In Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without A Cause, two scenes take place inside a planetarium which can explain so much more about the film than meets the eye. The first scene, during a school field trip, shows the kids watching a show with images of stars and planets. Though the lights are dim, each character can be clearly seen. The show is guided by the adult in the center of the room who is explaining to the students these wonders that make such little sense to them. This man guiding the show can be seen as a figure of adult guidance in each of their lives – helping shine just a small amount of light on a confusing world so they may begin to understand the mysteries of the vast universe that lies ahead of them. At the end, their guide talks about the destruction of the world and says to the class, “Through the infinite reaches of space the problems of man seem trivial and naive indeed. And man, existing alone, seems himself an episode of little consequence." During this speech, there is a gaseous explosion shown which leaves Plato cowering under the seats, and when he finally resurfaces, he asks Jim, “What does he know about man alone?”
It is not until much later the viewer understands why this concept scared Plato so much. We discover that he is completely alone – abandoned by his parents, without any friends – and this concept of man mattering so little that he can simply disappear terrifies him. He is searching for someone to care about him. He wants desperately to believe that his parents will come back for him, but perhaps even more than that, he just wants to matter to someone.
This scene is quickly forgotten as the movie moves forward with a knife fight, death, and tension between characters, but after what Plato perceives as his final betrayal by Jim and Judy, he runs back to the planetarium. Jim finds him there hiding alone in complete darkness. The blackness as compared to the first scene shows how lost Plato is without adult guidance. It is demonstrative of how dark and immense the universe feels when you are young and left to fend yourself.
Jim, who has already been set up as a semi-father figure to Plato is able to find him and talks him into coming out of the dark planetarium and back outside. Even then though, the lights outside are too bright for Plato to handle – he is not ready to understand the world or to be shown any real reason. The lights are temporarily turned off again, and Jim guides Plato outside, but the damage has already been done. There is so much confusion, and the gas has already started to spiral toward the ultimate explosion. When the lights come back on, Plato is shot and killed, ultimately proving that he really was alone in the world and not of much consequence to anyone. His fear from the first planetarium scene has now become a reality.
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You know, I have always been attentive to this scene but have never focused on Plato's experience or done this kind of analysis of the parallel scenes. Bravo for you! I generally think of this scene as a commentary on all of the action and as a further discouragement to all of the young people who are looking for guidance in their lives. While the geeky man's analysis may be true (hmm, this came out during the early Nouvelle Vague period and is certainly an echo of Camus and Existentialism, hmm), it adds a sense of hopelessness to the activities of the young people to whom those activities are life and death matters. Figuratively and sometimes literally, as we see. They are searching for meaning and here is someone telling them there is none and their lives are insignificant in the schemes of the universe.
ReplyDeleteNice work, Doomed.