Dream Scenario Is A Bold & Innovative Indictment Of The Digital Age |
This is #CineFile, where our critic Rahul Desai goes beyond the obvious takes, to dissect movies and shows that are in the news. |
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| THE premise of Kristoffer Borgli’s Dream Scenario reads: A mild-mannered professor starts to inexplicably appear in the dreams of people around the world. Imagine the sci-fi possibilities. Given our cinematic conditioning (and the film’s low budget), it’s normal to expect an inventive love story or a poignant portrait of new-age loneliness. Something on the lines of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or Her. Especially if the protagonist were a psychology professor. Or even an edgy indie version of Inception. Or at the most, a swipe at the cynicism and pitfalls of the middle-aged dating scene. (Stream top-rated movies and shows across platforms and languages, using the OTTplay Premium Jhakaas pack, for just Rs 199/month.) The last thing one might expect is a dark horror-comic satire about the fickleness of modern celebrity, the subconscious whims of cancel culture, and the surreal machinations of the social media age. It’s a distinctly European take on contemporary living, bringing to mind the creative commentary of one-liner satires like Look Who’s Back (Hitler wakes up in 2015) and Colossal (an alcoholic unwittingly wreaks creature-film havoc in a distant country). It’s no coincidence that this film falters in its third act, when it paints itself into a corner in pursuit of last-ditch sentimentalism. There’s a lovely lens-flare embrace in dying light — the romantic frame we expected from the onset — as well as a heartbreaking final line. But by then, emotion feels like a copout of sorts. |
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Good Grief: A Dan Levy State Of Mind |
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| | Cast: Dan Levy, Ruth Negga, Luke Evans, Himesh Patel |
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THE word ‘grief’ is never once mentioned in Good Grief, a film about a 38-year-old man (Daniel Levy) struggling to cope with the death of his husband (Luke Evans). Words like pain, loss, sadness, void and hurt are used as emotional surrogates, like familiar sounds poking around in the dark to acquire sensory meaning. You can see why. Grief is supposed to be an all-encompassing term, one that can mean everything and nothing at once. It’s a soothing linguistic crutch, but it also reduces the fractured soul to any single feeling. And the grief of Marc, the protagonist, is plural and complicated. When he discovers that his late husband, Oliver, was shacking up with a younger lover in Paris, Marc finds himself at odds with his own emptiness. There is confusion, but there is also heartbreak at not being able to muster up the requisite rage. So he uses resentment to escape his grief — he takes his two best friends Sophie (Ruth Negga) and Thomas (Himesh Patel) to Paris for an expensive weekend getaway and lives in Oliver’s secret love nest. He uses attachment to defy his grief — he meets a kind French man and spends the night walking with him. He uses memories to question his grief — he wonders why he used his marriage as a ‘rebound’ from the death of his mother. He uses regret to deflect his grief — Oliver may not have been the purest partner, and Marc wonders if he is now worth the anguish. But Marc ultimately realises that he can’t run away from an inseparable part of himself. That’s all there is to most stories about loving and losing. It’s about coming to terms with the futility of healing. And it’s about moving forward without having to leave behind. — RAHUL DESAI |
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