After his involvement in the London Olympics opening ceremony last year added to his Oscar victory a couple of years back, mainstream Britain seems to have woken up to the existence of Danny Boyle. I'm no Boyle fan-boy, but when I think about how much I have enjoyed the films he has directed I quickly realise that I should be. His outstanding films include Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, 28 Days Later, Sunshine and of course the Oscar winning Slumdog Millionaire. Each of these films is a fantastic achievement, linked of course by the unmistakable Danny Boyle style in which images and sounds are used with quick cuts, close ups, odd angles and fast-slow sequences to create something that's visually disconcerting and very effective. Think of the way he portrays the 'infected' from 28 Days Later with quickly-edited close ups and various noises of muffed terror. It's the same visual style as he uses in the fantastic chase sequences in Slumdog Millionaire.
Before the start of the film yesterday there was a 30 second message from Mr Boyle telling us that Trance is intended as something of an antithesis to the Olympic ceremony last year. He told us that the film was shot before the ceremony and edited after it, and that where the Olympics represented something fun and light, this is the dark side. Fair enough. Trance tells the story of an art auctioneer-turned-thief called Simon (played by James McAvoy), who narrates the story and tells us about an art heist gone wrong. Gone wrong because at some point during the heist he gets banged on the head and cannot remember where he has put a£25 million value painting. His criminal partner (Vincent Cassel) decides to enlist the help of a hypnotherapist (Rosario Dawson) to try to get him to recollect the memories of what happened on the day of the robbery. And then memories, dreams and reality start to merge as Simon tries to remember what's real.
The Danny Boyle style works well with this kind of stuff, since he uses all his usual tricks to good effect in the sequences when Simon is travelling through his dream-like world. As far as my enjoyment of the film goes though, that was about the end of it. The main difficulty I had was that I didn't believe anything that any of the characters were doing; I didn't buy into them and got a bit a bit bored. The middle of the film gets tangled up in its own details and takes forever to get where it's trying to go. Then when it does get there none of it really makes any sense. There are whole sequences of Simon's therapy that could have been cut out entirely, then just when you think they're getting somewhere something else happens that requires yet another hypnosis scene in yet another dark underground disused nightclub. When we get to the end I simply didn't believe the explanation. I simply didn't believe in the reality of these characters enough to buy into the so-called twist.
I can see why Boyle says that the film is of the dark side. There's a lot of graphic and brutal violence, shocking scenes of gore and some full-frontal nudity - all things that were understandably absent from the Olympics opening ceremony last year. I get the impression that Trance was an outlet for Boyle's dark creative side, an outlet that he desperately needed when he was spending the rest of his time crafting something sugar-coated for the Olympics. Despite not really getting Trance too much, I am impressed none-the-less that Boyle has made a film is dark and adult as this. He could easily have strayed into the mainstream and stayed there, but hopefully with Trance he is signalling his intention to stick with his roots outside the cinematic establishment. Kudos to that.
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