Transcendence (DVD, 2014) – A not so deep digging around on the internet tells us that Christopher Nolan has his eyes on this project when he had finished The Dark Shite Rises, but then handed it over to his director of photography Wally Pfister, believing it to be “perfect” for him. I get the sinking feeling that this was Nolan’s easy way out on the movie; Transcendence feels like a Nolan-lite affair and, quite possibly, reasonably good testing ground for Pfister to test out his directing chops. I’m not sure how other critics view this event, but I also get the feeling that Pfister, hanging around Nolan’s set and always playing second fiddle, probably hung around the Craft service table year-in, year-out secretly envying Nolan. Curiously, the movie concerns itself, eventually, with creating copy-and-paste versions of human being previously suffering ailments or injuries. It is remarked by a couple of characters in the movie that “he is not him!”, and simply an inferior – actually, make that superior – copy of the person in question. The irony is not lost on me that the same could be said of this movie; it moves ponderously toward its none-too clever proposition that technology should not take over the world; the end result, a mere pretender to the throne of vastly superior texts on the subject (not least HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey) through which one frequently pauses to remind themselves that it’s not Nolan at work here, but his little minion. In minion terms, however, Transcendence could have been a lot worse. It all looks fine in its reasonably plausible set up. Johnny Depp not so much phoning as Skyping his performance in, after he’s poisoned by a radioactive bullet and uploaded into his own program by his staggeringly annoying and “5 out of 10-looking wife, played by Rebecca Hall. Then of course there’s Paul Bettany playing the earnest and confused cyber side car who’s kidnapped by a bunch of luddites headed by Kate Mara, looking for all the world like she’s about to go into make-up tests for the upcoming Dawn of the Planet of the Apes movie. There’s me, sat back and allowing the fun to splash across me, and a strange question sheens itself over the screen; at the best of times, it takes ages for a file of about 2GB to transfer from one drive to another. Exactly how many gigabytes is Will Caster, anyway? In real terms, for some of the most rudimentary technological procedures shown in the movie, days and weeks, if not months, would have needed to fly past in order to simply have his pixelated face on my screen. And sure enough, as the running time clocks by, so too does the believability of the whole endeavour. The final act wanders into Lawnmower Man territory, yet, Jeff Fahey was an infinitely more imposing and powerful menace. Depp saunters around wondering why the government and Morgan Freeman’s lefty tossers are not on board with the idea that he can, seemingly without want for financial remuneration, cure the disabled and fix gunshot wounds. The movie never more than passively implies that it is not in the government’s - or, indeed, humanity’s - interest to have these solutions freely available to us. And, by turn, the third act in particular leans so much to the left that the entire movie vehicle tilts on to its side and reveals what the intentions truly are; that technology is bad and that standing around, looking at trees and breathing in fresh air is the reason for everything. Anchoring this trip down mammary lane (after all the conceit is pure tits) are a pair of star cross’d lovers, destined to insert USB port into socket three, and so we’re left with a curious pixelated cross between Lawnmower Man, Romeo & Juliet and, well, any fable that’s notorious for smashing the technological system. Pfister has it in him to do better than this material. Transcendence is never boring because it is quite absurd – but that alone limits its greatness, and everyone – Nolan included – should have known better than to have dropped any more than $50m on the budget for this one. 6/10
Posted on: Tue, 22 Jul 2014 07:27:53 +0000
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