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“After a top-secret experiment misfires, a scientist may be the only man left alive in the world.
“THE QUIET EARTH centres around a scientist called Zac (Bruno Lawrence) who wakes one morning to discover he is alone in the world. The global top-secret energy project (Operation Flashlight) which he has been working on for a year, has changed the world. Humanity seems to have been wiped out.
“In director Geoff Murphy's cult sci-fi feature a global energy project has malfunctioned and scientist Zac Hobson (Bruno Lawrence) awakes to find himself the only living being left on earth. At first he lives out his fantasies, helping himself to cars and clothes, before the implications of being 'man alone' sink in, along with his own culpability in the disaster. As this awareness sends him to the brink of madness, he discovers two other survivors. One of them a woman. “Quite simply the best science-fiction film of the 80s” - Los Angeles Daily News.” - New Zealand Film Commission; www.nzfilm.co.nz/film/the-quiet-earth; 3/02/2014.
“A global experiment malfunctions, leaving one of the scientists (Bruno Lawrence) alone in a world where every living thing has disappeared. He begins a frantic search for other survivors and pursues the pleasures of wealth and excess in circumstances where wealth is no longer relevant. Amidst a growing realisation that the forces unleashed by the experiment have created an instability in the universe he occupies, he discovers two other survivors; one of them a woman”- (From The Quiet Earth promotional flyer)
“A multilevel picture, the film discusses the ethics of science, and who has the right to own knowledge.” - (Geoff Murphy, Onfilm, Wellington 1985)
“The Quiet Earth obviously is deeply felt. It’s no accident that these tragic visions of depopulation come from a tiny country that has declared itself a nuclear- free zone. Or that one of the central characters is Maori, a tribe very nearly extinguished by the early white settlers, then earnestly ‘saved’ and assimilated in this century, at the cost of their tribal culture” - (Sheila Benson, “‘Earth,’ Star Are Out Of This World”, Los Angeles Times, October 18, 1985)