|
 he
Tesseract" sees Oxide Pang ("The
Eye") filming for the first time in the
English language, and attempting to bring Alex
Garland's enigmatic second novel to the screen.
The abject failure of the Hollywood adaptation of
Garland's debut novel, "The Beach"
notwithstanding, this is a brave move, as although
the book is written in a fairly cinematic fashion
(Garland himself has since turned to screenwriting
with the likes of "28
Days Later"), it is essentially a long,
philosophical musing on the nature of fate, based
around a disjointed narrative which leaps around
in time and between a set of seemingly disparate
characters.
The 'tesseract' of the title
refers to the unravelling of a four dimensional
hypercube into three dimensions, with the result
"we can see the thing unravelled, but not the
thing itself." Basically, this translates
into a film which focuses on several characters,
telling their separate stories in the context of
an overall narrative.
The action begins in a sleazy
Bangkok
hotel, with sweaty, twitchy Westerner Sean
(Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, "Bend
it like Beckham") nervously waiting to
pick up a mysterious shipment. Also in the hotel
are a depressed English child psychologist (Saskia
Reeves), a female assassin and a chirpy street kid
who has a tendency to steal from guests' rooms.
Gradually, their pasts and futures are revealed,
as all four hurtle towards an inevitably violent
karmic collision.
Wisely, Pang has chosen to
scale down the novel, concentrating on one of its
three parts, and weaving in the rest of the
characters where possible, albeit in different
roles. Although this was probably the only way in
which the film could have been constructed, in
doing so Pang does tend to gloss over much of
Garland
's existential ponderings, and to an extent,
misses the point entirely. To be fair, Pang does
try and at least engage some of the novel's
themes, though when seen in such a compacted form,
they seem to revolve around coincidence rather
than anything resembling destiny.
Cinematically speaking, what
is left is nothing new, as films with this kind of
overlapping narrative structure have been popular
ever since the success of "Pulp
Fiction", and although "The
Tesseract" is marginally more complex and
intelligent than the majority of its peers, it has
a definite sense of staleness. Given this, for all
its ponderous trappings, the film is hard to view
as anything other than yet another thriller based
around the tired conceit of a drug deal gone sour.
Although the film is tense,
and the narrative progresses in a skilful,
intriguing manner, the overall conclusion is never
in doubt and, aside from a rather cheaply tacked
on deus ex machina, is quite clearly signposted
from the onset. Pang does compensate for this
somewhat by fleshing out the characters, and by
attempting to attain a level of uncommon moral
complexity which at least makes the viewer more
interested in the characters' fates. This adds a
welcome layer of depth, and makes the film far
more enjoyable and gripping than it would
otherwise have been.
Unfortunately Pang's
direction is a mixed bag, with the director
employing a sense of chaos and manic energy that
tends to further undermine the story's
contemplative core. Pang quite obviously expends
far more energy on the film's action sequences, at
times painting them with bizarre psychedelic
colours and shooting them at varying speeds.
Although he never lapses into the kind of fast
editing so common in this kind of film, his style,
accomplished and interesting though it may be,
feels distinctly out of place, and is ultimately a
poor fit for the material at hand, making the film
neither one thing nor the other.
This really is the bottom
line with "The Tesseract", as although
it is undeniably interesting and entertaining in
its own way, it is unlikely to appeal either to
fans of the book or the average viewer, being at
once too complex and yet too shallow by far. For
Pang, it perhaps represents a learning experience,
and a chance to take a further step towards
becoming an established international film maker,
though it also clearly underlines the fact that he
has yet to overcome the hurdle of being a director
of style rather than substance. |
