If
you have read The Moon is a Harsh
Mistress, you know Robert Heinlein was more than willing to consider
unconventional relationships. Still, the strange bonds holding together the
characters of his story “All You Zombies” is definitely not what one would
expect from the author of military science fiction like Starship Troopers and popular juveniles such as Space Cadet. Nevertheless, the Spierig
Brothers (Michael and Peter) have faithfully adapted it for the big screen.
After garnering nine Australian Academy Award nominations, the Spierig Brothers’
Predestination (trailer here) opens this Friday
in New York.
A
man walks into a bar in the 1970s, but the bartender is actually a Temporal
Agent, charged with fighting crime across time. The man is a “true confessions”
columnist who writes under the pen-name “The Unmarried Mother.” It turns out,
he used to be one. The agent has been assigned to recruit the writer to help
catch the Fizzle Bomber, a time terrorist who will perpetrate a horrendous
attack sometime in the current time period, unless they can stop him in the
past. As a bonus, the writer will get the opportunity to confront the man who
abandoned her, before medical circumstances forced his transformation. The
agent will also take time out to save himself from the Fizzle Bomber, which he
obviously does, since he is able to go back and lend himself a hand.
That
is nothing compared to how complicated things get when the characters’
backstories start unraveling and intertwining. In a way, part of this
explanatory set-up is not really accurate, but it would be unforgivably
spoilery to be scrupulously honest. Frankly, this is a devil of a film to write
up, but the Spierigs somehow keep all the interconnected balls in the air. If
one domino fell out of place, the film would be a train wreck, but they
maintain the complicated narrative machinery with energy and style.
Ethan
Hawke also provides an invaluable assist with his unclassifiable turn as the
agent. It is rather fitting Predestination
is a top Australian contender while Boyhood
is considered an Oscar frontrunner, since both deal with time in very
different ways. In fact, his two performances could be compared and contrasted
for other murkier reasons. Regardless, it is superlative genre work, as is
Sarah Snook’s breakout performance as the writer and his earlier self.
