Spaceship Earth: Remembering the Biosphere 2 bio-nauts and their complex plan to REALLY self-isolate

By Karen Gordon

Rating: B 

While you’ve been in self isolation you may have asked yourself, “So, could I really live in a space colony?”.

If being in a quarantine situation hasn’t swung the balance for you, the often slow moving Biosphere 2 documentary Spaceship Earth might take you further towards answering that question.   

The film, directed by Matt Wolf, is built around a highly publicized experiment:  In 1991, eight people -  four men and four women - voluntarily moved into a specially constructed biosphere habitat in Arizona. There they committed to live for two years simulating what life might be like on a spaceship or a colony on another planet. 

The Biosphere 2, where the crew practiced the ultimate in social distancing.

And while that’s an interesting topic for a documentary, arguably even more interesting is the story of how that experiment came into being.

The who, how and why of this story is a magical mystery tour that begins with a visionary and adventurer, an engineer/environmentalist/artist named John Allen, (who also published poetry and fiction inspired by the Beat Poets under the name Johnny Dolphin). Then there were the members of what could loosely be considered a “commune” that he assembled and who helped manage, design and build Biosphere 2, among other projects. Add Edward Bass, an American billionaire with an environmental bent who funded the project, and a cast of other characters (including the future political strategist and alt-right media maven Steve Bannon).

To give us the full picture of how the concept came to be, Wolf pulls us back 25 years from from the day of the launch of Biosphere 2, to tell the story of how Allen pulled together a crew who were willing, and perhaps more impressively, capable of carrying out his restless mind’s imaginings.  

The range of the ideas they took to completion  is pretty staggering: it included building an environmentally sustainable farm in Santa Fe;  building an ocean-capable ship  (The Heraclitius) that they then sailed around the world on exploratory and environmental research missions; founding an art gallery in London, England;  creating ongoing environmental projects in Puerto Rico and Australia; and being part of an experimental theatre troupe called Theatre for the Reconstitution of Reality.  

And then, of course, came Biosphere 2. Wolf’s decision to give us both the story of the scientific and social experiment, and of Allen and posse’s story over two and a half decades, is a lot for one documentary. It creates a split in the focus and accounts for its almost two-hour length. 

Wolf put the film together using a mix of archival footage, news reports from the various eras that the film covers, mixed together with first-person modern day interviews with people involved.   

The use of archival footage has both advantages and disadvantages. On one hand, that grainy footage lends veracity. The environmental movement and ideas about communal and cooperative ways of living from the late ‘60s are easier to absorb when you see these young adults embracing the possibilities of Allen’s vision.  At that point in history, he was a man of his time, and the idea of a young man with no horticultural experience agreeing to join up to figure out how to build an orchard in a desert wasn’t as out there as it might be today. 

On the other hand, the footage is also a limiting factor.  You can only show what you have. The shape of the documentary is dictated by the way Wolf uses that film. That makes things initially slow as we wait for these disparate parts of this sprawling story to come together. 

The film looks at so many things at once, that in some ways it lacks depth or resolution. That is particularly true when it comes to John Allen’s depiction. He’s clearly a man of vision and charismatic persuasion to pull off complicated projects, with partners in the scientific and financial communities. But there are points when footage of Allen, with his penchant for experimental theatre, makes him appear frivolous, more like a cult leader than a man grounded in reality.    

Wolf clearly wants us to pay attention.  But what he’s showing us is unclear.  Is Allen a loose cannon with the ability to dazzle. Or should he be embraced as a visionary, a passionate environmentalist untethered by conventional thinking whose voice we could listen to now?

It all still makes for a compelling story, unanswered questions and clarity of theme aside.

Spaceship Earth. Directed by Matt Wolf. Stars John Allen, Edward Ross, Steve Bannon. Available to rent or own across all digital and on demand platforms on Friday, May 8.