POSSIBLE WORLDS

Canada, 2000, 92 minutes, Colour.
Tilda Swinton, Tom Mc Camus, Sean Mc Cann.
Directed by Robert Lepage.

Possible Worlds is the first English language film for playwright, film-maker and entrepreneur Robert Lepage (also an actor in such films as Jesus of Montreal, Stardom). Lepage is world-renowned for his plays and the dramatic staging. He moved into film-making with The Confessional, continued with The Polygraph and No.

The film was adapted by the director with the playwright, John Mighton. It is said to be a cubist poem, a reflection on consciousness, parallel worlds, right-brain, left-brain dichotomies, dreams and imagination. The central character moves through several parallel worlds, encountering the same woman, the goal of his life. She is played with subtle differences by Tilda Swinton. The woman is a scientist, a stock exchange broker, a lover, a wife, a stranger. She is called Joyce. The central character, who is murdered at the beginning of the film and his brain removed, seeks to understand his own consciousness.

The framework of the film is a police investigation into the murder, with a thoughtful inspector and a thoughtless assistant (who is humiliated often by the man in charge).

Eventually everything comes together with the focus on the human brain, its life, its imagination. While the film has a profound base, it often seems to be saying less than it thinks it might be saying.