Transcendence

Yep, I have been away for a while.  There was a personal flu that I had the last few weeks as well as a family member in the hospital that captured my focus.  This is no excuse, however, as the point of the blog was to try and write daily to keep my mind busy as well as forcing me to think creatively and analytically.  So, from some time away I now return to a star studded science fiction movie that popped out in theatres just this past weekend.

After establishing himself as one of the industry’s best cinematographer, Wally Pfister took to the director’s chair to quarterback the sci-fi film Transcendence.  Pfister, an Oscar winning cinematographer, has shown an uncanny ability to magnify the ethos of a movie through spectacular framing and lighting.  The main question that I had prior to the film was, ‘does someone who has the ability to show a story naturally have the ability to properly tell a story?’  The answer to my question was a very definitive, ‘no.’

The movie revolves around the concept of the creation of artificial intelligence, as Dr. Will Caster (Johnny Depp) finds himself dying and through asinine development and lack of character development he agrees to have his brain structure integrated into a computer.  While this happened, I was treated to an unemotional wife Evelyn (Rebecca Hall) and flaccid best friend Max (Paul Bettany) wasting their last few moments with the dying Caster.  The whole while Pfister made sure to insert shots of the sunlight hitting inanimate objects as well as loads of water drops in an over use of symbolism.  By the time the film came to an end, there was a mild payoff for the water drop imagery, but it never fully connect to create any emotion.  As well, whenever it was placed throughout the film it was done so in a distracting way that never bolstered the development of scenes but simply stood out in an abrupt nature.

This is essentially what was wrong with the film, and it was on every single level.  Attention was paid to the visual presentation, but there was a lack of humanity and understanding as to how the story should unfold.  As the story progressed and characters were lead to make key decisions, no effort was spent on showing why or how they came to their choices of action, leaving a vague and impersonal feel to the entire proceedings.

This was quite baffling for me, because the casting of the film was incredible.  Outside of the talent that I already mentioned there were actors such as Morgan Freeman, Kate Mara, and Cillian Murphy, all of whom have the ability to no just deliver lines but to capture and present deeps levels of emotion and complexity.  In Transcendence I continually was left with the idea that no perfection was chased by Pfister to harness the skills of the people who he had access to.  Lines that were supposed to be building a sense of the characters and personalities were delivered flat and without meaning, as though they were never perceived to be of importance to the tale.

The only interesting thing about the movie was the concept itself.  Many science fiction films have tackled the idea of artificial intelligence and the dangers of computers becoming too powerful and self-aware, and portions of this film brought the concept home in a fresh light.  If told in an extremely different way this movie could have built upon the creepiness of its plot and created a true sense of uneasiness about human exploration into technological development.  But it didn’t.  It took the idea and presented it in phone book fashion, just putting the information up on the screen in a way that is about as uninteresting as it gets, leaving no desire to revisit it ever again in the future.

You know a film is bad when the audience floods out the exits the moment the film is done, with no lingering whatsoever and no desire to talk, sit, and digest what they just saw.  Within a minute of being told it had reached a finale, there was nothing left but empty seats, mine included.  I almost always sit through the credits and chat with a friend about the highs and lows of the ride that we had just been on, but by the point the final credit was rolling my car was already warming up.  This is just another one of those films that comes and goes, wasting its opportunity and not surviving in public consciousness when all is said and done.

Rating - 1 out of 4 stars