Fridae

It’s better to think of Source Code as one of those absurdist thought experiment type films along the likes of Bedtime Stories, Groundhog Day and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, except where those movies were comedies with varying degrees of success, this movie chooses to come in the guise of an action thriller.

I say so because this is actually one of those science fiction thrillers in which the science involved makes so little sense that the film just gives up trying to explain how it works.

Consider this: army captain and expert helicopter pilot Colter Stevens wakes up in a strange cockpit. He is to be repeatedly transported into the body (a la Quantum Leap) of a teacher named Sean Fentress whose train ride will sadly be interrupted permanently by a terrorist bomb. His mission: to identify the terrorist before he takes out the whole of Chicago with a much bigger bomb. Each session lasts a mere eight minutes.

It is not time travel that Stevens engages in because he cannot change the current past as much as he can change an alternate past in an alternate reality. So far so good. All this is part of a top secret government experiment carried out by scientist Rutledge (a very hammy Jeffrey Wright, armed with an evil scientist limp and walking stick) and military handler Goodwin (Vera Farmiga). We’re told that only he can accomplish this because he is a physical and mental match for Sean Fentress of all the passengers that were on board the train.

Are you lost yet? Don’t worry, Rutledge will throw random words together and randomly punctuate them with the word “quantum”, and clobber your head with them until you accept the confusion and the absurdity which the premise rests upon and builds right up to the film’s final frames.

Part of me does not wish to buy this film as science fiction because in science fiction, any science, even junk science, follows a set of rules. For every action, there is a fixed consequence based on these rules. Such a set of rules does not exist in this movie because the rules have not even been thought through - which is why this is far more an absurdist thought-experiment fantasy like the films I mentioned earlier.

Still, I wish to say that this film is driven throughout by excellent performances and a solid sense of pacing that carry the film with zest and verve. The always appealing Gyllenhaal and his wide-eyed earnestness, the versatile Vera Farmiga exuding a mix of quiet strength and vulnerability as Goodwin, and bubbly Michelle Monaghan somewhat convinces you why any man can fall in love with her after a mere eight minutes on a train. The director, Duncan Jones, was up till a few years ago known as the son of David Bowie from his first marriage. With this film and the equally offbeat science fiction film Moon, like his dad, he expresses concern for Major Tom’s Space Oddity - individuals thrust into new, wondrous and incomprehensible realities. There is probably much to expect from the son of Ziggy Stardust in future.