Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
5/16/07
If
you've seen trailers or TV ads for The Invisible (and if you haven't,
you mustn't have been to a movie in at least 6 months...), you've probably
seen a lot of a ghostly old man in a hospital gown explaining some really
hard facts to star Justin Chatwin: “You'll never be seen again.
They can't touch you. They can't hear you. But if you can solve
the mystery of your own death, then you'll have the chance to live again.”
These clips are interesting for a couple reasons: 1)the old guy does
not appear anywhere in The Invisible, and 2)what he says is at best
partially true. Certainly this is not the first movie to feature
a deleted scene prominently in its' ad campaign, but I bring it up because
it speaks to a larger issue with the film. Brilliant in spots, almost
nonsensical in others, it's the kind of movie that screams “I'm been back
in the shop for repairs!” And because it seems that the filmmakers
never did quite lick the story, I'm not surprised to see that they changed
their own rules a few times while they tried.
Nick
Powell (Chatwin) is a “good kid” ready to explode under the weight of his
cold, distant mother (Marcia Gay Harden) and a pre-planned destiny.
Just before high school graduation, he plans to hop a plane to London,
leaving behind his screw-up pal Pete (Chris Marquette), who's run afoul
of Annie Newton (Margarita Levieva), kind of a small-time kiddie crime
lord. But there's more to Annie than meets the eye: growing
up in a nasty, uncaring home, she's got enough of a moral compass to watch
out for her little brother (Alex Ferris) and hope he doesn't end up like
her. When her loser parolee boyfriend Marcus (Alex O'Loughlin) rats
her out for a robbery, she suspects Pete, who in turn rats out Nick, thinking
his pal is already out of the country. But Nick missed his flight,
and instead gets beaten so savagely by Annie & her goons they assume
he's dead. The next day, Nick's ghost is going through the motions
of the school day, and learns that no one can see or hear him (the deleted
old guy was right about that much). But there is one exception:
Annie, who dismisses the voice in her head as a troubled conscience.
But is Nick really dead? And if not, can he get through to Annie
in time?
The
Invisible has a lot going for it, very little of which has to do with
its' plot. The plane of existence on which Nick finds himself is
a pretty unique movie place (at least to those, like me, who've never seen
the 2002 Swedish film of the same name that it's a remake of). Taking
as its' premise that a mind ungrounded by a physical body would perceive
things as happening the same way they would if it DID have that body, the
movie shows Nick throwing things, bumping into people, and generally interacting
with the world around him, only to have his brain catch up a moment later
with the fact that those objects and people are still right where they
were. I loved how, as he walks through crowds, Nick makes a point
of bumping into every passer-by to insist upon his existence. Even
better (and one of my favorite movie moments in a long time) is the shot
when he watches a bird slam into a window only to find the avian spirit
sitting on his shoulder, just where it expected to end up.
For
the first 2/3 of the movie, Nick and Annie are both strong, interesting
characters. The situation in which Nick finds himself allows him
to take out his pent-up rage on the people and things around him, only
to find them completely unaffected: a perfect metaphor for the simmering,
internalized frustrations men of all ages feel. Chatwin hits just
the right notes to make his character believably disaffected without being
unlikable. Annie is a very interesting character as well, in large
part because of how well Levieva walks the line between her thuggery and
compassion for her brother.
Alas,
maybe it's all that time in the shop, maybe just the problems in trying
to adapt a story conceived for European sensibilities to American ones,
but once Annie gets wise to the real nature of that voice in her head,
the character starts to lose its' edge. It's almost as though the
film views her emotional trauma as something that could be cured with a
good makeover (see how much happier and better-adjusted she is when she
doesn't have her hat on...). Things drag on a bit too long at this
point (the slow, familiar disintegration of her gang under the weight of
their shared secret isn't all that interesting), leading to a pair of climaxes.
The first is physical, and while it has a little “Perils of Pauline” quality
to it, I was engaged. The second is purely metaphysical, and while
I understood what it was getting at on an emotional level, I honestly didn't
understand what happened or how it was possible under the film's rules.
Granted, there are movies that can't be explained, only felt, and for its'
most ardent supporters this will likely be one of them. But I felt
like the final events were truer to what we as the audience were expected
to want for the characters than what they would actually do.
At
the end of the day, I liked The Invisible. Yes, it ends on
a note of manipulative dissatisfaction (and really ODs on the pop music
soundtrack), but when it's on its' game, it's a fascinating and unique
thriller. Director David S. Goyer sets an excellent mood for a while,
but seems to have lost control of it somewhere between the reshoots.
Maybe that old guy could explain what happened. |
