Friday, September 19, 2014

3 Short Paragraphs: I'll Follow You Down

2013, Richie Mehta (Amal) -- download

I am a sucker for time travel movies, especially indie ones. When you are not shooting for blockbuster fame, you have the energy to visit smaller ideas. In I'll Follow You Down it focuses on the question of which timeline deserves to exist.  This, of course, is assuming there is a singular timeline with which to mess with.

When Erol (Haley Joel Osment; all grown up but still baby-fat faced) was 9, his dad (Rufus Sewel) disappeared. He was off to Princeton and never showed up. Everyone assumed he just ran away but Erol's parents' love was so strong, it left his mother (Gillian Anderson) so irrevocably broken, she is lost to her family. Sal (Victor Garber), her father, believes that Gabriel didn't disappear but went somewhere more insidious -- into the past. He confesses this to Erol, who shares his father's genius and together the two decide to recreate the time machine and pursue Gabriel. Sal believes they are all living an alternate life that shouldn't be -- his daughter shouldn't be broken, Erol should not be prone to depression and Gabriel should be here, the perfect father. This will fix it.

This is a mild manner movie, set and shot in Toronto. Erol is a quiet lad, loving the girl next door, preparing a life with her. Despite his desperate desire to have his father back, he cannot deny his fiance is correct in saying, if they revert the timeline, she will definitely be in his life. This is the conundrum he must wrestle with -- which timeline is real, which one is the right one, why should all the people and choices and circumstances that exist currently be wiped away by a short jaunt into the past? But questions asked must be answered, or at the very least confronted.

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