Reviews

I feel the scenes are presented in the optimal order, and appreciate the repeat of some scenes (with a different camera angle). This helps to intrigue the viewer, while also making digestible the complexity of the story. Four examples of repeated scenes are the removal of a young man from a prison bus, secretly to be greeted by Marine One, the US Presidential helicopter; the materialisation of a whitish-haired male time traveller in a protective suit into the Fort Worth hotel suite where Jackie Kennedy is preparing herself for a motorcade in Dallas; the mustering of Robert Kennedy into this hotel suite; and the cylindrical haze that envelops Robert & Jack Kennedy into a private audience with the time traveller. Each instance of such a scene, allows a chain of other related scenes to be introduced to the viewer.

The ephemeral popping into existence of the time traveller in that hotel suite conveys information into the minds of those there present, while leaving no material trace. Robert is shown carefully handing to him a glass of orange juice for a toast, clearly intending to identify the man from his fingerprints. The dance scene is important, to demonstrate hand to hand touch with Jackie, who transfers oil and sweat from her own hands, which allows for a fingerprint upon the glass that persists beyond the forewarned dematerialisation of the man. The man's boyhood crayon drawing of her seems out of Jack's hands to have dematerialised by the end of the dance, shortly preceding the vanishing of the time traveller himself.

The information conveyed is what we recognise as history in our own timeline - that without the evanescent encounter, Jack was fated to have been shot dead at 12:30 p.m. that day in Dallas, and Robert to be shot dead five years later in Los Angeles - and the conspirators to these crimes. However, the time traveller also privately shares misgivings about Jack's infidelities' leaving him and his brother open to blackmail, and about the Vietnam War that his successor was to have escalated. He also reveals his own (possibly premature) birth was fated to occur upon this day of national anguish, but declines to identify himself further.

The result is a changed timeline between 1963 & 2002, which indeed seems superior to our own, in which Jack expands his 1962 vision of a man on the Moon, with an overture to the Soviet Union to join the Americans in founding a lunar colony and exploring space as a united humanity, setting aside the nuclear arms race and the Cold War. In 1979, the boy who was to have invented time travel in later life, is recognised by his fingerprints, his age & an identical crayon drawing of Jackie from his boyhood, and diverted into a patronised career as a painter. In 2002, with Jack's death in old age, a son James, whom he was set never to have conceived, invites the painter, now in his late thirties, to view a portrait painted by Jackie of the old time traveller with whom she danced. The painter sees his own eyes as if in a mirror!

A dream within a dream within a dream within a dream readies the mark for defibrilation and sheds from Cobb the guilt for inceiving into his late wife a yearning for joint suicide (her mistaken intention being to wake up from reality back to meta-reality). Kicked out of that fourth level dream by a defribrilator the mark deludes himself by constructing a deathbed encounter with his father that implies his attempts to emulate have only disappointed where rejection and restructuring would instead have impressed. The client is rescued from exsanguination and all wake up on board a flight inbound for the USA where Cobb's arrest warrant on suspicion of defenestrating his wife is quashed by the client's great influence and the mark seems benignly resolved to demonopolise his inherited empire of energy companies, averting hostile takeover of the client's rival energy corporation.

Too precise and clear are the dream sequences presented to us in the seats of the cinema, enveloped in crisp surround sound. Yet mist and defocusing are eschewed in a departure from that well-trodden path, favouring the paradoxical constructs of Escher to evoke reverie.

Chris seems a conscious social-climber of poor Irish origin who has normalised his accent past that of his tennis audience towards that of London executives. He offers moral support to a beautiful aspiring actress lacking confidence for her auditions and seduces her by forthright approach, only immaturely to spurn her pregnancy and clumsily prevent its disclosure to his upper-class in-laws. Stolen jewellery, seemingly incriminating him, distances him further from the shooting when blind luck contrives to place it into the pocket of a drug-addicted robber apprehended by police; tallying with the film's basic premise: that it is better to be lucky than good.

First off, I couldn't watch a film of this genre every day, without feeling seriously depressed myself! Very few directors focus on the issue of teenage suicide, perhaps because emotions are contagious. However, once we accept what this film is about, you'll understand why I feel the implementation is excellent. What comes first always shines brightest, and that is just desserts to a team with the courage to cover this genre, even as it remains unpopular. There is teenage angst resembling Jake Gyllenhaal's Donnie Darko and spontaneous humour grounding Magnus's melancholy in our common world. Just as the Mayflower that first brought the English Separatists to America enjoys precedence over the QE2 luxury cruise liner, so this film has bravely staked its claim in virgin territory that a big budget film can now only imitate.

The voting system only works for this film once you've accepted the genre as legitimate for artistic expression and comment. I feel the few low marks are an objection to the genre itself, rather than fair comment on the implementation. I would suggest that these accounts divert their criticism from the film Magnus to the genre: "Father and sister feel helpless to respond to teenage boy's lack of desire to carry on living." I would appreciate an outlet for people to vote on genres, so they don't distort the ratings for implementations within genres. As people we are all actors, not all in front of a camera, and the man who experienced a similar dilemma with his son is especially qualified to portray the rôle he does.

The Estonian legal argument that this film invades privacy is tantamount to a conspiracy of silence over the issues of teenage depression and teenage suicide. Maybe some children are born with an innate absence of desire to continue living. Only by free debate and sharing of research can we arrive at the truth on these issues - all the better to promote happiness and prevent suffering.

Felt the film glossed over the threesome between Strawberry, James and his brother Basildon. I hope Agent Fields' guidance of Bond through his hotel suite stationery is elucidated in the DVD's deleted scenes, though I'd be willing to understudy with Gemma Arterton if Daniel Craig has moved on to other projects.

The film requires high visual intelligence and achieves its short running time by judicious compression of scenes. A clear example is Camille & James walking towards a Bolivian bus and the next scene showing them sat within as the bus pulls away. Mathis is impugned by Le Chiffre in the finale of Casino Royale leading to his interrogation and, in this film, his subsequent acquittal. So a guy whom we instinctively like, whom we are led to suspect, we joyously embrace again as an ally. The SIS(MI6) touchscreen computer scene requires rapid visual intake and I look forward to examining this in slow motion with the DVD release. The high resolution facial photography at the opera would suffer from the camera shaking, though image processing could compensate, provided the target was clearly identified. I would recommend a second viewing of this film before final decision on its merit. It courageously breaks new ground.

The film-makers have informed tens of millions of people worldwide of the effects of an atomic bomb on a test village, which is a great bit of peace campaigning. Also it fits into the plot well, as it justifies the Russian quest for a psychic advantage, to control the minds of those who control the bombs, and thus end the arms race. When you start criticising the physics of a film, you really need to be spot on, or just enjoy suspending disbelief. The Tarzan vine swinging sequence would require Mutt to guess the twists of a windy jungle road to be able to catch up with the fast moving vehicles, given his slow moving vines, but it was a funny sequence for the beefcake character. As for Irina Spelko, she remains alive to be destroyed by her own greed for knowledge beyond her brain's capacity. She is a socialist academic, rather than a Russian Imperialist, which is perhaps why Indy doesn't shoot her when he has the chance. The Americans had nothing to fear from homegrown socialism but plenty from Stalinist Russian Imperialism and indeed the earlier fascism of the Nazis. The nostalgia of the film series which lags ~51 years behind the movie release date makes it special and beloved to those who appreciate the past. Maybe "Indiana Jones & the Infestation of Beatles" will cover 1964 well in 2015 if Harrison Ford can still crack his bull whip!