The Hinge Between 2s and 3s

Rating: Null/10 (26 August 2007)

You know sometimes when you see a movie, and you see the beautiful movie inside swimming to get out and probably drowning? I see this a lot with children: beautiful rich souls, with depth and insight who unwittingly are building barriers between their lives and themselves.
This is really a good project, in the sense that it has a good soul, one worth spending time with. Its more than just the idea of the thing, or the rough outline. Its the way it seems to have been born, outside of the factory. That it has a poor expression shouldn't be counted against it. Really, would you rather have a stylish, amusing film with no soul, or the other way around? Films are little loves; the depth of commitment matters.
The story here starts with a man and a book. The book is engaging. Over the course of the story in the movie, the story in the book creeps out of the book and overlaps with the man's life. Now this is a narrative device I call "folding," as it merges the world of the reader with that of the viewer and sweeps us into what we see.
The idea behind this is that the work of art  the book or movie  can change the viewer or reader. Not just color or educate, but fundamentally alter the fabric of being and thence the fabric of the world. It can change fate, perturb the laws of the universe, transmute.
What makes this an unsatisfying movie is that it appears about 2/3s of the way through that this is not the case. The story seems to imply  and uncareful viewers will believe  that there is an ordinary explanation, that the way things are isn't because a transmutation has occurred, but that a set of causes in the past is discovered. They were there all along, before encountering the book; the book has no agency in the world. At the end, that uncareful viewer will be unhappy. Perhaps even, this is what the director and actors believed the story to be.
But pay attention to the way it is written, and by that I mean both the story and the film.
Its entirely possible to see this movie as the story of the book changing this man's reality. And not in the simple way that he believes he is in the book, but in the magical way that his being  and entire past  is changed by it. There's a sort of superpowerful story that can do this.
Yes, it will have some universal structure, some family of hinges, that it leverages because it has to expose the bones of the world in order to reshape them. Here, its a number hinge. I suppose that's a good choice, given what the viewing public thinks about the structure of the world: I saw this together with "The Last Mimsy" which used visual faceted vision in the same way. And "Pi," "Proof" and that mathematical excrescence "Beautiful Mind." All of these like numeric structure or pattern as illuminative of a worldly structure that we can grab.
Tellingly, they always accompany this with massive writing, often on walls. Its the writing that makes the handles, you see.
Here, its done with no sensitivity to delivered narrative, that connection to us. Blame the filmmaker. Its not as effective as "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" or "Singing Detective," but as a structure, its pretty darn intelligent.
Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.