'Slipstream' is the stuff that dreams are made on
W.M. Akers
Issue date: 10/26/07 Section: Film
"The fact is that we're dreaming all the time," Anthony Hopkins said in an interview. "That's what really gets me, we're sitting here now but we have a fathomless lake of unconscious underneath our skulls. So we're watching TV or reading a book or whatever we're doing and suddenly we read three lines a second time and strange images appear before us just as we're drifting to sleep, as we dip into the lake of the unconscious mind. That's been my fascination, that we are always just about awake."
His new film, "Slipstream," follows the logic of dream creation, drawing on fragments from his life to build several different wandering narratives. Hopkins wrote, directed and starred in the film, which has three acts - one following a crime story, then the crew trying to film that movie and the screenwriter who wrote both the crime movie and the movie about its crew. It's not usually clear what is happening or why, but the scenes of movie-making seem to carry metaphoric weight.
"I'm interested when I watch a movie that just off camera there's lights and microphones and crew and trucks and craft services and John Wayne's out there fighting the bad guys," Hopkins said. "And at the end somebody says 'That's a wrap everyone,' and they all go their different ways, and that's the end of our lives. That's it." He paused, as if concerned by the gravity of what he had said. "And then the whole thing runs backwards because it's all a joke."
"Slipstream" may be a joke but, excluding a blistering performance by Jon Turturro, it is not funny. Hopkins' character, Felix Bonhoeffer, wanders from Los Angeles to the desert, a baffled man whose world has lost tangibility. "I believe that everything is illusory," Hopkins said. "We cannot grasp anything about time. ... For me time is God, God is time. It's an equation, like an Einstein equation. We sit here and everything seems solid; we're told by the physicists that everything is not, that we're just atoms. That's fine, we accept that, but nevertheless we have to cope and live with our lives. And finally we die."
There is a lot of death in the movie, from a freak collapse on the set of the film to a couple of random murders by gunshot. Hopkins' character alone seems to die at least twice.
"I'm not morbid," Hopkins said. "But that's the world we live in. Just look in the Old Testament. Millions of people just gone, and that's justice. There's horror, and yet there's beauty here. I didn't want to make a statement - political, philosophical, sociological - but it's my own personal thumbnail sketch of my own inner life, the movie. That's all it was meant to be, no more no less, so it's very personal to me. That's why I own the movie. I didn't want anyone else cutting it or editing it."
If there is a statement somewhere in "Slipstream," it is not obvious. Hopkin's doesn't seem to be striving for mainstream success with his project.
"I just want to poke people in the head," he said. "I just want to poke them in the brain, say, 'Come on, wake up!' Because you're in this state of suspended animation watching a movie. We yearn for Hamlet or Desdemona, or we cry with 'Death of a Salesman,' yet it's all an illusion. I wanted to do what Brecht did and say, 'Oh, wake up. It's only a movie.' "
W.M. Akers is a staff writer. E-mail him at film@nyunews.com.
His new film, "Slipstream," follows the logic of dream creation, drawing on fragments from his life to build several different wandering narratives. Hopkins wrote, directed and starred in the film, which has three acts - one following a crime story, then the crew trying to film that movie and the screenwriter who wrote both the crime movie and the movie about its crew. It's not usually clear what is happening or why, but the scenes of movie-making seem to carry metaphoric weight.
"I'm interested when I watch a movie that just off camera there's lights and microphones and crew and trucks and craft services and John Wayne's out there fighting the bad guys," Hopkins said. "And at the end somebody says 'That's a wrap everyone,' and they all go their different ways, and that's the end of our lives. That's it." He paused, as if concerned by the gravity of what he had said. "And then the whole thing runs backwards because it's all a joke."
"Slipstream" may be a joke but, excluding a blistering performance by Jon Turturro, it is not funny. Hopkins' character, Felix Bonhoeffer, wanders from Los Angeles to the desert, a baffled man whose world has lost tangibility. "I believe that everything is illusory," Hopkins said. "We cannot grasp anything about time. ... For me time is God, God is time. It's an equation, like an Einstein equation. We sit here and everything seems solid; we're told by the physicists that everything is not, that we're just atoms. That's fine, we accept that, but nevertheless we have to cope and live with our lives. And finally we die."
There is a lot of death in the movie, from a freak collapse on the set of the film to a couple of random murders by gunshot. Hopkins' character alone seems to die at least twice.
"I'm not morbid," Hopkins said. "But that's the world we live in. Just look in the Old Testament. Millions of people just gone, and that's justice. There's horror, and yet there's beauty here. I didn't want to make a statement - political, philosophical, sociological - but it's my own personal thumbnail sketch of my own inner life, the movie. That's all it was meant to be, no more no less, so it's very personal to me. That's why I own the movie. I didn't want anyone else cutting it or editing it."
If there is a statement somewhere in "Slipstream," it is not obvious. Hopkin's doesn't seem to be striving for mainstream success with his project.
"I just want to poke people in the head," he said. "I just want to poke them in the brain, say, 'Come on, wake up!' Because you're in this state of suspended animation watching a movie. We yearn for Hamlet or Desdemona, or we cry with 'Death of a Salesman,' yet it's all an illusion. I wanted to do what Brecht did and say, 'Oh, wake up. It's only a movie.' "
W.M. Akers is a staff writer. E-mail him at film@nyunews.com.
Be the first to comment on this story