Trance (2013)
What starts as a fascinating combination of heist film and psychological free-for-all ends up being hampered by clarity of purpose and a general motivation we care about as viewers. The characters don't fully operate by what you'd call normal logic--all the contrivances of their actions only compound a contrived plot.
The intentions are big and fascinating. Some of the big reality shifts of recent movies from "The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" to "Inception" and "Shutter Island" are brought down to a smaller level here. The title implies the trance of hypnosis, and so a hypnotist is central (the only woman of note in the movie, the American actress Rosario Dawson). And she has the ability it seems to hypnotize people in a few seconds without their even (necessarily) being willing or aware.
In these trance states, which the camera and narrative flow enters without warning we are made to see alternate realities which we can't always sort out until later. Knowing what's really going on is a welcome challenge in a way because you get absorbed in the process of figuring it out. Even if you can't quite keep up with the director's whims. The trance worlds are also manipulative and playing to a male audience too much for me (the rest of the cast is male, as is the director, photographer, writer, etc. etc.).
And so am I. But the point is the movie bogs down and shifts from one main theme (a stolen painting and money and greed) to another (the sexual fantasies of several of the men involved in the heist). Do we care? Well, we aren't made to care, or even understand the impulses very well. So the movie loses its way, and loses this viewer for one.
I had high hopes for this new Danny Boyle movie, especially after "Trainspotting" which this seemed to have some relationship to. And there are some flights of imagination and beautiful set designs to keep it afloat. It's a cinematically jarring movie, which is part of the point, and I like that, though it might have used some of the fluidity of "Trainspotting" and "Slumdog Millionaire" to keep the pieces sensible. I blame here the director perhaps but not the cinematographer who has shot some terrific alternative big films (including "Slumdog"). The editor, who has a short list of films, is the most clearly culpable cog, showing how brutal movie-making can be with so many key contributors.
See it? Oh, if this is your kind of genre go ahead, it's decent. But it's not a great film, and not a great Boyle film.
What starts as a fascinating combination of heist film and psychological free-for-all ends up being hampered by clarity of purpose and a general motivation we care about as viewers. The characters don't fully operate by what you'd call normal logic--all the contrivances of their actions only compound a contrived plot.
The intentions are big and fascinating. Some of the big reality shifts of recent movies from "The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" to "Inception" and "Shutter Island" are brought down to a smaller level here. The title implies the trance of hypnosis, and so a hypnotist is central (the only woman of note in the movie, the American actress Rosario Dawson). And she has the ability it seems to hypnotize people in a few seconds without their even (necessarily) being willing or aware.
In these trance states, which the camera and narrative flow enters without warning we are made to see alternate realities which we can't always sort out until later. Knowing what's really going on is a welcome challenge in a way because you get absorbed in the process of figuring it out. Even if you can't quite keep up with the director's whims. The trance worlds are also manipulative and playing to a male audience too much for me (the rest of the cast is male, as is the director, photographer, writer, etc. etc.).
And so am I. But the point is the movie bogs down and shifts from one main theme (a stolen painting and money and greed) to another (the sexual fantasies of several of the men involved in the heist). Do we care? Well, we aren't made to care, or even understand the impulses very well. So the movie loses its way, and loses this viewer for one.
I had high hopes for this new Danny Boyle movie, especially after "Trainspotting" which this seemed to have some relationship to. And there are some flights of imagination and beautiful set designs to keep it afloat. It's a cinematically jarring movie, which is part of the point, and I like that, though it might have used some of the fluidity of "Trainspotting" and "Slumdog Millionaire" to keep the pieces sensible. I blame here the director perhaps but not the cinematographer who has shot some terrific alternative big films (including "Slumdog"). The editor, who has a short list of films, is the most clearly culpable cog, showing how brutal movie-making can be with so many key contributors.
See it? Oh, if this is your kind of genre go ahead, it's decent. But it's not a great film, and not a great Boyle film.