Franklyn - Truth wears many masks
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Franklyn - Truth wears many masks |
| Original title | Franklyn |
| Country of production | United Kingdom |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 2008 |
| length | 98 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Gerald McMorrow |
| script | Gerald McMorrow |
| production |
Jeremy Thomas , Simon Fawcett , Peter Watson |
| music | Joby Talbot |
| camera | Ben Davis |
| cut | Peter Christelis |
| occupation | |
| |
Franklyn - The Truth wears many masks is a British fantasy film from the year 2008 . The film is Gerald McMorrow's first directorial work , who also wrote the script. The main role was played by Ryan Phillippe . The film was shown for the first time in Germany on March 7, 2009 as part of the Fantasy Film Festival .
action
The film is set in contemporary London , but also in Meanwhile City , a city in a parallel universe . The film tells the storylines of four people, these respective storylines meet at the end. Another point is that the two worlds merge towards the finale.
Story 1: Jonathan Preest / David Esser and Peter Esser / The Individual
Jonathan Preest is a masked vigilante in Meanwhile City . Religions of any kind are prescribed in this city . Preest, who is not religious, has only one goal: to eliminate the so-called individual who murdered an 11-year-old girl. One night he meets up with his contact Wormsnake in a club. However, this betrayed Preest to the Ministry of Religions . The Ministers of Religion , a special unit that put infidels in prison, attack Preest, but he escapes.
In contemporary London , Peter Esser is looking for his mentally ill son David, an Iraq veteran . He was supposed to visit him, but has now disappeared. Peter wanders all over London just to find a trace of David. He goes to the mental institution where David was imprisoned and asks the clinic's director for advice. He explains to sad Peter that David broke out of the clinic. However, Peter doesn't believe this and wants to find out for himself what David did.
Meanwhile, Jonathan Preest is arrested by the ministers for religion and taken to prison. Four years later, Preest is taken to Tarrant, the prison director. He says that Preest will be released if he helps the ministers of religion to locate the individual . Preest agrees; A chip is to be implanted into him, but shortly before the implantation he escapes. He goes to Wormsnake, his traitorous contact, and attacks him. Preest wants to know where the individual is. Wormsnake says that he does not know anything and after a few blows he receives an address from Preest, which he should give to the "individual" when he comes to Wormsnake and asks about his whereabouts.
In the real world, Peter Esser has arrived at a library . Here he goes to David's war comrade Wasnik, who works in the kitchen. Wasnik tells Peter that David came to him a few days ago and threatened him. Wasnik gives Peter an address that David gave him. Peter goes there.
Story 2: Milo and Sally
Milo is a young man who has just been let sit in front of the altar at the dress rehearsal. He then lives with his friend Dan and thinks about his life. One day he thinks he sees a childhood friend named Sally on the street. He follows her until she can no longer be seen. Milo then goes to his mother and tells her about this encounter. His mother explains to him that this Sally is just an imaginary person that he created as a little boy after losing his father and who had accompanied him until he got over the pain. Milo doesn't want to believe this and sees Sally one more time on the street. He follows her into a cellar. There he meets a mysterious man who introduces himself to him as Pastor Bonne . Milo explains that he has to look for Sally . Another day he sees Sally in a school yard and speaks to her. The two arrange to meet for dinner.
Story 3: Emilia Bryant
The young art student Emilia Bryant is mentally unstable . She made several suicide attempts and recorded them with a video camera . Shortly before the respective suicide attempt, however, she always calls the emergency number to avoid dying. She also has a bad relationship with her mother, in large part due to the fact that she did not react to the father's assaults on Emilia in her childhood as she would have liked, the separation of the parents more than a withdrawal of the Father felt.
After another suicide attempt, Emilia is in the hospital. She asks one of the doctors if they called her mother. The doctor affirmed this and reported that the mother wanted to know whether she was okay. Emilia adds that it is not so important to her mother that she come to her. The doctor's silence confirms this thought. During her stay in the hospital, Peter Esser also arrives at the hospital, looking for his son. Emilia sees him from her bed. To pray, Peter goes to the in-house chapel, where he meets "Pastor Bonne" and has a short conversation with him. A short time later, Emilia is approached by "Pastor Bonne" in the hallway, over a mug of coffee he tries to make her understand that she would trigger a series of events with a suicide. She should not only think about people close to her, but also that this would prevent other people's first encounters with her. She breaks off the conversation as he tries to explain to her how long isolation can affect itself.
After she was released from the clinic, Emilia presented her video-recorded suicide attempts to her art professor. However, he finds her "work" abhorrent, Emilia cannot understand this. When he asks her whether this "work" of hers should end with her death, she comments with "No idea ...". She interrupts her next suicide attempt herself after experiencing a kind of "vision" in which she sees herself dead, which terrifies her and makes her "wake up" ("You asked how this should end, I told the truth. .. I don't know. A damaged doll, a hollowed-out girl ... ").
