Yesterday Was a Lie

A ridiculous amount of literary, science, and philosophy names are dropped in the first twenty minutes of this movie, in hopes that any pseudo-intellectual dick tracy fan will latch on to the story. unfortunately the story is already over, or at best meanders and returns to its inevitable conclusion. the wide brimmed fedora still doesnt look good on anyone, but i would like to visit a city with all 1960s cars, payphones, caller id, AND the internet

A love story for cerebral cineastes. A delight to watch after dinner with a philosophy professor friend and three glasses of wine, and it belongs right up there with your volumes of Wittgenstein. Upon more sober viewing, my analytic mind felt challenged. Actually, this reflects the film's purposeful plotting. Being a psychiatrist, let's see what I can offer.

The film exemplifies Godard's maxim that all it takes to make a movie is a girl and a gun. In this case the lead female characters are two lovely blondes. Each so cleverly resembles the other that one is reminded of Discreet Object of Desire, the surrealist flick where two actresses played one character.

But adding layers of complexity here, these twin-like actresses are also playing the left and right sides of the brain of the feminine anima of one male character. Got that? They all meet at the Pigeon Hole lounge. The first character is the young Hoyle, a feminine Bogart/Sam Spade analytic detective - the left brain. Like Sam she likes the gin and the story straight. The second is a sultry, un-named singer who has a familiarity with the poetics of T.S. Eliot - the brain's right. Her music is entrancing, her wit intuitive and nonlinear. Together, these two provide the counterpoint of Jung's anima to the male animus of the main character, Dudas.

Whether Hoyle and her counterpart, Singer, convince us they are our anima is irrelevant as we so want them to be part of us. These lovelies draw us ever so seductively into imagining the dark recesses of our own beautiful unconscious, despite whatever misgivings. All we're here for is love, we are told. The shape of the universe is a relationship - functional or otherwise - whether with our inner parts or with our fellow beings. This makes for a strange little Jungian romp in luscious b&w footage. This is Lynch with an underlying premise. Somewhat like the film Pi, this low budget beauty was made at the cost of Pi (made at $60,000) times pi!

First time director James Kerwin makes for a Jungian fortune teller taking us on a trip to disentangle or re-entangle our male and female halves. Kerwin is an urban shaman who shows us the conventional mind as a "surge suppressor". Our conscious minds filter small broken bits of time in a lame attempt to tell a story. Does it matter whether they "add up"?

Beginning with some obvious allegory, the locks are broken off the allegorical unconscious and our character, curiously named Hoyle bravely walks into a poetic film noir journey to confront the Self. (Hoyle seems named after transcendental astronomer/physicist Fred Hoyle who was deeply intrigued by the "Anthropic Principle" of nature.) We begin with a look at Dali's surrealist masterpiece Persistence of Memory in a hallway. They meet Schrödinger's cat, the parable of which tells us there are opposite angles on everything and only by choosing do we arrives at any definitive perspective. Free Will is discussed. The film reveals a Jungian Fenestra Aeternitatus, a window to the eternal, that our characters need to navigate.

A variety of other cutting edge consciousness theories are peppered throughout the film to spice the intellectual interest of the knowledgeable viewer, including pondering Planck's constant, a number describing the fundamental vibration at the Ground of Being. For those less informed, the film literally goes back to the psychiatrist to explain itself. Jung, we are told, said a man needs to project his animus onto the feminine anima in order to unlock the secrets of the universe. This is a film for men who are in need of seeing themselves and for women who want a deeper look into those men. What does a man see in himself as a woman?

Hoyle goes into a dream within a dream (hasn't everyone had at least one of these?) to contact her animus, Dudas, who has a notebook of important thoughts or ideas. Meanwhile we are constantly asked, what if our theories, concepts of self, and common sense don't add up? And what does that tell us about our relationships? And what is the nature and consequence of the loss of "relationship"? The right-sided feminine asks the questions. Left-sided Hoyle tries to read the tea leaves, the pattern in the chaos. Hoyle and her doppelganger meet another aspect of their animus, a scientist who explains the nature of time and who feels these two sexy blondes are "better" and "better". They are also the choices that interface with reality. They will help us overcome our own guilt about our very existence and the broken promises to ourselves and to others.

A deep understanding of time is seen in this film's Feynman diagram writ large in cinema. Physicist Feynman showed everything else might be one mind/particle bouncing backwards and forwards in time, appearing as each and all of us trying to make contact with every part of experience over eternity, the very fabric of time. This reach for the eternal is countered by the Shadow, the dark side, who delivers a bit of lead poisoning in the form of bullets. Death's shadow is a terrifying/exhilarating lockdown on the many-sided reality of now, it haunts our Selves. It occurs when we bring our stories to a halt. We need to let go of our life-text and grab onto our fuller selves, leaving our memories to be what they are and move on to script ourselves anew.

