THE I INSIDE
US, 2003, 90 minutes, Colour.
Ryan Phillippe, Sarah Polley, Piper Perabo, Stephen Rea, Robert Sean Leonard, Stephen Lang, Peter Egan, Stephen Graham, Rakie Ayola.
Directed by Roland Suso Richter.
The I Inside is a psychological drama, a fantasy.
Ryan Phillippe plays a young man who wakes up in 2002 with two years of his life gone. He is able to move back in his imagination, his dreams, or in reality, to an accident in the year 2000 and finds himself in the same hospital, with the same nurse, one of the patients, but with different doctors.
There are various theories about this – that it is all dreams and dreams within dreams (memories of inception). Or it could be that the subject was in coma and that what is going on takes place in his subconscious. However, the film-makers have decided to make it complex and offer no easy solution, offering different clues for different interpretations. Some audiences will find this too difficult – and the film had a delayed release.
Sarah Polley plays the fiancée of the man’s brother with whom she was having an affair. Piper Perabo plays a mousey nurse who gains control over the patient and turns into a femme fatale. Stephen Rea is the doctor in 2002, Peter Egan in 2000. Stephen Lang is the heart patient in both periods. Robert Sean Leonard is the hero’s brother.
The film unfolds well initially, the audience puzzled by the experience of the man and the doctor’s treatment as well as the appearance and disappearance of the mysterious women. However, as the film becomes more complicated, especially when the young man becomes paranoid and thinks that there is somebody trying to kill him and, in fact, in reality or in his dreams, kills the patient (Stephen Lang), it is hard to know what is really happening.
The other theory is that during coma, or during the death experience (and it seems the three central characters died), the young man has the opportunity to review his life, discover what was happening, try to make some amends and perhaps change the decisions that he had made.
The director is the German Roland Suso Richter, and this is one of his few English language films.
1. Psychological drama, melodrama?
2. Real, surreal? Dreams, subconscious, time travel?
3. The two times? Which was real? The coma, coping with issues and possibilities of repentance and change? Characters from each time entering into the subconscious? Projected into the story?
4. The title, Simon? His past, the experience of the accident, the experience of hospital, as poisoned? As moving from one time to another? The reality or dream? His consciousness, conscience?
5. The action of the film confined to the hospital, the house and the grounds? The wards, the rooms, the visitors? The mansion, the roads, the cliff? The score?
6. 2002 and the opening of the film, as basis for the audience to understand the characters, Simon waking, his puzzle? Doctor Newman, talk, explanations, therapy? The nurse and her help? Clair’s appearances and disappearances? Her message, the relationship? Anna as the wife, the femme fatale? Not believing Simon? The reality? The orderly and his help? Discovering Travis? Moving back and forth? The scans, his fear, someone behind the door, his killing Travis? The blood?
7. 2000 and his waking, the ward, Travis calling him a wacko, the younger Travis? The new doctor? The same nurse? Clair, her appearances, the affair? Anna as mousey, then the recording, the truth, her hold over him?
8. Moving back and forth, the different clothes, characters, the blood, appearances and disappearances?
9. Going back to Peter, their feud, their parents (and the photo with Doctor Newman as the father)? The arguments, Simon watching his struggle with Peter, Peter falling to his death, Simon dragging him away, the car? Peter on the cliff, suicidal? Clair’s role? Simon with Clair and Peter seeing them?
10. Simon being in the story rather than watching? The argument with Peter, Peter’s explanations? The fall, Simon dragging him into the car, putting him in the car, going to the hospital, Clair and her departure, the decision to return, the crash? The orderly and Simon being dead for two minutes, being revived?
11. The reality that Peter, Clair and Simon were dead? Simon and a purgatorial experience, realising the possibility of change?
12. The impact for audiences, the delayed release, too difficult? But a drama of life, death, morality and choices?
