The story is as old as humanity itself: how do we survive within the limitations of our disposable physical bodies? Here it is illustrated in an extreme sense of a man afflicted with "locked-in syndrome" (completely paralyzed yet perfectly aware). It is based on a true story.
What makes it interesting is that it's not your standard tale of overcoming adversity, not like "A Beautiful Mind" or "Shine" or "My Left Foot". Instead it focuses on *dealing with* adversity, anticlimactic as that may seem. In particular, it highlights the power of imagination.
This permits the camera to indulge in lots of fantasy sequences, and therein lies the power of this film. In that respect it's similar to the Terry Gilliam film "The Fisher King", the Peter Jackson film "Beautiful Creatures", the Rebecca Miller film "Angela", and the obscure Japanese masterpiece "Shiki-Jitsu" (Ritual), all of which focus on the protagonist's ability to slip into a dream world to overcome physical or situational limitations. It's a tale as old as the sun, but what makes it fresh each time is the creative way in which it's presented.
Here the film's creativity comes by way of first person perspective. Most of the time the camera shows us the viewpoint of the afflicted man, putting the audience literally into his mind. It's effective at conveying his frustrations, desires and hopes as if they are our own. The soundtrack helps us along by giving us gorgeous orchestrations, then suddenly stopping cold when the character comes back to reality.
You definitely have to be in the right frame of mind for this experience. If you're looking more for a clearcut plot & story, you'll probably be disappointed because the plot of this movie is basically what I said in the first paragraph. Not much more. It remains deliberately vague on several points, like the significance of certain people in his life, and exactly who the man was before his accident. But I think that's the director's intent... it's a film about imagination, so isn't it fitting for the audience to use its imagination to fill in the gaps?
What makes it interesting is that it's not your standard tale of overcoming adversity, not like "A Beautiful Mind" or "Shine" or "My Left Foot". Instead it focuses on *dealing with* adversity, anticlimactic as that may seem. In particular, it highlights the power of imagination.
This permits the camera to indulge in lots of fantasy sequences, and therein lies the power of this film. In that respect it's similar to the Terry Gilliam film "The Fisher King", the Peter Jackson film "Beautiful Creatures", the Rebecca Miller film "Angela", and the obscure Japanese masterpiece "Shiki-Jitsu" (Ritual), all of which focus on the protagonist's ability to slip into a dream world to overcome physical or situational limitations. It's a tale as old as the sun, but what makes it fresh each time is the creative way in which it's presented.
Here the film's creativity comes by way of first person perspective. Most of the time the camera shows us the viewpoint of the afflicted man, putting the audience literally into his mind. It's effective at conveying his frustrations, desires and hopes as if they are our own. The soundtrack helps us along by giving us gorgeous orchestrations, then suddenly stopping cold when the character comes back to reality.
You definitely have to be in the right frame of mind for this experience. If you're looking more for a clearcut plot & story, you'll probably be disappointed because the plot of this movie is basically what I said in the first paragraph. Not much more. It remains deliberately vague on several points, like the significance of certain people in his life, and exactly who the man was before his accident. But I think that's the director's intent... it's a film about imagination, so isn't it fitting for the audience to use its imagination to fill in the gaps?