Immortality, review of Sam Barlow’s new masterpiece

Marissa Marcel was a big promise for cinema. Like many actresses before her, she made her commercial debut in 1968 before she was recruited for director Arthur Fischer’s “Ambrosio” starring the role of Matilda. Unfortunately, the movie was never released in theaters. In 1970, Marcel found another role in the movie “Minsky,” directed for the first time by Ambrosio’s cinematographer, John Durick. This movie never made it to theaters either. Years passed and Marcel disappeared from circulation, at least until 1999 when he returned to the set of a new Durick movie, Two of Everything. Unfortunately, Durick’s death stopped that movie as well. Marcel has not been heard from since then.

But in 2020, the movies reappeared with footage of the three works. That’s why the Half Mermaid development studio decided to create software to scan them in high resolution and try to reconstruct them to better preserve them and not let Marcel’s memory die. You can find out by reading whether it is worth undertaking the restoration of three films. immortality reviewSam Barlow’s new masterpiece.

In the role of editors

What we gave you in the previous paragraph is a good bit of information that developers are willing to know before starting player rebuild work. They are very important as they include some of them. basic questions which prompts us to evaluate what we do from a different perspective. For example, it’s inevitable to ask why the movies didn’t come out and why Marissa didn’t look like a diary when she reappeared in 1999. Even if you don’t quite know yet, there’s probably more to discover. Something must have happened after all, otherwise why would we be here?

As with Barlow’s Tale and Don’t Lie, Barlow’s two previous plays Immortalityinterface really down to the bone. Basically we have the tools to watch movies, rewind or fast forward them at different speeds (even frame by frame), pause and select the details that interest us. The latter automatically jumps us to another thread. It appears in an old editing room, in front of slow motion, with the possibility of seeing the collection of uncovered clips that can be sequenced in various ways and the collection of selected details.

Nothing else. Then you open one of the captured clips, look at its contents, and choose which detail to click on: an actor’s face, a smile, an object of the script that you think is interesting, whatever is interactive, and the clip. the destination is where the whole procedure is repeated. It is important to point out that target clip is not always the samethat is, it is not certain that you will reach the same clip by clicking the same detail twice. Often there is a transition to a similar object. For example, clicking on Marissa’s face would likely lead to another clip with Marissa, while clicking on a snake used in Ambrosio could lead to a snake-shaped earring worn by the Two of Everything actress, but there may be surprises there as well. This way the game manages the exploration progress in a particularly clever way, always giving us new clips to watch (there are about two hundred in total), but occasionally bringing us back from previously discovered clips, just to remind us that maybe we’re lost for something on the street.

An engaging experience

Be that as it may, understand very little game mechanics It’s really easy, because learning how to manipulate clips is just the first step towards something that will capture you in an all-encompassing way. Because at some point you find yourself lost in those broken images and you choose one detail after another, you look at the same clips and watch them again, until you are satisfied. Every sequence, even the most trivial, always seems to suggest something, even if you don’t know what it is most of the time. The perception is that you actually have the footage of three never-released movies and you’re in an editing room (after all, isn’t editing the essence of cinema?). Yes, because the power of Immortality lies in its constant stimulation, in making you feel like within the role assigned to you by the developers, then radically changing and transforming, making the role more central, as if it were the job of a film historian. researcher.

Unknowingly, you find yourself investigating an even greater mystery and trying to penetrate something hidden and unfinished, which plunges you even deeper. research vortexallows you to use the tools provided in an alternative way. Immortality expands at this point, making you realize that the story you’re watching is not just the story of Marissa, but of Durrick and other characters we haven’t named for the sake of surprise. You know very well that there will be no definite answers in those parts of the movie that were never edited, and you know that you will not find a definitive solution for those behind them, but you will not be able to stop yourself from sinking in this sea. images that start talking to you in a different language, more video games in a sense, right there where you start to understand that the video game is happening first and foremost in your head and you’re entering a kind of stream of consciousness. ghosts of the unconscious make the images appearing on the screen like gods; fragments of something we can imagine being reassembled, but never grasp the essence of.

You become an instrument of the game and the game begins to reflect who you are. The details you choose create a wall that also showcases your intuitions, initiatives and, why not, your special interests. You realize that the chain of objects in front of you says much more about you than you want to admit. You continue to play by developing a very powerful game. mystery charm It is obscured by fake sequences, but realizing that some events can never really be explained because, despite being in front of a camera, they have shaped a life outside of it and determined by a force acting on it.

Results

It’s too bad we can’t go into more detail about what happened while playing from a narrative standpoint, because it’s part of the reason Immortality is an absolute masterpiece. barlow He proved once again that he is one of the few writers who can meaningfully interact with filmed sequences, creating sandboxes that require the active participation of the actor in order to be appreciated. It must be said that the game displays its charm on different levels; one of them is the fascination created by the material we watch, painstakingly done to give the illusion that it was the filming of three films of their era. So in most dramas we can see the take offs at the beginning and end of the scene, some scenes are real auditions, some see the actors reading their lines around a table with the director. Then there are television interviews, celebratory moments, and special scenes that serve as narrative links to make sense of certain episodes.

Depending on the film, shots have different grains and colors, creating a remarkable probability effect. Even the actors are very good and partly excellent, starting with Manon Gage, Marcel’s interpreter, to Carlotta Mohlin, who is truly excellent in the role, popping up every time she appears on screen, but we can’t explain it. role. As a result, we see no reason why you should not experience Immortality, other than perhaps an absolute hatred of such experience.