Perfect Sense

Released:  February 3^rd, 2012

Rated:  R

Distributor:  IFC Films

Starring:  Ewan McGregor, Eva Green, Ewen Bremner, Stephen Dillane, Connie Nielsen

Directed by:  David Mackenzie

Written by:  Kim Fupz Aakeson

Personal Bias Alert:  loves Eva Green, not big on romance

7.7 of 10

            Movies, while quite evocative, only work with two of your senses:  sight and sound.  There have been attempts to add touch and smell, but both have proven too costly a gimmick.  The limitations of this setup are rarely apparent, but they’re hard to miss in Perfect Sense, which depicts a world where humanity is losing their senses one by one.  The horror of such a strange loss has been seen before (watch/read Blindness), but it’s rarely as visceral as it is in Perfect Sense, which goes far out of its way to make the audience feel each blow.  When director David Mackenzie succeeds at this, the film floors you with its emotional ramifications, but just as many times the loss isn’t palpable enough to support the film’s misty-eyed philosophizing.

            Instead of focusing on society’s slow disintegration or using the situation as a metaphor for some larger cultural examination, writer Kim Fupz Aakeson chose to take the high concept and apply it to a simple parable about the power of love and connection.  To those of you gagging, please bear with me, because I normally hate that kind of mush, too.  The wonderful Ewan McGregor and Eva Green are your main couple, who fall in love as the disaster unfolds.  While their relationship isn’t that well-written and both characters feel more like a collection of affects than real people, McGregor and Green are such emotive actors that you get behind their relationship despite the false notes.  But it’s not just their love lives that prove meaningful.  Both characters are quite invested in their jobs, he’s a chef and she’s an epidemiologist, and the strong bonds they have with their coworkers prove nearly as fruitful.  The first half of the film suffers because of the underdeveloped characterization, but over time Green, McGregor, and the excellent supporting players sell the relationships with such wholeheartedness that the film’s back half transcends sappiness and achieves that remarkably elusive white whale:  a moment of vicarious joy.

            Working in tandem with the cast to achieve this moment is a myriad of bold technical choices by Mackenzie that butters you up for the eventual climax.  Characters are brought to the extreme foreground of shots, and the camera jostles and sways as their emotions brim.  When their emotions are released, which occurs before the onset of each new stage of the disease, Mackenzie chooses to stay with them, letting the big, occasionally nasty scenes play out in graphic detail.  It’s all very off-putting at first, like the overdone efforts of an uncertain guide, but these spaced-out punctuations eventually wear down your defenses, forcing you to become comfortable around the character’s beating hearts.

            Nothing, though, is as essential to the film’s success as its score.  This is a film about loss, about whittling down the world to the bare essentials, and what these essentials end up being aren’t tangible things.  To access these abstract aspects of life, Mackenzie smartly leans on the music, which becomes more and more important as the film goes on.  Composer Max Richter leads us gently, allowing pieces to expand and grow along with their accompanying scenes.  For all of Mackenzie’s aggressive insertions, the score cannot be counted among them, and it proves to be the most emotionally evocative aspect of the movie.

            This is a bleeding heart film, one that, depending on your affinity for such rawness, will either move you to tears or make you run screaming from the room.  As with many open wounds, it’s quite ragged around the edges, but there’s catharsis and comfort to be had at the end of it all.

Other Notes:

Ø  I found it very interesting to watch the world crumble and pick itself back up over and over again.

Ø  I wish they didn’t have the narrator spell out everything.

Ø  Green’s continued use of the word ‘sailor’ felt incredibly false.

Ø  Wanna throw some rocks?