Danny Boyle films are often a testament to how a well-directed film can surpass the actual events in the film. Trainspotting might be the exception to this inasmuch as I love the entire movie: narrative, acting, direction, and music. However, Boyle’s other films are beautifully shot, wonderfully scored, often meticulously frantic, but narratively underwhelming.
I’d rather not discuss The Beach or A Life Less Ordinary. Sunshine is a genre mash-up that revels in the contrasts of darks and lights. Slumdog Millionaire is set amidst brilliant colors and brings endearment to poverty, though its overall story is a simplistic, exaggerated, predictable fairy tale that culminates in a dance number. 127 Hours thrives on similar beauty and James Franco’s acting, but it’s a one man show; and that one man is mostly stuck in a crevice. While the amputation, the scene that the entire movie builds to, is intelligently shot and scored, the bulk of the film is about the dwindling of hope.
The same might be said for Trance, Danny Boyle’s new film that adulterates various dramas, combining a heist film, a psychological thriller (see: mind fuck), a love story.
Trance plays like a rave, replete with rapidly-moving limbs, neon colors setting the scene, and cut-up songs that offer both noise and ambiance The first ten minutes are enthralling, sucking the audience in with the robbery of Goya’s “The Witches in the Air,” a painting that, shortly before, garners a 27.5 million pound price tag at Delancey’s Auction house. Boyle spins a tale that sets the audience up to expect a “whodunit,” but he shortly bunks this by revealing the culprits and the motives.
And I’ll do the same, but will offer “spoiler alert” as a perfunctory warning.
Simon (James McAvoy) is both a Delancey’s employee and the robber of Goya’s work. To pay off a hefty gambling debt, he gets himself aligned with Frank (Vincent Cassel), a wealthy gangster who pays off Simon’s debt in return for the painting.
However, things, as they do in heist films, go awry, Frank strikes Simon with the butt of his shotgun. (It’s warranted though; Simon uses a Taser on Frank when confronted for the painting.) This strike on the forehead imparts partial amnesia into Simon, so the location of the painting is ultimately lost – or misplaced – in Simon’s memory.
Thus enters Elizabeth Lamb (Rosario Dawson), the hypnotherapist who will attempt to recover Simon’s memory and, ultimately, the painting.
This all happens in the first twenty minutes, so very little of the movie has been revealed here. However, the narrative wanders pretty peripatetically through the genres listed above and gives Inception a run for its money on the investigation of memory and reality – just without the awesome special effects. There are visceral moments and macguffins, red herrings and obvious progressions, and none of these are that enthralling. Most are expected, but there’s something about the pace in which Boyle works that keeps the audience riveted.
There’s something fascinating about the injection of humor in a movie that features fingernails peeled off with a pocket knife, castration-by-shotgun, or the abject fear caused by the word “strawberry.”
