I have lately found interest in reviewing movies with great, wasted potential. This is another one, sharing a lot with a 'Wind Chill' that I've written about, too. That movie was about merging the philosophical idea of "eternal return" with a ghost story. It was quite clever in my opinion, but failed because someone wanted all the imaginable clichés to satisfy the masses (that it never reached, 'cause it went straight to DVD).
We have a deep idea here, too. It's basically a struggle between two men and their differing ideologies, two worlds, two metaphysical forces, set in a city that is quite not in OUR world, just a bit "off". So, all in the core of this movie is abstract. It's like a show presented to us by these forces behind the curtain.
On the other side, we have Wood's character who represents fate, order, patterns. He believes he is able to determine the universe, to understand the ultimate story behind the mystery. On the other side, we have Hurt, a Wittgensteinian professor seeing only the uncertainty of "truths" and the freedom of an individual to create his own destiny in an unorganized universe. The battlefield of these two ideas is Oxford, seen as a strange place inhabited by strange people: after centuries of twisting and shaping of physics, metaphysics and mathematics it has somehow turned into a world where special laws of nature work. And everyone is just a bit crazy.
It might basically be about solving a murder mystery, but just watch how everything gravitates around this struggle. All the dialog, about who's right and who's not, in every turn. The men even fight of the attention of the same woman.
But it doesn't work, because there had to be a mystery. They chose the Dan Brown -style instead of Agatha Christie -style. Lots of running, lots of amazing conclusions from simple clues, lots of ado about nothing. It's boring, and really nowhere as smart as these characters should be. You have the minimum number of characters, so it's not too hard to guess the twist(s). The romance sub-plot has way too much emphasis. The ending is almost great, exactly what the idea of the story called for, but the events that lead you there are not.
Staging, editing and directing: good, but nothing special. It could have been, with a bit more wackiness. Actors do basically fine.
Hurt in a Guy Fawkes costume must have been a joke.
We have a deep idea here, too. It's basically a struggle between two men and their differing ideologies, two worlds, two metaphysical forces, set in a city that is quite not in OUR world, just a bit "off". So, all in the core of this movie is abstract. It's like a show presented to us by these forces behind the curtain.
On the other side, we have Wood's character who represents fate, order, patterns. He believes he is able to determine the universe, to understand the ultimate story behind the mystery. On the other side, we have Hurt, a Wittgensteinian professor seeing only the uncertainty of "truths" and the freedom of an individual to create his own destiny in an unorganized universe. The battlefield of these two ideas is Oxford, seen as a strange place inhabited by strange people: after centuries of twisting and shaping of physics, metaphysics and mathematics it has somehow turned into a world where special laws of nature work. And everyone is just a bit crazy.
It might basically be about solving a murder mystery, but just watch how everything gravitates around this struggle. All the dialog, about who's right and who's not, in every turn. The men even fight of the attention of the same woman.
But it doesn't work, because there had to be a mystery. They chose the Dan Brown -style instead of Agatha Christie -style. Lots of running, lots of amazing conclusions from simple clues, lots of ado about nothing. It's boring, and really nowhere as smart as these characters should be. You have the minimum number of characters, so it's not too hard to guess the twist(s). The romance sub-plot has way too much emphasis. The ending is almost great, exactly what the idea of the story called for, but the events that lead you there are not.
Staging, editing and directing: good, but nothing special. It could have been, with a bit more wackiness. Actors do basically fine.
Hurt in a Guy Fawkes costume must have been a joke.