscellaneous
At the beginning of the film, original footage of United Nations Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim in the United Nations General Assembly is shown, representing a moment of silence for the astronauts who were believed to be dead. The film also incorporates real footage from various space missions and victory parades.
Rainer Erler’s film is primarily not intended as a “space opera,” but rather as a portrayal of group dynamics in an extremely stressful situation for all involved. Notably, in the end the physically and mentally weakest but intellectually most flexible member of the mission survives, while the others—who had previously acted more strictly according to protocol and training—prove unable to cope with the unexpected circumstances.
Reception
A science fiction film that strips space travel and its heroes of their aura of glory and encourages viewers to look more critically at technological progress.
A technically excellent utopian thriller with intellectual ambition.
— Fischer Film Almanac 1981
The production is not only excitingly told, well acted, and convincingly produced, but also thought-provoking.
— epd Film
Rainer Erler proves that action films made in Germany can certainly be worth watching.
— Playboy
Operation Ganymed is about Vietnam as much as it is about the moons of Jupiter. A film about the old game of power, aggression, and manipulation—and about the transformation of scientific projects into instruments of propaganda.
— Johannes Grenzfurthner on ORF FM4
Awards
1978 Best Science Fiction Film of the Year at the Trieste Science Fiction Film Festival
DVD release
- Operation Ganymed. KNM Home Entertainment, 2005
Literature
- Thomas Ballhausen: The Missed Apocalypse. Notes on Rainer Erler’s Operation Ganymed (1977), in: Quarber Merkur. Franz Rottensteiner’s Literary Journal for Science Fiction and Fantasy, No. 107/108, Passau 2008.
- Ronald M. Hahn / Volker Jansen: Lexicon of Science Fiction Films. 2000 Films from 1902 to Today, 2 volumes, Heyne, Munich 1997.
References
External links
- Please use a more specific IMDb template. See the documentation for available templates.
- Operation Ganymed at Filmportal.de
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