Back in 2002, producer Nicolas McClintock launched a new film project to mark the beginning of the new Millennia. Inspired by a 1978 short by Herz Frank, he invited a selection of prominent filmmakers to create new ten minute short films on the subject of time.
Ultimately this resulted in not one film, but two (Ten Minutes Older: The Trumpet, and Ten Minutes Older: The Cello, named for the main instrument in their theme music) and he attracted such directors as Jean-luc Goddard, Werner Herzog, Spike Lee, Jim Jarmusch and Wim Wenders.
Buried in among all these other films was a lyrical — if deeply melancholy — little outer space film by British Director Michael Radford (who is perhaps best remembered for Il Postino, or for his highly acclaimed version of 1984).
His contribution — Addicted to the Stars — stars Daniel Craig as an astronaut who has just returned to Earth after a long mission and finds that the world changed enormously while he was gone.
It is a fairly simple tale and I can’t offer much more of a summary without spoiling it, but it is an incredible beautiful and accomplished short, one which portrays a chill and mildly uncomfortable future London with a bare minimum of resources, and which gives us stunningly beautiful views of space and alien worlds.
At the same time, it features one of the most specific references to ten minutes in all of the films in the series.
While it isn’t easy to find a copy of the two anthology films these days, the good news is that you do not need to: Radford’s short is available on YouTube.
It is a elegant and artistic little film, which looks incredible and has a poignant story at its heart.
And, what’s more, it revolves around one of the tenets of relativistic physics.
Not bad for a mere ten minutes of your life…
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