The Infinite Man

You don't need top end Hollywood actors to make a great movie. This was very cleverly written and well acted.

The production was of a very high level, excellent sound and visuals- nice cinematography. Clearly a lot of thought went into the script, but in its quest to be intellectual, sacrificed some of the humanity of the characters. A lot of the quirks of the characters, the way the male lead ran, the vintage clothes, the references to Greek mythology and tantra all seemed very forced.

Important philosophical questions about identity, why we love someone at different times in our lives and why/when we should give up on someone were partially raised but never really explored. By the end of it, I felt like a lot had happened, but I didn't care about the characters at all - I hardly got to know them. All in all, it felt like it was all style and little substance.

Saw this at the Leiden Film Festival 2014 (LIFF). What will you do when given the chance to "repair" a failed romantic weekend by changing the past and reliving those days again in a new setup?? Though I found the end result disappointing, there were several positive elements in this film. Firstly, it did not waste resources in the making: 3 actors in total, a single location, and without a gadget overload. Secondly, the deserted sea resort offered an excellent décor with ample opportunities for seeing things from different angles, running parallel scenes in various rooms, and letting variants from the protagonists meet, or even see one copy meeting another. Thirdly, the successive chapters were clearly labeled "xx years later", a great help while trying to follow the story line while it developed in (for me) mysterious ways.

On the negative side, I found the movie mildly interesting overall, not thought provoking in any way, no mind bending time paradoxes, at least none that I felt as challenging. The role of the gadgets (looked like EEG headsets, as used in hospital) was poorly explained, and I saw no one actually wearing them, so it is not clear what their purpose was in the proceedings. Devices and schematics might have looked highly technical for the average layman, but were in fact outdated for at least 30 years. The protagonists did not interest me at all, so I was not pulled in by the turn of events that this movie presented to us. It merely looked a bit unnatural, like finding a way to turn a basically good idea into a feature length movie without having enough material to fill the allotted time.

All in all, I got less than what I had expected. (And I had serious problems to stay awake. It may not be completely the film's fault, but anyway it was a fact.) My fault may be that I've read too many SF books in my life, and usually observe that movies, within their limited time frame, cannot present a consistent plot without loop holes in the time travel section. For some reason, books prove to be a better place to design a believable setup with richer details. Anyway, the idea behind this film was fresh, the décor was very well chosen, the actors were casted well, and all did their best to cope with the script. Yet, I'm still surprised about the many good things other reviewers found in this film, all of which I regrettably overlooked (so it seems).

Time travel element interesting, but the plot is just not sustainable, and ultimately the film becomes quite boring about 30 minutes into it. I guess this hit the spot for some viewers, but fell very flat for me.