Written and Directed by Nacho Vigalondo (Colossal)
This is one of the few foreign films that is on the list due to someones recommendation. I hope you all like reading as much as I do because we're watching the subbed version not the dubbed.
This might have been one of those films I've recommended to Davy. I discovered this movie a few years back from some recommendation on a podcast, a list of time travel movies or following along various links to similar movies as one does. I've seen this film a handful of times both subbed and dubbed and as you'd expect, subbed is the better version.
When it comes to sci-fi, as much as I enjoy the grand epics, I also really enjoy stories that are short, tight, still somewhat grounded in reality, but with an interesting concept.
While I can't say the acting is particularly good or bad, the characters still felt believable. The main character Hector started off like anyone would when accidentally time traveling, in shock and disbelief as to what had just happened to them. Then when faced with the unfortunate situation of dealing with something out of his control he did what many would do and try to take control of it. After multiple failed attempts to take control he learned to just accept his fate and just let things play out.
I put this movie alongside a couple of my scifi favorites, Coherence and Primer. They took a concept and executed it in a straightforward manner without overwhelming the viewer with a ton of fluff about the world/setting or extraneous characters.
For someone who likes the type of movies I do, I rate this: 9/10. For anyone who doesn't like foreign movies at all and watches it dubbed: 6/10. For anyone else: 7/10.
PART 1: I tend to be really critical about time travel stories and find that rarely do time travel stories adhere to logic or sometimes don’t even adhere to their own logic (Looper). Timecrimes delivered what I like in time travel stories and that is continuity.
Spoilers Below: Following the main character linearly through his story was a great decision. I can only imagine how awful this would have been if they did one of those “1 hour earlier” sort of things, or continuously jump to scenes from different timelines. The way the story progressed was thrilling and enjoyable. I thought this was going to be a horror sub-genre based on the poster, but the slasher-esque tone was removed at the perfect time. The characters weren’t extremely compelling but fit the narrative. The one I cared for the most was the innocent bystanders in all of this, the wife and the bicycle girl. That poor bicycle girl was pushed into all of this and died and all she ever tried to do was help a guy in a car accident.
I would like to note that the theme of the story from each character’s point of view is very different. To the scientist the whole thing would have been like a puzzle, trying to piece everything together nicely so he doesn’t get in trouble from the higher ups. He had very little fear for physical injury his entire timeline since he knew all along that the guy in bandages was just hector. He also had no idea about the bicycle girl. His only motive for helping hector is so he doesn’t get in trouble and that is the only skin he has in the game. To the bicycle girl the story plays out like a rapey hack-n-slash. She witnesses a car crash, helps a guy with bandages on his head who forces her into the forest to undress, gets knocked out, runs away, finds the other victim of the crash, and is told by him that the bandage man is after him as well. Then they go into the house together and are chased by the bandaged man upstairs. The 2nd car crash victim tells her to escape to the attic to which she does, climbs onto the roof and is pulled down by the bandaged man and falls to her death. She was afraid for her life for almost the entirety of her story. Clara, the wife, leaves to the store and comes back to find the bandaged man climbing the fence into their yard. She goes inside and realizes there is someone else in the house and her husband is beaten and broken with no explanation and proceeds to hide her in the shed telling her not to come out no matter what she hears. When she is finally let out of the shed her husband still offers no explanation and instead leads her to the lawn chairs where the sit facing away from the house and listen to a chase and the death of the bicycle girl. When this happens Clara tries to turn around and see what is going on and her husband doesn’t let her. What is she to think after all of this? Her entire story is one of utter confusion to her. I will get to Hector in a moment.
PART 2: What I thought this movie did wrong is having the main character performing acts simply because he saw his future-self performing them. Putting on the coat, making the binocular eyes at himself, and looking into the silo to scare himself. I think these parts could have been written a bit differently to make Hector’s decisions make sense for his character. This was done very well with the telephone sequence in the beginning and I think could have been done just as well for the other parts. Hector stabs himself in act 2 simply because he was stabbed by himself in act 1. He forces a girl to undress because he knows it is necessary to get his past self to the time machine. This means it was Hector who caused the girl to undress all along. What does that say about Hector as a person? Is he the kind of guy that stabs himself and forces women to undress, or did he really have no free will in all of this and was just on the ride. If I were to be sitting here typing this and my future-self popped in and said “I’m from the future” and gave me a high five, then I would know that at some point in the future I would travel back and high five myself. Did I really have a choice in the series of events that led me to become that future-self that came back to high five himself? Did Hector have a choice in forcing the girl to undress or stabbing himself? He must have realized at some point that he had to do it and that he already witnessed himself doing it. Was Hector a rapey, stabby murderer?
Sorry for such a long review but I think this movie deserved it. Very well done. 9/10 would try to count total number of walkie talkies at a given time again.
