Mindscape (film)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Mindscape |
| Original title | Mindscape |
| Country of production |
United States , Spain , France |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 2013 |
| length | 98 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Jorge Dorado |
| script |
Guy Holmes , Martha Holmes |
| production |
Jaume Collet-Serra , Mercedes Gamero , Peter Safran , Juan Sola |
| music | Lucas Vidal |
| camera | Óscar Faura |
| cut | Jaime Valdueza |
| occupation | |
| |
Mindscape is an American - Spanish - French psychological thriller released in 2013 . It is the directorial debut of the Spanish filmmaker Jorge Dorado .
action
John Washington works for Mindscape, the world's largest detective agency. Their employees have the talent to put themselves in people's thoughts by touching them.
During a session that goes wrong, John suffers a stroke and is suspended for two years as unfit. Financially ruined, he still owns the beach house where his wife died, but he refuses to sell it. Desperate, John asks his old boss, Sebastian, about a new job. The case he receives is that of a brilliant but troubled 16 year old, Anna Greene, who is on a hunger strike. Her stepfather wants her to be sent to a mental institution. Anna's mother and she are against it. John is there to determine if she is a sociopath or if this is all trauma based.
John and Anna begin their therapy sessions, focusing on Anna's time at a prestigious girls' school and several incidents that happened there. Anna's maid Judith, who was on a date with John, is pushed down the stairs and Anna is held responsible for the incident. So that John can help Anna, he demands the complete file from Anna's mother. This tells him that Sebastian has the file.
John learns that Anna had a sexual relationship with photographer Tom Ortega. In prison, John meets with Tom to learn the truth. Tom claims Anna molested him and Anna's parents saw him go to jail. In another attempt to research Anna's past, Anna finds out that three girls from boarding school teased Anna - and that the three were later poisoned. Anna was accused and expelled from boarding school. To this day, however, she accuses a girl named Mousey.
John notices that Anna's stepfather has him tailed. John and Anna go further back into their memories and see Sebastian approach Anna when she was only four years old, which leads John to blame Sebastian. This denies everything. John informs Anna's parents of his diagnosis and suggests that they not be sent to an institution. Back at his house, John discovers that the signature on Anna and Mousey's picture, which is said to have been written by Mousey, and the signature on a portrait of him drawn by Anna, which she gave him, match. In Anna's yearbook he sees that it was not the girl from Anna's memories who was nicknamed Mousey, but another girl. Then he gets a call from Anna.
John rushes to her home and notices that someone has broken in. From the security room of the house, John sees Anna frantically fleeing from an invisible assailant in a panic at the discovery of the bodies of her apparently murdered parents. John calls the police, who say they have already been called, and follows Anna into the woods. John meets Anna in the forest and she tells him that she is sorry. She runs away and John is arrested by the police.
During interrogation, John learns that the parents are still alive and that he is suspected of breaking into their home and drugging them. Later, John is visited by the man who has been chasing him all the time. It turns out that this man is another memory detective too. The sessions with John were held to restore the truth about Anna. The memory detective concludes that Anna manipulated her own memories to portray John as her killer. Instead, she faked her own death to escape from her parents. Because she knew that as long as they believed her alive, they would never stop looking for her. John apologizes to Sebastian, who promises to use this new information to secure John's release.
Anna sends John a single rose and a photo that she shows with an updated newspaper so that he knows she is still alive. John, now released from prison, drives to the beach house where he sees a family who bought the house happily sit together on the porch. Towards the end of the film you see John visiting Judith and asking him inside.
Reviews
Mindscape received mixed reviews. Michael Meyns from Filmstarts.de wrote that Jorge Dorado's 'Mindscape' was "a solid thriller with supernatural story elements that, thanks to its convincing leading actors, made it possible to forget its somewhat distracted and ultimately unsatisfactory script over long periods."
Marie Anderson regards the film in her cinema-time review as the carefully conceived and visually stunningly staged evocation of a shadowy sphere of drastic experiences and memories that would have an impact on the lives of the protagonists that is as significant as it is captivating. Mindscape hits the zeitgeist with its visualization of memories as a criminal investigation method as well as in the character drawing of the detective, who, with his personal deficits , embodies the classic investigator of film noir in a modern form . Mark Strong's interpretation of his role as a disoriented widower is hailed as impressive; Taissa Farmiga's nuanced game is also praised as Anna. The end of the film, however, is judged critically: In his feature film debut, the Spanish director Jorge Dorado puts “the relationship between the two characters quite incoherently under a new motto”, which “has not been developed dramaturgically consistently” and “in its hints of suddenly harmonious tendencies too forced ”. Regardless of this, Mindscape marks “a strong, suspenseful thriller with good entertainment value” in many moments.
In the film review on the Internet portal Filmchecker , Mindscape is also seen as a captivating film that presents its exciting story without inflated cinema effects. Above all, Taissa Farmiga's subdued portrayal of Anna's role is positively emphasized. The director Jorge Dorado confidently juggles unexpected twists and turns in the last part of the film, although the plot in the final part goes "haywire". The cleverly nested memory battle leads to an extremely insidious finale. Dorado proves with his first work that he is in no way inferior to most suspense experts. Mindscape is convincing overall not only through the acting performances of its actors, but equally through the well-written script.
Web links
- Mindscape in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ Certificate of Release for Mindscape . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , June 2014 (PDF; test number: 145 388 K).
- ↑ Mindscape . In: Filmstarts.de . Retrieved March 5, 2017.
- ↑ Anna and the memory detective - Mindscape on kino-zeit.de. Retrieved September 25, 2018.
- ↑ MINDSCAPE - review on Filmchecker . Retrieved September 25, 2018.