Horror according to Freud – Weekend
[ad_1]
The debut film by Danish Karoline Lyngby, The Escape Illusion, is a psychological horror, evil doppelganger drama about family relationships, in which human chemistry is as interesting as quantum physics.
Stine, Tate, their son Nemo and their dog travel from Copenhagen to the Swedish wilderness: they are going to live there for a year away from people. Stine will finally finish the novel, and Tate will record podcasts for the radio and send them every week to Copenhagen – in envelopes, because there is no mobile connection and the Internet in these forests. The forest is overgrown with moss, the sky is reflected in the lake, the house also seems to consist of continuous reflections. It’s almost paradise here: the electricity works, the dog runs around the neighborhood, Nemo looks at the spiders with delight. Of course, there are problems: Tate is busy only with himself, Stine is tired of both him and her son, who does not like to play with himself and demands attention all the time. And on the other side of the lake, as it turns out, there is another family living – although Tate was promised that there would be no one else in these parts but them. But still Stine and Tate hope this year to forget all their grievances against each other and find themselves again.
And they find. One day, Nemo disappears in the forest, and when he finally returns, it seems that he has been replaced: he no longer smiles. And he is sure that Stine is not his mother.
If you perceive the debut of the Dane Karoline Lyngby “Illusion of Escape” as a horror, it will not be very scary. Here from the very beginning it is clear what awaits the heroes. Here they merge with their reflections, entering the house. Here Tate and Stine are photographed, slightly clowning around. Here is a family laughing happily, although everyone knows that laughter in the deep forest is a harbinger of a nightmare. Here dad finds a gun. A mother says to her son: “Don’t go anywhere.” Like children, honestly.
Of course, their neighbors are themselves. Lyngby almost directly quotes, oddly enough, Freud’s study “Terrible”: Freud believed that it becomes eerie not from a collision with something unknown, but, on the contrary, from something that is familiar to us. In particular, the creepy is “when one wanders in a dense forest, say, shrouded in fog, and yet, despite all efforts to find a noticeable or familiar path, they return repeatedly to the same place marked with certain signs.” The forest in “The Illusion of Escape” does not release the heroes, and they need to figure out how to behave with their counterparts in order to finally get out into civilization.
One seems to Stina more cunning, the other seems to be too naive; one Tate is too narcissistic, the other is a little confused. But both couples are unhappy. And only Nemo they have one for two families. Two Stine over a bottle of wine quickly find a topic for discussion: “Tate is sincerely sure that he feels thinner than me … Do you feel the same way?” “Aren’t you tired of having to adjust?”
In the original, the film is called “Superposition” – a fundamental principle of quantum mechanics, leading, in particular, to quantum entanglement: particles turn out to be dependent on each other, even if they are outside the limits of interaction. One illustration of the principle of quantum superposition is Schrödinger’s cat, which is both alive and dead at the same time.
The Illusion of Escape is a striking example of horror that is both alive and dead at the same time: if you take The Illusion of Escape as a psychological drama, it becomes truly creepy.
The worst thing is our desires. The main thing that the characters want – like any average middle-class family, creative, decently paid, with a car and a dog – is for everything to return to normal. What needs to be done for this? Hug someone? Yell at someone? Attack someone? Locked up? What to do when you find yourself face to face with yourself? The duality in The Illusion of Escape is not perceived as a threat to life, as in “We” Jordan Peele, where the doppelgangers were the “evil twins” of the characters, as well as a deal breaker. Tate was promised that nothing would disturb his peace; he is outraged. It is even more outrageous that the intruder is himself. “Maybe I have a psychosis and I see you all, or this is retribution, and we are in hell,” Tate suggests without any interest.
Even during the filming of the film, producer Amalie Lyngby Kvist (“The Breeder”, “Psychosis”), talking about the main idea of “Illusion of Escape”, explained that the authors wanted to make a film about the present times, about the times of individualism: “The worst thing is what we let us be able to learn that we are not unique.” Actors Maria Bach Hansen and Mikkel Boe Felsgaard (they played together in the TV series “Legacy”) play completely different, but equally not unique characters, turn this kingdom of direct mirrors into a poisonous drama without bringing their characters to caricature.
The slow, gray-green psychological drama turns into horror not when Stine and Tate meet their full doubles, and not when it turns out that it is impossible to leave this forest, you still return to the same place, but in the last minutes. When the depth of the heroine’s despair becomes clear. Caroline Lyngby tells much more about the secret (and explicit) desires of a modern woman than is allowed, and the thriller is a great way to hide these desires. If you want to hide a leaf, hide it in the forest. If you want to hide your fatigue and hatred and constant irritation with your son, and fear, and the desire to sleep with someone else, not with this dull husband, go with your dull husband to the forest, play gentlemen Golyadkin there. If you want a live cat, don’t check if it’s alive.
In theaters May 25
Subscribe to Weekend channel in Telegram
[ad_2]
Source link
