The plot: Thomas Harbor (Robert Redford) has made a
world-changing discovery: He has found scientific proof that there is life
after death. In the midst of an increased suicide rate in reaction to this
news, he has begun further tests to see if he can see this afterlife for
himself. Meanwhile, his son Will (Jason Segel) and his new friend Isla (Rooney
Mara) have been brought into the facility where Thomas is doing his
experiments, and it seems that Thomas is on the brink of a whole new discovery.
It’s definitely good to see Segel take on some more dramatic
work, and while he does well enough with his very troubled character, he ends
up being a little too placid to really work as our leading man. Mara does a lot
better overall, managing to get a lot out of the incredibly morbid character. I
should bring up here that, regardless of their individual performances, have
next to no chemistry on-screen. Considering an unnecessary amount of the film
is dedicated to their budding romance, that’s not a good sign. Jesse Plemons as
Segel’s brother is a decent fit, and their scenes together are honestly the
only ones where any kind of familial bond makes itself known. Redford as the
scientist behind the titular Discovery definitely nails the inquisitive risk taker
that the role requires, but in his scenes with Segel and Plemons, he feels too
cold to that character connection to exist beyond the script.
Ron Canada is
okay as one of Thomas’ assistants, Mary Steenburgen leaves a good impact in her
initial scene as an interviewer, but the best performance here absolutely has to go
to Riley Keough as Lacey. Not only does she seem to be the most comfortable in
dealing with her character’s psychology, her presence in the film shows a very
clear and direct mindset attached to the fallout of the Discovery. As troubling
as her efficacy might be, she does extremely well at getting across this rather
psychotic perspective on a world where death has completely changed its meaning
as humanity knows it.
It’s rare that a singular idea at the heart of a film is
this instantly compelling, and what’s more, it takes a rather familiar sci-fi
trope and takes it even further. Films like Flatliners and The Lazarus Project
end up posing questions about the existence of an afterlife, but a film like
this, where there is definitive evidence of an afterlife, feels like a story
that is worth telling. As we see more of the world, and how it reacts to the
Discovery, we get the kind of sci-fi world-building that we haven’t gotten much
of this year. The very concept itself involves basically rewriting how people
understand reality, given that death is a rather inherent part of the human
condition.
But the really remarkable thing about this is that, because
the film proposes scientific proof as opposed to belief, theism doesn’t end up
playing much of a direct role in the narrative. Rather than delving into
theological implications, it sticks to the practical applications of such
knowledge… and those applications are quite unsettling. With this new
information forcing humanity to reconsider what a human life is worth, since
another chance is pretty much guaranteed by the Discovery, it brings up notions
of suicide and compassion for others and twists them until their heads fall
off. As much as part of me is slightly worried by how casually suicide keeps
being brought up in-story, and always in context to the Discovery without
delving into any other reasons why someone would choose to end their life, it
is an aspect of the story that would need to be explored in order for the main
concept to stick.
However, there’s a major problem with that main concept:
It’s not the only one we’re given. As the film goes on, we keep getting more
and more high-concept ideas injected into the narrative, pondering ideas like
alternate realities and literal recording of memories. Now, while some of these
questions end up bringing the “definitive proof” of the Discovery under
question, and in turn a lot of the in-universe reaction to it, that’s not the
issue. The issue is that director/co-writer Charlie McDowell clearly had a lot
of different ways to extrapolate that one idea into a feature-length
production, but not the efficacy to make each individual idea blossom. It’s
high-concept storytelling at its worst, where it feels like the filmmakers
focused more on creating clutter within the narrative rather than effectively
use what they have already.
As a result, we get a bunch of compelling ideas
crammed in together so that none of them get the chance to breathe, ending up
suffocating a lot of the character drama in the process. Unlike something like
Rick & Morty, where the high-concept ideas are balanced out by an extremely
tight narrative structure and a sense of pacing to make everything fit in the
running time, this ends up going for quantity over quality. McDowell really
should have pared things down, stuck to one or two main ideas and focusing on
getting those right first, instead of what we got here.
All in all, this is a whole bunch of ideas that never manage
to come to narrative fruition. The acting is rather bland, the visuals are all
washed-out and dreary, which even for a story this bleak feels like it went too
far, and while the writing deserves some credit for how imaginative and
creative it can get with its concepts, it also deserves a lot of flak for
ultimately wasting them through lack of focus.
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