This is a curious little film.
"Little", because that is the kind of movie it seems to aim to be. The plot is tightly wound like a David Mamet film; likewise the manifest restraints of the acting, deliberate and disciplined. Is it plausible? That question is not the point, since from the very beginning the film-maker has asked us to suspend disbelief, by way of having a black and a white actor, who share no physical resemblance at all, as identical twins whom neither their mother nor the plastic surgeon can tell apart (the surgeon actually comment on the black twin's Greco-Roman physiology). The contruct of events is highly stylized, in a quitessentially "American" way that is of the schools of Mamet, Lynch or Wim Wenders. But this detachment from plausibility is matched with painstaking attention to details, so that it feels like life in its smallest minutia: yes, just the way we experience our nightnmares, those encounters of familiarity AND strangeness. For instance, the nurse's precise and deliberate articulation, or the psychiatrist's freshening up his mouth before entering the patient's room, or the surgeon's digressions on target shooting., all adding up to a measured precision. Also as in nightmare, our observations seem omnipresent: we can see how a "character" enter our room from behind his back, and how ourselves get up from the couch to greet him. A well-constructed nightmare, indeed.
The strangely fitting soundtrack of folksy rock-and-roll contrasts ironically with the intelligent lines and tight acting (for instance, the black homor in the country singing: "love is a burning pain", when the hero is packed off in an ambulance, suffering 95% burn from an almost-fatal explosion). Or the atmospheric touches like the ominous jazz tempo leading up to the twins' re-union, or the wonderful, nightmarish noise of someone running a baton across iron rails. For me, thoroughly enjoyable.
When I call the film "curious", I am referring to its odd yet plaudible boldness in its intellectual wrappings. How often do you hear a movie character quoting Auden, "learn from your dreams what you lack", or Shalespeare's "fatherful remembrance", as the psychiatrist does? And the surgeon's digression on the origin of plastic surgery in 15th-century Italy. And the frequent use of Bel Canto arias in the soundtrack: what's the last time you see on screen a birthday gift given in the form of a live oratorio (Gluck?) in the hospital? All the characters, the doctor, the widow mother, and even the cops, are not afriad of speaking with a precision of vocabulary that is, well, shocking to hear in an American film. People casually toss off words like "tumultous" or "thwart his compulsion", and the words don't sound out of place, either. The film-makers are admirably indifferent to the American mass's knee-jerk anti-intellect sentiments, and obviously nonchalant to the worries of turning away the mainstream audience with their high-brow "excesses". I love them!
To round up this review, let me pay tribute to the dream references in this film, and fend off critics, with another quote (from Apopcrypha, Ecclesiasticus 34:2.):"Whoso regardeth dreams is like him that catcheth at a shadow, and followeth after the wind." Enjoy.
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