|
|
|
The Chronology | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
e open with assistant coroner Phil D'Amato, who was once interested in becoming a physicist, but drifted into medical examination instead. Phil's unique background compels physicist Lauren Goldring to ask for his help in investigating the disappearance of her husband, also a physicist.
He had been working on an advanced project involving quantum signaling, a phenomenon which allows a signal sent to one particle to affect another particle which split from the first particle at some point in the past. The research seemed to have practical applications in faster-than-light communication and even, possibly, a form of time travel. But Dr. Goldring's group shot down its research months ago, and Dr. Goldring has been acting secretive and scared about why. Several of the project participants have died in frequent accidents. Lauren is certain that the explanation has to do with quantum signaling, but has no idea how or why.
Phil agrees to investigate, but when both Goldrings turn up dead in separate incidents, he begins to suspect that these murders are being committed by the universe itself, to suppress a discovery that represents a threat to the natural order. Not long after that, he learns that his investigation has made him a possible next victim ...
Talking heads targeted for death
"The Chronology Protection Case" is not a great story, or even a memorable one, even on the printed page. But there it functions as the kind of science-fiction story where all the characters are talking heads, and the plot is just the thinnest of all possible excuses for the lengthy discussion of a central interesting idea. Stories like that are legion in science fiction, especially hard science fiction. For all their, limitations as fiction they can work quite well as brain fodder. Their effectiveness depends entirely on whether the idea itself is worth the journey. The idea here, a discovery so earth-shattering that the universe itself conspires to kill anybody who even considers revealing it to humanity, could have been applied equally well to a fantasy about a magic spell, or a horror story about a demonic incantation. This version, based on quantum physics, obliges its characters to spend much of the story regaling each other with their own painstaking recreations of theory. But make no mistake, while Levinson might have been most interested in the quantum implications, they operate here only as a MacGuffin.
The problem is that while a story based on talking heads, with minimal characterization and even less suspense, might work acceptably well in print as long as the idea compelled, it takes a truly exceptional effort to make it work as a dramatic presentation. It's certainly been done. But the makers of this no-budget video version are nowhere near up to the challenge. The dialogue, taken directly from Levinson's story, is the kind of stuff that can be read but is almost impossible to speak convincingly out loud. The performances are all charisma-free, to the extent that some seem downright bored. The lighting and picture quality vary widely, often within the same scene. The choreography reduces every scene to endless cross-cutting between endlessly droning Person A and endlessly droning Person B.
And it all builds up to an impulsive kiss, and budding romance, between its hapless detective and a woman he just met—a moment of unexpected character development that might have worked all right on the printed page, but as filmed is downright embarrassing, since it joins two characters who until that moment shared less sexual chemistry onscreen than a hypothetical coupling of Yasir Arafat and Jessica Tandy. (It's also odd in that it requires the woman to blithely shrug off the trauma of surviving while all of her co-workers die untimely and in some cases horrid deaths. That didn't work in Levinson's original story, either, coming off not as a natural progression of events but as an author's determination to provide something that resembled an ending.)
Ironically, for a film based on discussion of an idea, the only moment that really works is a special effect. Midway through, our hero's car goes off a bridge and into a river. We've seen that so often, in bigger-budget films, that we're almost bored by it. But director/producer Jay Kensinger didn't have the budget to actually stage this, so he resorted to actual creativity, filming the accident with a degree of visual inventiveness that, while far from convincing in big-budget Hollywood standards, nevertheless did a fine job in expressing the terror and hopelessness of the trapped driver. Kensinger deserves kudos for meeting that challenge. It's just too bad that nothing before or after that moment was staged with anything approaching that degree of energy, and that all the dialogue scenes are models of stiffness and tedium.
One suspects a good film could have been made of Levinson's original, but somebody along the way would have had to give some serious thought to altering it for the best possible impact in another medium. — Adam-Troy
Also in this issue: Spider-Man, Dinotopia and Lost Voyage
|
 |
|
| Home |
Copyright © 1998-2006, Science Fiction Weekly (TM). All rights reserved. Reproduction in any medium strictly prohibited. Maintained by scifiweekly@scifi.com. |
