THE DISCOVERY
US, 2017, 102 minutes, Colour.
Jason Segel, Rooney Mara, Jesse Plemons, Robert Redford, Ron Canada, Riley Keogh, Mary Steenburgen.
Directed by Charlie Mc Dowell.
A futuristic scenario with a focus on the existence or not of an afterlife.
Robert Redford plays a scientist who has explored the afterlife, the experience of death, brain activity at the moment of death, and has published his findings declaring that there is an afterlife. A stranger comes to his house but turns out to be his alienated son, Jason Segel, who had helped him with initial experiments. On the way, Segel encounters a young woman who is inquiring about the afterlife, seems suicidal, becomes part of the entourage at the scientist centre, experimental candidates (Rooney Mara).
There is a very good supporting cast including Ron Canada, Jesse Plemons as Segel’s younger brother, strongly involved in working for his father, yet somewhat disillusioned in the nature of the experiments and tests, found footage of experiments from the past, finding also that his father is involved in experiments. Mary Steenburgen appears as a media interview.
The film is a blend of the mystical, the urbane yet probably mad scientist, and thriller elements.
1. The title? The discovery of a dimension in the afterlife? Scientific, philosophical, religious or not? The effect on the human race? Suicides to go to this hereafter?
2. The interview with Thomas, a celebrity, his discovery, his explanations? The role of the interviewer, the questions, her challenging him? The sound recordist, coming to the front, killing himself? Audience expectations?
3. The transition to Will and his story? Travelling to the island? The encounter with Isla? The discussion, his not wanting to listen to his father on television? The audience discovering that Thomas was his father?
4. Going to the island, meeting with Toby, the relationship? Discussions about their father? The mansion and the explanation of the inmates, despair, the jumpsuits, the routines and regulations? Will and his disagreement with his father, seeing his father undergoing the tests and revival? Meeting with him, the discussions? His father praising him, helping him with his science? The issue of the mother, her suicide, Will leaving? The reason for his return? His reaction to the suicides?
5. Toby, his personality, brother, with the father, working in the laboratory, doing the ordinary work, searching for corpses and taking them to the laboratory? His life?
6. Will, walking along the beach, seeing Isla, her going into the water, his rescuing her? Not wanting to be rescued? Taking her to his father, her discovery of the truth about him? Her agreeing to the questionnaire? Her being allowed to stay, the return, the jumpsuit?
7. The role of those working there, Cooper, his age, experience, the experiments? Loyalties? Lacey, present for a year, her work, beginning to resent Isla, participation in experiments, the comments, Thomas denouncing her in public and expelling her, her later turning up, the shooting, winding Isla?
8. The experiment to discover the images of the afterlife, the machine, the decision to get a corpse, the visits to the mortuary, Toby and his cover, the rescue of the bodies, later delivering them to the mortuary and leaving them outside?
9. The man with the experiment, no images? Thomas’s disappointment? Will returning, adjusting machine, seeing the images of the hospital? Will going to the hospital, retracing the steps, getting the information about changes in the corridor, the events 10 years earlier? The files and information about the dead man? The visit to his wife?
10. Revealing the truth? Thomas wanting to be the subject of the experiment? His images, the night of his wife’s death, his work, her going upstairs, yet her returning, joining him for the meal? So different from what happened in reality?
11. The probing of what was being revealed, alternate scenarios?
12. Thomas, his reaction, wanting to destroy the machines, his sense of failure in his discovery? The destruction, the effect? The confrontation with Lacey in public, her return, the shootings?
13. Will left with his dilemmas, his work in the past, his father’s work, his mother’s death, the experiments of the revelations, the destruction of the machines?
