film

Coherence (2013)

Carnage meets Looper in this lean but efficient thriller.

Update:  I found an interesting chart discussing the different versions of the characters and when they enter and exit certain scenes.  It definitely puts a more interesting spin on things.  I’m not sure if I’m convinced that this chart’s explanation is what was intended, but it could be, and it doesn’t try create facts out of thin, it sticks to “rules” established in the movie, and it wisely weighs the difference between purposeful changes and likely continuity errors.  Check it out here: https://i.imgur.com/3iE5y7Q.png

I had a blast with streaming services like Netflix and Amazon at first (it’s still better than the 2,000 cable channels). But it doesn’t take long to run through all the recognizable stuff. And then suddenly I found all those movies I’d wanted to see slipping from my memory, so I don’t even have the luxury of searching. That’s when the new equivalent to channel surfing takes over – movie surfing. Or TV surfing. Or whatever. Anyway, a variety of factors go into plucking a movie at random to watch, the least of which is the synopsis. Amazon cuts half of their synopsis off (which I believe is lifted straight from IMDB anyway) and Netflix tends to give away huge spoilers in theirs. Having not been long since I rewatched Buffy and Angel, I spotted Nicholas Brendon, which grabbed my attention long enough to read a plot about a comet, and so I gave it a shot.

Coherence was a pretty good film all in all, and it would’ve fit in perfectly with all the late 90’s and early 2000’s “what is reality” pieces like The Matrix, Fight Club, Mulholland Drive, and Memento, among others. The idea was to pull off an almost no-budget sci-fi flick that included highly naturalistic dialog between the actors. On this level, it succeeds. Much of the dialog is improvised, there’s overlaps in speech, interruptions, a few muddled ramblings, and you can believe that these are 8 real people in a room having a real conversation.

The twist, if you could even call it that, unfolds slowly and inconspicuously. There’s a comet passing overhead, the power goes out, and one guy starts talking about quantum physics in a way that makes sense – Schroedinger’s Cat.

I won’t launch into an explanation of Schroedinger’s Cat – others have explained it better and more completely elsewhere – but I will get into the implications it has for the film. As the night rolls on and the comet flies by, our 8 characters begin to discover another reality parallel to their own. These realities begain to cross, with characters from Reality 1 over at the house of Reality 2…and worst of all, they’re not even sure of which reality they’re in or even which one they belong to. As the film draws to a climax, we learn that we’re not only dealing with 2 realities, but at least 3, and possibly an infinite number.

To make matters worse, Coherence begins playing with time as well, as if to suggest that although these realities are similar, they are not necessarily moving on the same arrow of time. Events happen in one place before they happen in the other yet overlap nonetheless, and the film quickly spirals into a complicated mathematical equation as well as a mind-numbing philosophical quandry. From one cut to the next, we can never be totally sure of what reality we’re in and whether or not we’re following the same character. The implications are virtually endless, leading to an infinite number of possibilities on just how to interpret the ending, a time when all such alternate realities have collapsed and only one remains.

Like all other thought-provoking films, there’s a plethora of explanations about what the ending means, some reaching deep below the surface and picking up on small clues that may or may not have been intentionally placed by the filmmakers. I’m not one for grasping at straws, but to create a story that begs such discussion while still presenting a fairly obvious conclusion is at least admirable. However, on a least some small level, I feel like the idea of intersecting alternate realities was merely a clever device to make maximum use of a single setting and a small cadre of performers. I wish more of the pragmatics had been explored and that the audience had been presented with less ambiguous information. I think playing with alternate realities is a great idea – it certainly leaves less room for paradoxes than time travel – but it wouldn’t hurt to give the viewer a more omniscent perspective on the events at hand. Otherwise, the answer “alternate reality!” can serve as a cop-out for virtually any inconsistency, and it can be used to defend any arguement and render any interpretation unfalsifiable. By giving the viewer some concrete, indisputable information, I feel like we can better understand the filmmaker’s message rather than spend our time conjuring up elaborate scenarios over the most mundane of “clues.”

Griping aside, the story works well enough, but it seems that Coherence is more of an exercise in efficient filmmaking than anything else. It would probably make an excellent show on the stage thanks to the absence of camera tricks or other common filmmaking conventions needed to drive the plot. We get some decent performances out of our cast of relative unknowns, but the film has a hard time driving its point home without giving the audience a greater understanding than the characters. It gets an A for effort, though I’d take pause before wholeheartedly recommending it to sci-fi buffs and instead lean towards those interested in the limitations and possibilities of film as a medium and art form.

Have you seen Coherence?  Did you like it?  Was the ending as it seemed, or is there more to it than meets the eye?  Let us know and comment below!

Written by The Cubist