Dir. David Mackenzie, Germany/UK/Sweden/Denmark, 2011, 92 mins
Cast: Eva Green, Ewan McGregor
Review by Carol Allen
David Mackenzie’s film starts from an interesting science fiction premise and shares a similar theme and approach to Fernando Meirelles’ 2008 film Blindness and Canadian Don Mckellar’s underrated end of the world movie Last Night (1998), in that its focus is on its characters’ human reaction to apocalyptic disaster rather than on showy special effects.
Set in Glasgow, McGregor plays Michael, a chef in an upmarket restaurant, whose personal life consists of casual one night stands, though he would like to be able to commit to a more substantial relationship. He then meets Susan (Green) a doctor who lives opposite the restaurant and who has a difficult romantic past herself and they begin an affair. Something strange though is happening in the world, in that human beings are losing their physical senses one by one. The first to go is the sense of smell, an event which is preceded by everyone being gripped by strong outpourings of emotion. Then everyone is seized with a ravenous hunger, causing them to devour everything within reach – raw fish, lipstick, flowers, anything that comes to mouth – after which the sense of taste too disappears from the world. Both of which are bad news for Michael and his colleagues as restaurateurs. But one of the points of the film is how humanity is an adaptable species. Food for example is now rated by colour and appearance rather than flavour. And as each disappearing sense strips the world and the two central characters of much that makes human experience what it is, what is left is the most important element of human life, our feelings for each other.
The situation is imaginatively handled, particularly when universal deafness kicks in and some people learn to sign while others continue to experience music through physical vibrations. It also has a good cast. McGregor and Green engage us in the central relationship and there is good support from Ewen Bremner and Denis Lawson as Michael’s restaurant colleagues and Stephen Dillane as Susan’s co-worker. The film does sometimes tip over into being pretentious, not helped by the sonorous voice over narration, which gets a bit up itself, and the somewhat grainy second unit footage of what’s happening in the rest of the world doesn’t really fit in with the style of the movie. But McKenzie is to be applauded for his original approach and his attempt to pinpoint the essential nature of the human experience in a sci-fi story.
[cinemabase tt1439572 video_player]
xx - posted on 23/05/2012 13:13:28
