Memories of Mind
Robin Williams digs through some cranial confusion in the unsettling The Final Cut. (Film Review)
By Michael Sean McGowan
The Upside: One of the most provocative, unpredictable movies of the year.
The Downside: It won't make a quarter of the box office that The Forgotten did.
In its heart, it's an idea worthy of Hallmark's. What if every moment of your life could be recorded from your point of view? Your baptism. The first time you kissed a girl? The day you graduated college? What if these moments could be recorded and assembled to be watched posthumously by the loved ones you leave behind in tribute to your mark on the world? In some ways, it isn't that different from what we do now. Human beings are pack rats, scavengers of emotional trivia. We keep journals, diaries, scrapbooks. We developed digital photography so our chronicling of everything around us wouldn't be inhibited by the pale 24 shots in a clunky plastic container. There doesn't seem to be any end to our ravenous appetite to collect the residue a life can leave behind.
But what if that collection didn't have an "off" switch?
The Final Cut is set in a world out of time- not quite the future, not quite the present. It is the kind of science fiction film that lifts and hauls its allegory into a more familiar and recognizable context. In the film, for decades people have been walking around with "Zoe" implants- tiny microchips implanted in the brain that record everything they see, hear, and do from the moment they are born until the day they die. What is left over is the responsibility of "cutters" like Alan Hakman (Robin Williams), who are hired to sort and edit the recently deceased's memories into a two-hour "rememory" meant to rectify some degree of honor and respect to the dead. Only problem is, if the Catholic way of looking at things is true, we are all more sinner than saint- it is only how much so that comes in manner of degrees. But due to the old adage of "respect for the dead," no one wants to trot out the memories of the deceased beating his wife or the childhood accident that took a friend's life. "You take people's lives," one critic charges Alan, "and you make lies out of them." But is this any different than what a eulogy, obituary, or autobiography does? Maybe not. However there is something particularly unsettling about having a camera inside of your head. All of a sudden everything you do is tempered with the knowledge that it will pass before someone else's eyes later. Will this change how you act- and thus, who you are? If spontaneity is the key to the human soul, once that spontaneity is gone do we stop being human?
Science fiction has always been the realm to take up these intriguing "what-if" questions. This being said, though, a provocative idea makes for a good idea, not necessarily a good film. Do you remember Gattica? What is surprising about The Final Cut is not just how deep it digs under a premise that seems pretty shallow at first, but how it constructs a story that seems to naturally live and breathe on its own. The Final Cut is probably the first movie I've seen in a while that wasn't built into the "thriller" mold- it doesn't follow a blueprint of "this happens and then this happens" to arrive at a preconceived destination. It seems to spill out all over the place, even dodging an easy identity for a while. Is it a mystery about secrets locked in the human mind? Is it a cyber-enhanced drama about a man dealing with his own set of demons as he slaves at purging those of the dead? When a film is so camouflaged, when it seems this free to go where it pleases on its own, it creates real surprise.
The Final Cut is the latest in a string of films where Williams has stowed his off-kilter irreverence on a shelf and has channeled into the deep psyche scars that fuel a comic's self-deprecating view of life. In Insomnia he played a sociopath who believed that life was no more valuable than the trinkets we use to signify love. In One Hour Photo he played Photo Guy Sy, a man who, like Alan Hakman, believed in the illusion and fantasy that could spring from carefully selected visual medium. Williams is a sight to watch here. He is not as much a participant in the film as he is an observer of the odd maelstrom of events it creates. As the rememory of one man (the afore mentioned wife beater) plays, he observes stoically from the shadows. Wisely, Williams remains a morose statue through the movie- his face never betraying the alarm bells that should be going off in his head as he sees the things he sees. Why should he? In a profession where the truth is not only not a priority, it is the thing that you must fear the most, why should anyone criticize? As Alan plows through the massive life history of a media tycoon who recently died of a "heart condition," he remains impenetrable. Is he judging? Forgiving?
Or doing his best to ignore, especially when he reaches one moment of the man's life that would stop any reasonable person cold.
The Final Cut lays on a couple of sub-plots, including a childhood tragedy of Alan's that through circumstances I won't reveal here, begins to echo in his current assignment. There is also the matter of Fletcher (Jim Caviezel), a former friend of Alan's and an ex-cutter who has given up his ways and has gone as far as to join an anti-Zoe movement whose members believe that the implants are violations of the natural and private bond every person shares with God. Fletcher shares a peculiar interest in Alan's current project and, in a breath of fresh air from the tired routine thriller attempts to pull the rug out from under us, makes no bones about his determination to become involved. There is also a rare bookstore owner (Mira Sorvino) and love interest whose involvement with Alan comes to a head in a way I was not ready for.
I've said before, there is no want of movies built on fascinating ideas, but it seems like too many don't know what to do with their own cleverness. The Final Cut is a hybrid polemic- it doesn't feel the need to thump its chest or bang drums or whatever to make its points. Writer/director Omar Naim paints the dread of his own Orwellian conceit in almost domesticated ways, like how reality TV, which would have been the source of scandal twenty years ago, has reached a bizarre cultural acceptance today. On the flip side of the coin, a less confident director would have beefed up the thriller aspect to give the movie an air of predictability to sell tickets, like the dumb-as-dirt The Forgotten. When Alan's assignment does put his life in danger, it feels like it comes from a realistic clash of circumstance, not the template from a Write a Blockbuster! book sold to overeager screenwriters.
The Final Cut is a small film, but its size nicely keeps its ambitions and its ego in check. Watching it, I began to realize how spoon fed we are on movies that trumpet grandiose themes and try to build the better mousetrap, no matter how rickety and unwieldy they get. Robin Williams has made great movies before, some even better than this, but here he bares himself to a degree that only the most courageous would and we get a very rare glimpse at the hauntings behind the laughter. A
Note: The Final Cut is being released and distributed by Lion's Gate Films, an indie production company that has made some smart movies (Fahrenheit 9/11) and some not-so-smart ones (House of 1,000 Corpses). Perhaps as kind of a promotional stunt, or as a way to help usher George Lucas' dream of all-digital movies into the here-and-now, The Final Cut, rather than arriving in multiple film reels, is being beamed into select AMC theaters in DTDS format. Since my feelings about a movie and its presentation can be separate, I'll say that I wasn't particularly impressed with what I saw. The texture of the film had a grainy, low-rez feel (which I hope will be cleaned up when it gets on DVD) and had some particular color contrast problems. It is fortunate that a sci-fi film can get away with such visual flubs more easily than most, however it is still degradation of Tak Fujimoto's (Silence of the Lambs) fine cinematography.
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