A wholesomely touching documentary of a man who devoted his life to broadcasting music into space to catch alien ears, championing the documentary codes to show off his esoteric bleep-bloop stuff.
I’m gonna say it right now, if I don’t grow up to become this man then something has gone terribly wrong and I should just beat myself to death with my own ironing board. You can all hold me to this.
It does exactly what it says on the box, about John’s lifelong dream of contacting or at the very least hearing a whisper from the tall grey people that dwell somewhere in a far-off region of space. As his computer equipment flashing with a constellation of lights and dials and beeping an electric orchestra of bleeps and bloops grows, so does his reach into space.
Broadcasting his favourite music out into the velvety blackness of space, this Space DJ’s aspiration isn’t just a wholesomely heart-warming in the face of our cosmic insignificance, but is daringly well planned. How else do you get the ear of aliens? Just send your signal further out! So, his house becomes crowded with signal resonators, huge coils that look like they could blast a hole in a mountain spewing out music into space. I dare you to tell me this isn’t the coolest shit ever.
John Was Trying to Contact Aliens (2020) as a short documentary fills in the hoofprints of the genre but condensing this weird man’s life enough to keep it snappy and us still identifying with his quirkiness. The aspect ratio dances around as home taken photographs of his childhood take us through his life, so this isn’t a static talking head by any count. It boasts not only stupendous shots of space (thank you Hubble) as one would come to expect from a space documentary which I have a weak spot for, not just a killer wavy electric soundtrack of synths singing with the voice of electronic angels, but a very fitting end to his mission.
The few million miles within which our planet is nestled punily, are now echoing with the sounds of music because one person wanted to contact some aliens, I feel quite happy about that because if some aliens happen to drive by on a space-road-trip, they’ll find us a rather funky place to visit (if they can avert their attention from the other unspeakable nonsense that happens here.)
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