FLASHBACK/THE EDUCATION OF FREDRICK FITZELL

Canada, 2020, 97 minutes, Colour.

Dylan O'Brien, Maika Monroe, Hannah Gross, Emory Cohen, Keir Gilchrist.

Directed by Christopher MacBride.

For streaming release, the production went by the more direct title, Flashback. However, it had the far more literate original title.

Audiences will be bewildered at first, identifying with Fred and his ordinary life, marriage, job, presentation to the company. However, especially with his visits to his mother in hospital and their effect, he begins to get a sense of the past. What emerges is a psychedelic/surreal journey for Fred and for the audience.

The focus is on the drug, Merc, indulged in by Fred and the others at high school, especially by a homeless man who keeps appearing to Fred in the present and is revealed as a child in the past. He also rediscovers Cindy, his relationship with her in the past, trying to find out what happened to her and told she has disappeared. However, in his continual returns to his high school past, he rekindles his relationship with Cindy – falling in love, and, with the power of the drug and its effect to introduce the taker into a multi-verse, he travels all over the world with Cindy.

Eventually, experiencing breakdown in the present, he has to make decisions, return to his wife, complete his work for the company, visit his mother in hospital – with the realisation that the image of an open mouth that has tormented him is that of his reprimanding mother from the past.

Dylan O’Brien, especially with the series Teen Wolf for many years, then the Maze Runner films, and moving into more adult roles, The Outfit, has been building up his career.

1. The direct title? The original title and its overtones?
2. The 21^st-century setting, the business world, hospitals, home life? The contrast with high school, earlier decades, the drug scene? The musical score?
3. A surreal film, different time phases, intercut, time travel, the drug and its power, releasing individuals, their lives and choices, relationships? Drug dependence? Multi-verse travel?
4. Fred and his story, initially, his mother in hospital, concern, his marriage, his work, presenting the production? His crises?
5. His experiences, fantasies, nightmares, the mouth, seeing the homeless man, memories of school, the child, the high school, memories of Cindy, to school, the Merc, its prevalence, the group, taking it, the experiences, the uncut drug?
6. Fred, the effect, recovering his past, in an out, encountering Cindy, returning to the past, the relationship with her, in love, the multi-verse travel?
7. The drug takers, the dealers, a destructive world, the power in the drug, unleashed, the consequences?
8. Fred, the experience of the multi-verse travel, his option, returning to his wife? The problem of the presentation, collapse, return to complete it? The visit to his mother, the recognition of the mouth, his mother reprimanding him?
9. The overall effect of this kind of psychedelic dramatic journey?