A little later she goes to her mother to talk to her about the past and the father. She also records this conversation on video. Afterwards, mother and daughter embrace, their relationship now seems less tense.
final
In present-day London, David Esser goes to the address given to Jonathan Preest in Meanwhile City . David meets Emilia and asks her if an older man has come by. Emilia shakes her head and David tells her that if an elderly man comes by, she should tell him that he is in the restaurant across the street.
Peter Esser goes to the address he got from Wasnik. When he rings, the doorbell rings in Emilia's apartment (she is currently thinking of killing herself with the help of the gas stove), David is on the floor above her (there is probably an error in the circuitry of the doorbell / intercom). Peter asks for David Esser through the intercom , but Emilia does not know this person and makes it clear that this is not David Esser's, but her apartment. Peter notices that he will be in the restaurant across the street, which he then goes to and takes a seat at a table.
There is a knock on the door of Emilia's apartment. Emilia opens the door, there is David Esser and awkwardly introduces himself as her new neighbor, John Preest (!). He explains that he has moved into the apartment above her and that he suspects that the buzzer on his door may not work properly. She tells him about the gentleman who shortly before asked for a David and would now be waiting for him in the restaurant across the street.
Some time later, Milo also happens to arrive at this restaurant and is waiting for his former childhood friend Sally . This appears shortly afterwards and confirms the truth to Milo: he only created it in his imagination. The death of his father had hit him hard, and so he invented an imaginary playmate to overcome the pain and live with the loss.
In the meantime David knocks on Emilia's door again and when she opens the door for him as a supposed neighbor, David pushes it open and hits Emilia in the head, so that she goes down and he can gain access to the apartment. David goes to the window and watches his father in the restaurant from there. He exchanges a few words with Emilia, when asked how long she has been living in "Meanwhile City", she reacts with confusion. Your subsequent attempt to take David by surprise and incapacitate with a piece of furniture fails. David puts on the sniper rifle. He aims exactly at his father, Peter Esser, in the restaurant across the street. Since at this point the real world and the parallel world have merged, David would kill his father and the individual with one shot . Meanwhile, Milo does not want to admit that Sally is actually just his imagination, so he gets up and kisses Sally. This then disappears. David pulls the trigger, but Milo is now in the path of the shot, which David hadn't noticed. Milo is injured in the arm, while Peter survives.
Emilia managed to turn the gas on in her apartment unnoticed. To keep David from another shot and finally to get out of her apartment, she holds a gasoline lighter in front of the stove and threatens to light it. David gradually sees clearly again, recognizes his father and the futility of the previous attempt at killing and his own further existence. He takes the lighter from Emilia and tells her that she should go now. She does so, turns around at the door and sees her room transform into a room from Meanwhile City . David, now recognized as Jonathan Preest, lights the lighter and the apartment explodes .
On the street, Milo meets Emilia, who just managed to escape from the house and looks very much like Sally. Peter is now also on the street and stares at the house that has just exploded.
You can see Pastor Bonne , with whom Milo had spoken, as he was mopping the floors in the hospital. Suddenly he disappears.
production
Director Gerald McMorrow wrote the script for Franklyn for his feature film debut . Franklyn has a connection with McMorrow's short film Thespian X from 2002. Originally, Ewan McGregor was supposed to play the role of the vigilante Jonathan Preest , but he broke his leg in a motorcycle accident while filming the second season of Long Way Round . Ryan Phillippe , Eva Green and Sam Riley were signed in late 2007. The film was shot in London . The budget was around £ 6 million .
Interpretation of the director
For Meanwhile City, director McMorrow was inspired by the religious iconography he saw in shopping malls in Mexico City .
“The idea was that if you have a capital city that is based on religion, it is somewhere like B. to have in Florence or Rome and to send this "somewhere" three miles into the sky. "
About Ryan Phillippe's role Jonathan Preest McMorrow said the following:
“Part of Preest's delirium and fantasy comes from the religion that surrounds him, the comics he's read and the movies he's seen. It's made of pieces, and together they make a jigsaw puzzle of his own delusions. "
useful information
The model for Preest's mask was that of the comic figure Rorschach from the graphic novel Watchmen .
criticism
“A delusional, comic-like and morbid series of images in a synthesis of Batman, Burton, Max Payne, Sin City, The League of Honorable Gentlemen and many others. Somehow a Gothic Novel in detailed cadres that seem to celebrate themselves. Somehow also exciting, but also sometimes lengthy. Still a worth seeing anti-worlds thriller in which John Carpenter's 'You Live!' distant godfather. The infinite number of weird, bizarre and grotesque characters catch your eye, where the black henchmen of the tyrannical 'Ministry' could have sprung from the theater of the absurd. "
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Interview with Gerald McMorrow on digitalspy.co.uk , June 1, 2010.
- ↑ Film review on digitalvd.de ( memento of the original from April 20, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , June 1, 2010.
Web links
- Franklyn - The Truth wears many masks in the Internet Movie Database (English)