Triangle
(2009)
(SPOILERS of Triangle and Time Crimes) I've not seen Chris Smith's Severance, mainly because Danny Dyer's in it. On the evidence of
this film, however, he's got talent to spare as a director, although I'm not so
sure the several years he spent on the script have paid off.
Melissa George and her
yachting companions encounter strange weather conditions and then come across
an apparently deserted ship. Exploring it, things start to get weird. And then
a whole lot weirder.
Whilst the "What is it
about?" is evident by the time the credits roll, a glance at IMDB's Boards indicates how much debate
the different possible permutations of the plotting have provoked. I actually
prefer the looseness of possible interpretations (in comparison with the too
rote for me Time Crimes for example,
with which this shares certain structural similarities even if its conceptually
very different) but there's a sense that getting to caught up in analysing
every detail will end in disappointment, reading in levels and tangents that
were not intended.
Melissa George is
outstanding, some of the CGI is ropey, and there's a shot reveal just after an
hour in that is just jaw-dropping.
Time Crimes stopped working
for me when the protagonist decided to wrap the bandages round his head. Then,
without reflection or (apparent) flaw in his actions, he went through the
motions of repeating himself as the antagonist he’d encountered earlier, in
order to complete the loop. How, aware of the situation, was he able to repeat
his actions and why did he make the assumptions he made and decisions he did,
which were pretty grim ones? I just didn't buy into the character’s choices.
And more than that, the action of playing out the earlier events to the tee did
not engage me or seem remotely plausible.
Likewise, in Triangle I
began to get uneasy when George seemed to be blundering into forced
repetitions. Then - joy - she became aware of her ability to change the
outcome, which culminates in the shocking scene of all the dead copies of the
female character she sees on the deck (and a nice touch that many of them have
the cardigan she then puts on the dying character). So other versions had that
self-awareness.
But then, after this flash
of insight, she seems to revert to type, repeating the actions in order to
fulfill the narrative demands (as far as I could tell). Which seems to involve
the same kind of precise repetition of events we see in Time Crimes. Even though they require different definitions of what
the loops "constitute", they are played out in similar language. It
left me disappointed as, from that point until she reaches shore, I found the
film all-too predictable again.
I can see some of the arguments that others have presented; that she
would ultimately succumb to her violent nature and so, despite a flash of
awareness, reverts to type. And, the compulsion to get back to her child operating
as an overriding impulse. But, as at least one version of her (the one who was
beaten to death on deck by herself) hadn't taken that course, I'd have liked to
see more variations of it play out differently. There's a point in the film
where the giddy potential (the bodies on deck) falls into a more routine line; there
could have been any number of variations on the theme presented or versions of
herself on different courses aboard the ship. The course chosen might serve the
purgatory/damnation theme more fittingly, but it fails to satisfy in terms of character
logic.
There are still other aspects of Triangle
that require protective logic to explain, like the "gods" rules for
what on the ships stays and what goes with each loop. The mirror sequence is
probably the most under discussed moment in the film in terms of symbolic
importance; is there supposed to be a "switch" then, where full
realisation of what George must do takes place and she becomes the ruthless killer version of herself?
Ultimately, I was left dissatisfied
as the film was neither as rich or layered as I hoped it would be; partly
because the use of certain elements felt over familiar, but mainly because the
characters become slaves to the where Smith wants to take the plot and so cease
to hold integrity.
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