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Slipstream

Review By: Michael Dance
michaelmdance@gmail.com

I have a feeling many people will hate Slipstream, Anthony Hopkins's new experiment that plays like an energetic David Lynch movie. For starters, it makes no effort to make any kind of sense.

It's clearly meant to be a kind of dream/puzzle movie like Mulholland Drive: the movie, as it's presented to us, is actually a dream that the main character is having, and we're supposed to piece together what's "real" based on the deranged, out-of-order information the dream gives us. At least, that's what I think. Audiences typically approach these choose-your-own-interpretation movies in two ways: they either get really obsessed with figuring them out, or they think the whole thing is a colossal waste of time.

I must admit I was tempted to take the second route and zone out, but then I reconsidered. If I'm stuck in a dark theater for an hour and a half, I might as well pay attention and get into it...especially if that's, you know, my job. I usually never take notes during movies, but if there was ever a movie I was going to do it with, it might as well be Slipstream. I fished a pen out of my pocket and started furiously writing down what was going on in hopes that I could piece it all together later.

So, what did I conclude?

The short answer: Hopkins (who wrote and directed) stars as Felix Bonhoeffer, an aging screenwriter/actor. A movie is currently being shot in the desert starring Christian Slater, Jeffrey Tambor, and S. Epatha Merkerson, but the production is a mess, and they bring in Bonhoeffer to re-write the thing.

The only thing is, all of that might be the dream part: in reality, Bonhoeffer is writing a script about an aging screenwriter/actor, based on himself, getting sent to re-write the script of a troubled movie being shot in the desert.

And then of course, there's the real-life reality: Anthony Hopkins wrote a script about an aging screenwriter/actor based on himself, who's writing a script about an aging screenwriter/actor based on himself, who gets sent to the desert, etc., just as Hopkins actually did in real life when he shot the film.

Head spinning yet?

Hopkins himself described the film as being "about a man, who's caught in a slipstream of time falling back on itself and he remembers his own future." The movie itself defines a slipstream as a sort of dream within a dream within a dream, which I guess is exactly what the movie is. There are about six distinct levels of reality.

So hopefully at this point I've given you a good inkling of what to expect (if you're hopelessly confused, that's the idea). Now the much more important question: is it good?

I'd say yes, although like I warned before, it really only depends on how much thought you feel like putting into it. As a film, it ...