DVD DETAILS:
Vision
The 16:9 enhanced widescreen transfer is professional despite a murkiness which may obscure clarity on some shots: it is noticeable but never severe. The film has an astonishing sense of the hallucinatory uncertainty of perception – a key motif throughout – and the way in which people and events increasingly have significance beyond the apparent chronicles the film’s descent into a paranoid vision. Again, this adopts a schizophrenic approach: ideas of reference as a precursor to paranoid delusion. It has a cold sophistication, full of the glossy elegance typical of Lyne (often attributed to his background in television commercials) with a structural emphasis on the notion of the persistence of memory. The seeming hallucinations are kept abrupt and pass by quickly, adding to the sense of uncertainty so well established. They are often blurry, Lyne admittedly intending to evoke the paintings of Francis Bacon. It is a glistening world of almost hostile coldness, with the little warmth being a respite from the chaos of Robbins’ increasingly fevered mind. Such respite is found only with Aiello and in the ending’s intimation of happiness. A journey down a hospital corridor becomes a fearful descent into hell in the film’s most astonishing sequence. The notion of the madhouse thus becomes a motif in the film, its purpose seemingly to equate the process of dying with the psychotic dissolution of the identity.
Sound
The Dolby Digital 5.1 sound transfer is exceptional. The evocative score by Maurice Jarre adds both a mournful delicacy and a mounting urgency, tied as it is to Robbins’ awareness of his own disintegrating mental state. Abrupt changes in levels between quiet, minor, ordinary sounds and almost crashing loudness are appropriately jarring. The uneasy use of directional effects in the surround space adds to the increasing sense of disorientation, further allying the viewer’s helplessness to Robbins’ fate. With score and diegetic sound levels always linked to the notion of perceptual uncertainty and destabilization, the aural design is as important to the overall effect as is the visual style – thus, there is an otherworldly sound to many of the abrupt hallucinations and natural, familiar sounds are gradually made to seem dangerous and even threatening. Robbins’ lone auditory hallucination (of a voice) proves a devastating moment, adding to the film’s relentless plunge. Just as Lyne establishes a convincing aural realism, so too he seeks to undermine it: all calm is illusory in this movie, except perhaps for the final moments in a film building to one man’s need to make peace with his fate. A gentle rainfall is nicely used, and an abrupt explosion contributes to a sense of danger and an ever-extending sphere of paranoia. A slowing heartbeat, with attendant flashes of vision, is used to striking Expressionist effect in the final scenes. read more
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