PART 1: The two other reviews here do a great job of describing this movie, so my review will focus mostly on the issue I had with the movie as I am mostly in agreement otherwise. The rest of the review will contain SPOILERS.
I went into this movie with basically no expectations, though I too thought there would be more horror elements based on the cover. It turned out this was more of a thriller that ends in tragedy that the main character himself seems very conflicted in following through with. Ultimately, I do not understand why he does, but I will get to that.
The way the story plays out is very clever. It is complex yet easy to follow because you follow one version of Hector the entire time. As he learns things about what's happening, so do you. You can start to put the pieces together a little before hand, but not so far ahead that it reveals the whole picture too early in the movie. I enjoyed this movie quite a bit and admit it was significantly more enjoyable than I anticipated.
The one big issue I took with the movie is that it doesn't wrap up in a way that offers any real explanation as to what started the chain of events. In some movies leaving an open ending is fine, but in this case not knowing what started it all became a glaring question I had because of the concept this movie is built upon, time travel. The motiviations for everything also become relatively unclear without this knowledge. The reason is that we follow who we come to find out is Hector 2. As David mentions in his review, Hector 2 ends up doing a lot of things just because he figures out that he is the bandaged man all along so he follows in his footsteps. But if he is doing those things because he already saw himself do them, why did he ever do them to begin with? Was he in a car accident that he tried to prevent? Did he kill the bicycle girl in some different way that he was trying to prevent? Did something happen to his wife that he was trying to prevent (other than thinking he killed her at one point in the movie)? If so, why did he have to do what he did in the way he did it?
It seems to me the only logical explanation is that he did something he was not supposed to that started things off, but we never really find out what that is because the story essentially happens backwards, where he does the things he does because he already did them, but he also does them to try to prevent something he thought he did to his wife, and he ends up doing it anyway but it turns out not to be his wife. Because of this, I still do not understand why the bicycle girl had to die at all. It seems that at the end of the movie he realizes what is going on after he goes through the time machine a second time, and makes the choice to cut her hair to make another version of himself think it is his wife that dies, but all that does presumably is continue the loop of that version trying to save what he thinks is his wife. The big issue I take with this other than it never being explained how all this started happening is that he also has the knowledge that the version of himself with the bandages on his head is already aware of time travel. After he finds the bicycle girl and somewhat gains her trust without the bandages on, and knowing that the bandaged version is somewhat aware of what is going on as well and is playing out what he thinks is the right course of action, I feel he should have been able to confront himself, and then try and explain what is going on to the girl, or something along those lines. The fact that he sacrifices the girl to the other version of himself knowing that he was going to pull someone off of the roof makes no sense to me. Instead, the movie plays out as if it were always going to happen the way it happened, because he does everything he already saw himself do throughout the entire movie down to every last detail. Even when Hector 2 learns there is already a Hector 3, he goes back in time and ends up doing everything he already saw Hector 3 do as Hector 2.
PART 2: Unless there is a better theory out there, this lends itself to the idea that there were always more versions of Hector than one, which is impossible. At some point he had to enter the time machine the first time for a reason, but we never find out what that initial reason was, and that bothers me. Hector 2 should have tried to figure out why Hector 3 (who was really the first Hector as far as we know) went through the time machine to begin with, then maybe he could have prevented whatever the catalyst for the entire story line is, Hector 2 and 3 may have even been able to work together. For instance, I myself thought about an idea where I would try to find the other versions of Hector and keep them confined to a room until all that remains is the "youngest" version so that the other versions would disappear without consequence when they got to the point in time they should no longer exist (according to the sceintist's theory), and make sure none of them goes through the time machine again to keep it from ever happening (though I understand that would make quite a boring movie). Instead, what we get is a telegraphed chain of events where the real story of the movie is finding out that everything that happens, happens because of different versions of Hector doing them, because he already did them, and we have to put those pieces of information together to figure that out. So the movie becomes about having "Aha" moments as the viewer, and you end up learning how the things you already saw happen halfway through the movie happened, rather than being introduced to new story elements. In a nutshell, you are basically given about 20 minutes of actual content, and the rest of the movie is learning how that content played out from various angles and through various characters eyes.
Conceptually, I enjoyed this movie a lot. I also enjoyed watching it quite a bit. It was fun to have the "Aha" moments, don't get me wrong, and I feel like my own curiosity about time travel and whether or not changes in events change the outcome of the story is an unfair expectation because that wasn't what this movie was about. For that reason, I have a couple of different scores:
As a cinematic experience, and conceeding that wanting more out of the story isn't necessarily a realistic want, I give this a 9/10 - it was a very engaging watch. In my personal opinion and being fascinated with the concept of time travel and how it might play out, I give this a 7/10 - I wanted more.
This might have been one of those films I've recommended to Davy. I discovered this movie a few years back from some recommendation on a podcast, a list of time travel movies or following along various links to similar movies as one does. I've seen this film a handful of times both subbed and dubbed and as you'd expect, subbed is the better version.
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to sci-fi, as much as I enjoy the grand epics, I also really enjoy stories that are short, tight, still somewhat grounded in reality, but with an interesting concept.
While I can't say the acting is particularly good or bad, the characters still felt believable. The main character Hector started off like anyone would when accidentally time traveling, in shock and disbelief as to what had just happened to them. Then when faced with the unfortunate situation of dealing with something out of his control he did what many would do and try to take control of it. After multiple failed attempts to take control he learned to just accept his fate and just let things play out.
I put this movie alongside a couple of my scifi favorites, Coherence and Primer. They took a concept and executed it in a straightforward manner without overwhelming the viewer with a ton of fluff about the world/setting or extraneous characters.
For someone who likes the type of movies I do, I rate this: 9/10.
For anyone who doesn't like foreign movies at all and watches it dubbed: 6/10.
For anyone else: 7/10.
PART 1:
ReplyDeleteI tend to be really critical about time travel stories and find that rarely do time travel stories adhere to logic or sometimes don’t even adhere to their own logic (Looper). Timecrimes delivered what I like in time travel stories and that is continuity.
Spoilers Below:
Following the main character linearly through his story was a great decision. I can only imagine how awful this would have been if they did one of those “1 hour earlier” sort of things, or continuously jump to scenes from different timelines. The way the story progressed was thrilling and enjoyable. I thought this was going to be a horror sub-genre based on the poster, but the slasher-esque tone was removed at the perfect time. The characters weren’t extremely compelling but fit the narrative. The one I cared for the most was the innocent bystanders in all of this, the wife and the bicycle girl. That poor bicycle girl was pushed into all of this and died and all she ever tried to do was help a guy in a car accident.
I would like to note that the theme of the story from each character’s point of view is very different. To the scientist the whole thing would have been like a puzzle, trying to piece everything together nicely so he doesn’t get in trouble from the higher ups. He had very little fear for physical injury his entire timeline since he knew all along that the guy in bandages was just hector. He also had no idea about the bicycle girl. His only motive for helping hector is so he doesn’t get in trouble and that is the only skin he has in the game. To the bicycle girl the story plays out like a rapey hack-n-slash. She witnesses a car crash, helps a guy with bandages on his head who forces her into the forest to undress, gets knocked out, runs away, finds the other victim of the crash, and is told by him that the bandage man is after him as well. Then they go into the house together and are chased by the bandaged man upstairs. The 2nd car crash victim tells her to escape to the attic to which she does, climbs onto the roof and is pulled down by the bandaged man and falls to her death. She was afraid for her life for almost the entirety of her story. Clara, the wife, leaves to the store and comes back to find the bandaged man climbing the fence into their yard. She goes inside and realizes there is someone else in the house and her husband is beaten and broken with no explanation and proceeds to hide her in the shed telling her not to come out no matter what she hears. When she is finally let out of the shed her husband still offers no explanation and instead leads her to the lawn chairs where the sit facing away from the house and listen to a chase and the death of the bicycle girl. When this happens Clara tries to turn around and see what is going on and her husband doesn’t let her. What is she to think after all of this? Her entire story is one of utter confusion to her. I will get to Hector in a moment.
PART 2:
ReplyDeleteWhat I thought this movie did wrong is having the main character performing acts simply because he saw his future-self performing them. Putting on the coat, making the binocular eyes at himself, and looking into the silo to scare himself. I think these parts could have been written a bit differently to make Hector’s decisions make sense for his character. This was done very well with the telephone sequence in the beginning and I think could have been done just as well for the other parts. Hector stabs himself in act 2 simply because he was stabbed by himself in act 1. He forces a girl to undress because he knows it is necessary to get his past self to the time machine. This means it was Hector who caused the girl to undress all along. What does that say about Hector as a person? Is he the kind of guy that stabs himself and forces women to undress, or did he really have no free will in all of this and was just on the ride. If I were to be sitting here typing this and my future-self popped in and said “I’m from the future” and gave me a high five, then I would know that at some point in the future I would travel back and high five myself. Did I really have a choice in the series of events that led me to become that future-self that came back to high five himself? Did Hector have a choice in forcing the girl to undress or stabbing himself? He must have realized at some point that he had to do it and that he already witnessed himself doing it. Was Hector a rapey, stabby murderer?
Sorry for such a long review but I think this movie deserved it. Very well done.
9/10 would try to count total number of walkie talkies at a given time again.
PART 1:
ReplyDeleteThe two other reviews here do a great job of describing this movie, so my review will focus mostly on the issue I had with the movie as I am mostly in agreement otherwise. The rest of the review will contain SPOILERS.
I went into this movie with basically no expectations, though I too thought there would be more horror elements based on the cover. It turned out this was more of a thriller that ends in tragedy that the main character himself seems very conflicted in following through with. Ultimately, I do not understand why he does, but I will get to that.
The way the story plays out is very clever. It is complex yet easy to follow because you follow one version of Hector the entire time. As he learns things about what's happening, so do you. You can start to put the pieces together a little before hand, but not so far ahead that it reveals the whole picture too early in the movie. I enjoyed this movie quite a bit and admit it was significantly more enjoyable than I anticipated.
The one big issue I took with the movie is that it doesn't wrap up in a way that offers any real explanation as to what started the chain of events. In some movies leaving an open ending is fine, but in this case not knowing what started it all became a glaring question I had because of the concept this movie is built upon, time travel. The motiviations for everything also become relatively unclear without this knowledge. The reason is that we follow who we come to find out is Hector 2. As David mentions in his review, Hector 2 ends up doing a lot of things just because he figures out that he is the bandaged man all along so he follows in his footsteps. But if he is doing those things because he already saw himself do them, why did he ever do them to begin with? Was he in a car accident that he tried to prevent? Did he kill the bicycle girl in some different way that he was trying to prevent? Did something happen to his wife that he was trying to prevent (other than thinking he killed her at one point in the movie)? If so, why did he have to do what he did in the way he did it?
It seems to me the only logical explanation is that he did something he was not supposed to that started things off, but we never really find out what that is because the story essentially happens backwards, where he does the things he does because he already did them, but he also does them to try to prevent something he thought he did to his wife, and he ends up doing it anyway but it turns out not to be his wife. Because of this, I still do not understand why the bicycle girl had to die at all. It seems that at the end of the movie he realizes what is going on after he goes through the time machine a second time, and makes the choice to cut her hair to make another version of himself think it is his wife that dies, but all that does presumably is continue the loop of that version trying to save what he thinks is his wife. The big issue I take with this other than it never being explained how all this started happening is that he also has the knowledge that the version of himself with the bandages on his head is already aware of time travel. After he finds the bicycle girl and somewhat gains her trust without the bandages on, and knowing that the bandaged version is somewhat aware of what is going on as well and is playing out what he thinks is the right course of action, I feel he should have been able to confront himself, and then try and explain what is going on to the girl, or something along those lines. The fact that he sacrifices the girl to the other version of himself knowing that he was going to pull someone off of the roof makes no sense to me. Instead, the movie plays out as if it were always going to happen the way it happened, because he does everything he already saw himself do throughout the entire movie down to every last detail. Even when Hector 2 learns there is already a Hector 3, he goes back in time and ends up doing everything he already saw Hector 3 do as Hector 2.
PART 2:
ReplyDeleteUnless there is a better theory out there, this lends itself to the idea that there were always more versions of Hector than one, which is impossible. At some point he had to enter the time machine the first time for a reason, but we never find out what that initial reason was, and that bothers me. Hector 2 should have tried to figure out why Hector 3 (who was really the first Hector as far as we know) went through the time machine to begin with, then maybe he could have prevented whatever the catalyst for the entire story line is, Hector 2 and 3 may have even been able to work together. For instance, I myself thought about an idea where I would try to find the other versions of Hector and keep them confined to a room until all that remains is the "youngest" version so that the other versions would disappear without consequence when they got to the point in time they should no longer exist (according to the sceintist's theory), and make sure none of them goes through the time machine again to keep it from ever happening (though I understand that would make quite a boring movie). Instead, what we get is a telegraphed chain of events where the real story of the movie is finding out that everything that happens, happens because of different versions of Hector doing them, because he already did them, and we have to put those pieces of information together to figure that out. So the movie becomes about having "Aha" moments as the viewer, and you end up learning how the things you already saw happen halfway through the movie happened, rather than being introduced to new story elements. In a nutshell, you are basically given about 20 minutes of actual content, and the rest of the movie is learning how that content played out from various angles and through various characters eyes.
Conceptually, I enjoyed this movie a lot. I also enjoyed watching it quite a bit. It was fun to have the "Aha" moments, don't get me wrong, and I feel like my own curiosity about time travel and whether or not changes in events change the outcome of the story is an unfair expectation because that wasn't what this movie was about. For that reason, I have a couple of different scores:
As a cinematic experience, and conceeding that wanting more out of the story isn't necessarily a realistic want, I give this a 9/10 - it was a very engaging watch.
In my personal opinion and being fascinated with the concept of time travel and how it might play out, I give this a 7/10 - I wanted more.