|
IMMORTEL (ad vitam) (2004)
The future, where even people have black boxes! This movie gives the weirdo-puree plots of Stargate and The Fifth Element a run for their money. Ancient Egyptian gods, genetically enhanced man-fishes that can get you through your bathtub drain, bodily possession, soap holders that talk to you, flying cryo-prisons, a lot of mid-grade CGI characters alongside live-action ones as if we're not supposed to notice...it's one of those movies I'd be glad existed at all even if I didn't like it, which I do. It's also a movie that was filmed in English, which I didn't pick up on until the second time I watched it. I just assumed it was in French, and watched with subtitles. Never even noticed the lip non-syncing. So, remember people: English. Immortel begins with New York City late in the twenty-first century - first thing you might notice that's different is that there's a giant pyramid just hanging in the sky. Nobody in New York knows what's up with the pyramid, but it's been there long enough without doing anything that nobody really cares anymore. In fact it contains some ancient Egyptian gods - specifically, jackal-headed Anubis, cat-headed Bastet, and hawk-headed Horus, who we later see shoots lasers from his eyes. Horus has been sentenced to death "for rebellion", and the other two give him exactly seven days to live it up in the big city, while they sit in the pyramid and play Monopoly (no kidding). It's worth noting that the first human to see him cries out "It's a naked guy with a bird's head!" - this movie is not as unselfconscious about its weirdness as Stargate was, but it is more fun. All this is CGI; this is one of those "digital backlot" movies which, barring a few live actors, is essentially an animated movie. There are three such actors with much screen time here (though for one scene, I was completely fooled by one guy): Linda Hardy as a young woman with an uncertain memory and more uncertain internal physiology, Charlotte Rampling as a medical researcher who finds her interesting, and Thomas Kretschmann as a cryo-con revolutionary who Horus opts to spend his time with, giving him superpowers and a propensity for sort-of raping chicks. To this mix add a red hammerhead-shark-man assassin, a prohibitively cumbersome prosthetic leg made out of a piece of railroad, a Central Park that lets you in but only lets your bones out, a Greek chorus of floating neon signs, and enough uses of the words "sexual intercourse" that you'll realize like never before just how little those words capture the nature of what it is...which is why in the real world nobody ever says it. If you haven't figured it out, this is not set in the real world. Which is the entire point of these digital backlot movies, isn't it? Immortel creates a New York that is alternately glitzy and gritty but all cold. The cars don't look so different from the ones we have today (except for how they travel), and even the outlandish hairstyles don't look implausible given the technology to make them happen, but it's different enough from both the world of today and whatever "vision of the future" people are hailing this week. Like in The Fifth Element, the goofy plot mostly serves to keep us hooked along while we soak in its vibe for a couple of hours, and I found it soakable enough that I watched it twice in as many days, which doesn't happen often. I could've done without the way Kretschmann recites poetry to himself at his more dire moments - how French is that - but this movie had me as soon as Horus shot lasers from his eyes. (c) Brian J. Wright 2006 BACK TO THE I's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE |