A rowdy Saturday night crowd, mostly in their early twenties, who showed all kinds of bad-movie-going-experience-warning-signs: Loud giggles and fidgeting, lots of cell phone usage, people constantly changing seats, etc. before the film was held in rapt attention once the story started to play out. In this day and age of uncouth cinema-etiquette, a talky bit metaphysical science fiction engaging the horde is not nothing! Duncan Jones’ ability to take the goofy ‘Quantum Leap’ type subject material and imbue it with a brains, a sense of homour and make the package an all around good time at the flickers made me realize how much I love the ‘sort-of-time-travel-sort-of-parallel-universe’ kind of film, and thus, why not outline a few fun companion pieces that could go on a double- or triple-bill with Source Code some time down the line. This is not a review of Duncan Jones’ new ‘quantum forensics’ thriller Source Code, a film I am only moments from returning from that is really quite spiffy, but sort of a Row Three Rep-tacular! If you were to have a festival of movies to watch along side Duncan Jones latest, I offer a few below. Apologies if the films are so modern, but this type of subject matter seems to be a product of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Although if you have a Howard Hawkes, Ernst Lubitsch, Fritz Lang or John Frankenheimer story that plays with consequence and Schrödinger’s cat, please let me know.
1. Minority Report
Here Samantha Morton is a person used as a machine in the future-crimes experimental program (not unlike Jake Gyllenhaal in the Source Code program) which brings the Patriot Act to its satirical end-game. Tom Cruise plays the damaged cop who is the ace-man for doing on the ground arrests of folks that are ‘about to do a crime’ before he comes up as the next future-criminal. Spielberg is an odd director to adapt Phillip K. Dick, and the film is wobbly some times fluctuating between cynical ironies and Indiana Jones set-pieces. It all works pretty well until the the wacky feel-good epilogue that undercuts any kind of logic or coherence.
2. Donnie Darko
Jake Gyllenhaal launched his A-List career with one of the new millenniums first ‘Tangent-Universe’ movies. A post-theatrical cult-crossover that acquired profundity by being obtuse (this is a clever way of me telling you to avoid the needlessly over-explained directors cut at all costs.) Disturbed teen has trouble with sleep walking and eventually finds out that the universe is ending on Halloween night. Angst-y encounters with authority figures, large talking rabbits and a would-be girlfriend (Jenna Malone) make Donnie Darko a sort of an unholy blend of John Hughes and Kurt Vonnegut, but someone is already sharpening their knife for that comparison. One wonders if Source Code is not a slicker, establishment-made bookend to Darko’s rough and tumble up-and-comer. Then again, Duncan Jones is only two films in and Moon was his own rough-and-tumble, yet slick and somehow humane coming-out party.
3. Trancers
This D-grade Terminator knock-off produced by Full Moon Entertainment (a company that specialized in decent D-grade entertainment) features a futuristic cop traveling back to 1985 by way of consciousness altering narcotics to possess one of his ancestors bodies for a time. He is going there/then to chase down his arch-nemesis, a super-psychic criminal named Whistler, and on the way he grows to love the 80s, fall in love with Helen Hunt (in an early role) and create a whole lot of paradox by trying to prevent a paradox, not that the filmmakers explore things too deeply, but it sure is fun to see Tim Thomerson get a rare starring role in a film.
4. The Fountain
Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz are destined to not be together in three different eras (or rather the present and the future and within a fictional short-story within the film.) A stylish, occasionally overcooked, and delightfully convoluted way to say, make the most of the time you have and stop worrying about what the future may bring. Or if you are a Beatles fan, ‘life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.’ But come to think about it, it is kind of the same message that Source Code flirts with.
5. Mr. Nobody
Here is a film that plays out all of its tangent universes at the same time to visualize choice in a similar way to Source Code. But Mr. Nobody gussies it up even further with flowery cinematography and completely eschewing exposition by literally lecturing the details of the films premise by its lead character (Jared Leto.) Like The Fountain (see below), it mixes in a characters own series of short-stories to further confound, and its take on ‘time travel’ is decidedly backwards. Settling on that somewhere in all the possible worlds, there is probably one or two in which you don’t suffer too much, but there are far more shitty lives than good ones. I think people overlook the fact that although Mr. Nobody is a hodgepodge of other movie styles and conceits, it actually has a delightfully absurdist take on the universe, something that comes out of the wackiness and non-intuitive nature of Quantum Mechanics.
6. The Adjustment Bureau
Probably playing in an adjacent cinema to Source Code is another Philip K. Dick adaptation. It doesn’t quite have the momentum or elegance, but it does feature a valiant attempt by Matt Damon to forestall the inevitable (i.e. God and fate) by actually fulfilling the original inevitable. No the film is not as complicated as that last sentence, but it does cover more than a few ecclesiastical and existential hurdles along its merry way to an ending that is either sappily positive or subversively negative. Take your pick.
7. Groundhog Day
An obvious reference point for Source Code, as Bill Murray spends an endless cycle repetition (decades by one account on the internet) reliving one day in Punxsutawney to either see if the local groundhog will see his shadow or get into Andie MacDowell’s pants. Harold Ramis and company have a lot more fun with the concept than Duncan Jones, albeit Source Code has plenty of fun and there have been many serious papers written on Groundhog Day. Go Figure.
8. Inception
BWAAH! Yes, this film, albeit also quite recent, is on the list if only that one could live a life or three in the dilated time in a-dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream. While Source Code, and many of the films in this list come with the message to savour each minute. The Nolan brothers indicate that the wells of the brain are deep enough to dwell between seconds if only you dream hard enough. It’s a wonderful idea that is only hinted at in the film, and seemingly outright rejected by those few with the opportunity to do so (Marion Cotillard and Ken Watanabe, for instance, are both happy to get out of that situation) although the whole film could possibly be Leonardo DiCaprio’s character opting to stay. Either way, much like Source Code, it gets at metaphysics by way of big-action-movie syntax. An unusual way to approach the subject.
