Christmas on Mars is a 16mm home movie by the alternate pop-rock band The Flaming Lips. The band has been around over some twenty years and has built up a strong following not
just for their music but also as counter-culture exhibitionists. They are as much performance artists as musicians and they steadily expand their Flaming Lips iconic and iconoclastic universe in all mediums. This film is another part of the process.
Christmas on Mars is about a Martian colony struggling to function with a demoralized crew who are slowly going psychotic from the solitude and confinement of space. The central character bears witness to the slow degradation of everyone around him while getting ready for the colonies first Christmas party. He struggles with the set backs while trying to hold on to his own sanity made feeble by seriously disturbing visions and an enigmatic alien visitor.
Christmas on Mars is a work of love heavily reminiscent of late '60s - early '70s arthouse type of sci-fi cinema. It plays largely in grainy black and white with colour moments, has built in scratches for nonexistent reel changes and plays (on the dvd) with Russian subtitles. While watching this Tarkovsky's 
Solaris immediately came to mind, but Dark Star turns up in spirit as well. Christmas on
Mars also harks seriously back to the more allegorical form of storytelling from that era. It makes no bones about its pretensions as a message movie. But it's not an easy message to decipher. Indeed, if it could be said easily there would be no point to the film.
Christmas on Mars is an existential panto rich with images and symbolism that often requires decoding via Kafka, David Lynch and the music and performance of The Flaming Lips themselves. It is funny, disturbing, dreary, surreal, bewildering, charming, stylistic, nihilistic, cynical, hopeful, absurdist and joyful. It plays all this contradiction on cheap but nicely designed sets, on very terrestrial looking but alien locations, with cheap but effective special effects and a remarkable soundscape that demands to be played very loud.
Christmas on Mars is not a film I can say entirely works. I cannot say it is a brilliant success. I cannot say it will be remembered in the pantheon of great, even good cinema. I can't say this is a movie I can comfortably recommend to anyone.
Christmas on Mars is a film I can say is exceedingly cool. I can say it is destined, deservedly, to be a culty. And I can say that despite all the weirdness it is a genuine Christmas movie. And I can say I loved it.
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