This film is an ultimate romance with "The Other", a mix of the cosmos and the chaos, the order and the disorder, the male and the female. In this cocktail lounge of our emotions, letting go of our primordial selfishness lets our unconscious sing its own songs, reconciling the Self to itself. And pay attention to terrific music in here. Chase Masterson sings beautifully the lounge songs of our longing.

The starting theme of this film is simple: "Look at the rack on this dame." All the rest is pretty much philosophical filler preparing for the rest of the film. The director makes sure the primary theme is emphasized throughout the first third of the movie by means of tight-fitting shirts and wide plunge-to-the-navel dresses... insuring that at least half of the viewers will follow the film through to the end whether they understand the unfolding plot or not. Admittedly, the girl has the goods to make that happen.

The film slowly curves to an almost-campy feel. The noir aspect is done just right, not too fuzzy, not too sharp. Most of the lines in the script are properly adept to the 30's and 40's. It falls short just enough to hint there's more to this film than a noir satire, but in the beginning doesn't take itself too seriously... quite yet. This allows the viewer to enjoy certain aspects of the film without being forced to delve too deeply into the philosophical paradoxes. But there's an overriding uneasy feeling that's a portent of what's to come.

The last third of the film is when they pour it on, and the foundation they've built to that point begins to hit paydirt. There are some brilliant ideas and lines here (although not original, still interesting to follow). If the viewers have stuck through the semi-cerebral dialog to this point they're likely to stick with it to the reveal. And there is a reveal... but it's just enough to hint at what's happening rather than spoil the mystery. Ordinarily I hate films that leave the viewer to figure out the purpose of the film, but in this case it works.

The acting starts out questionable. It's not good, not bad, some of it decidedly hammy where it fits. When it comes to the lead actress, acting isn't her prominent attraction. She's there to catch and hold initial attention while the writers and directors build the plot line. The supporting actors are sufficient to the job, but no one but the lead actress pushes their role too much. The lead actress does. Her acting gets better halfway through as the plot solidifies. This all is evidently by intent, initially making you question her role, then seeing that role developed and defined as the story unfolds.

Especially impressive are the sets and backgrounds. Simple and clean yet precisely period. The lighting is great (especially in the final scene) as is the use of fog and steam throughout the film. In this it's the little things that count, and the director uses them efficiently.

At first I was going to give this film a 5 star mediocre rating, but it kept getting better as it went along. At the end I realized the director skillfully pulled us along exactly as intended, tricking us by making us wonder whether this was a serious film or a satire. They made sure the question marks were in all the right places but the answers never quite handed to us on a platter. In the end if we've been paying attention we figure out what happened, but aren't quite sure we've figured it right. That aspect is surprisingly and very unusually satisfying. As stated prior, I usually hate questionable-ending films. Not hating it in this film indicates a decided mark of skill in the presentation.

Not a "brilliant" film, but somewhat in a class of its own. It's one of the best uses of neo-noir I've seen, with the plot both coming together and unraveling at the same time. That's a tricky balance, but one I feel they pulled off successfully.

This film falls short to deliver a Twilight Zoneesque feel. Unless you're a Jungian or are familiar with Fred Hoyle and anything psychological or science for that matter, then this film will pass over your head. Love the noir atmosphere but the characters aren't believable in telling a noir style story. Chase Masterson is incredibly talented and gorgeous,and makes an attempt to be Virgil and walk Kipleigh Brown through a scientific Dante's Inferno. If this film were a student project for an astrophysics class, then it would have succeeded. Unfortunately it was presented as an actual film at Cannes. As a lover of science fiction, especially Twilight Zone and Star Trek I delve into this film expecting for a great deal of human factor drama and a blend of 1950's murder mystery and suspense. Instead I received a puzzle with pieces that are missing. If you watch this film research Fred Hoyle or read October First Is Too Late or keep the Sixth Sense and Dante's Inferno in mind.

I had very low hopes for this movie, and it managed to fall below even those.

Short form, if you've seen other films noir, you've seen this one, except done better. If you've seen a lot of film noir, you've seen everything in this one, because it seems to be little more than a visual mash-up of what's been done before.

That in itself is bad enough, but the acting and the writing are atrocious. If you saw Super 8, at the end of the film you get the see the project film that all the kids are working on throughout the movie. "Yesterday was a Lie" is very slightly better than that. Given that the writer is also the director, and based on the fact that every performance is flat and fails to engage, I think the direction must also be at fault.

There is philosophy to be found here. I would urge you to read up on mysticism and physics (particularly quantum mechanics) instead of spending your time on this movie. You'll learn a lot more, and in the end you will have spent your time more wisely.