Polypore |
USA / Japan / France / Spain • 2013 • 70m •
  • Directed by: Jesse Barack. • Starring: Chen Tang, Jonathan Thomson, Marshall Berenson, Herbert Von Schild, Alexander Lewis, Oselito Joseph, Vania Mendez, Caleb Neet, Christine Altan, Sarah Nicklin, Vanessa Leigh, Richard Wayne, Greg Nutcher. • Music by: William Alexander Theis.    A young man must cope with involuntary telepathy, a potion-induced transformation, teleporting agents and a clone reincarnation, all while dodging an evil corporation that wants to harvest his brain for knowledge.
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Review:
The direction behind the film seems somewhat lacking. And the film is by no means straightforward. Most parts of the story are quite disjointed from each other, especially the cold opening which leaves us watching a family mealtime with absolutely no clue or reason to know why we should be paying attention to the details of their table conversation.
Things only begin to start taking any specific direction around a quarter to a third of the way into the hour running time, but still don't quite settle into one particular flow until the end, which is not particularly built up to as a finale as much as a scene that happens to hold the actions that cause the story to stop being interesting enough to continue following. There are many characters introduced as the film progresses, many with very different goals and thoughts which are never explored as the 'show don't tell' principle is taken to an extreme, and the short run time of this kind of film sacrifices any development for progression of the overall story.
There's even a completely-divorced-from-reality scene that seems straight from Scooby Doo where a hired killer begins talking about how terrible his job is mid-chase to a passing film director. This is not helped by a cast that seems not to have been given a strong enough direction for their parts - deliveries feel either too wooden or far too scrambled to provide an emotional shorthand for what we otherwise can't draw from the writing of the film, which itself has a lot of cultural run-off in its influences.
Anyone who has played an Assassin's Creed game will notice a lot of similarities between the near-magical pseudo-science and techno-babble hand-waving on the concept of a concrete scientific basis to past lives and perfecting the bridge between past and current reincarnations, not to mention the anti-corporate sentiments, and even certain aesthetic sensibilities of "The Rein Corporation" (get it?). Use of "Ave Maria" during one scene certainly calls back to several recent pieces of media, but various other callbacks can be spotted as unintentionally included in the film because they don't lead anywhere.
Despite this, there are some very interesting shots throughout. Many cutaways have very interesting surreal images like a man convincingly throwing himself to a remorseless suicide, and a dreamy alternate reality where the main character has exactly the life he wants, highlighting the following scene's demonstration of just how far from ideal his current situation is. Many transitional scenes are very visually pleasing and are well-colored and shot in a way that that film overall should have taken clues from. Locations are very fitting and seem well researched, never staying in one environment for too long and each one does feel distinct. Once in a while a shot is so incredibly well made that it stands out to make the rest of a scene feel lacking, and this stood out to me more than anything else about the film.
Criticism aside, the film definitely has a lot of care taken and it has strong points to offer despite its incoherence and oversights. It has the feel of someone with limited resources but a lot of research and writing time who maybe has such an over-understanding of their script they have forgotten what doesn't come across to an outside viewer. It seems as if the story board was well conceived but poorly recreated, or that the script had many line notes that weren't translated. If published as a book I'm sure it would be a lot more interesting to experience, or if given a little more time and funding to develop, or perhaps a change in director. Sadly, the finished film definitely does have a sense of something being missing, and while I recommend that if you're looking for something very quirky and different this short film may well be worth sitting through, perhaps a second time with a little more conviction, it may be worth skipping on if you have no patience. As it is the film is simultaneously slow on the atmospheric shots and far too quick on the plot, some of which is incredibly interesting to hear about but gets parroted off with no deeper exploration most of the time, so a lot of interest from the start is likely required.
Review by catebaum from the Internet Movie Database.
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