Though none of his previous works have been capital-G Great Films, Tarsem Singh has nevertheless built a reputation as a filmmaker with a very recognizable style who makes visually magnificent films. Whether telling inspired original stories in The Cell and The Fall or reimagining more familiar narratives in Immortals and Mirror Mirror, Tarsem has always made films that are both ambitious and aesthetically beautiful. Or at least he used to. Though the auteur’s latest is not terrible, Self/less nevertheless emerges as his first entirely unremarkable film.
The film tells the story of Damian Hayes (Ben Kingsley), a very wealthy New York businessman who discovers that he is dying of terminal cancer. When he learns about a top-secret organization for the elite, led by Professor Albright (Matthew Goode), that offers a procedure called “shedding”, which can transfer one’s consciousness from an ailing body to a younger, healthier one that has been artificially grown in a laboratory, he goes through with the procedure and spends the rest of the film being played by Ryan Reynolds. As Damian gets used to his new body and begins to enjoy the type of activities that looking like Ryan Reynolds can make possible (namely, those involving numerous attractive young women), he also starts to have reason to become suspicious not only of Albright and his organization, but also of where exactly his new body actually came from. His quest leads him to cross paths with a small-town mother (Natalie Martinez) and her young daughter, who join him as he searches for answers.
All of Tarsem’s previous films have had very ornate production and costume design. This is a director who fills his works with atmospheric dreamscapes and surreal beauty. Alas, Self/less has none of these luscious visuals to offer. Some scenes are shot in New York City and New Orleans, others in Midwestern suburbia — at all times, however, the film looks exactly as you’d expect it to. For the first time, Tarsem gives the impression of being merely a director for hire on this one; there’s nothing visually or aesthetically that is unmistakably him. This is also the filmmaker’s first film without his regular costume designer, the Academy Award winning genius Eiko Ishioka, since her death from cancer in 2012, and her contributions are perhaps what I miss more than anything here. Ishioka had a knack for creating jaw-dropping, intricately detailed costumes; the characters in Self/less wear mundane, everyday clothes. I know it’s not the kind of film that requires elaborate, fantastical costuming, but still I would love to see how she could make that interesting and artistic.
Reynolds is a sturdy and charismatic leading man, while Martinez recreates the emotionally overwhelmed mom character she recently played on ABC’s Secrets and Lies. The actors are fine. A significant flaw in the film, however, is that Reynolds and Kingsley do not seem to be playing the same character. At no point do I buy that Reynolds’s Damian is the same human being introduced by Kingsley, just in a younger, hotter body. To make matters so much worse, Kingsley plays Damian with a (ghastly) Noo Yawkah accent, and Reynolds… doesn’t.
The film’s biggest problem, though, is that screenwriter brothers David and Alex Pastor (Carriers) introduce an intriguing science-fiction concept, but then never develop it in any depth. There is a lot of juicy material to explore in a story about the conflict between science and ethics, but the ethical dilemma at the core of this film is only ever superficially examined. It feels like the filmmakers have made merely the most cursory of efforts to extract a meaningful and intelligent story from this concept — or that their goal was purely to set up exciting set pieces rather than build the story out of characterization. They do try to throw in a redemption arc for Damian, who realizes too late he’s been an awful father to his adult daughter, but the emotion is entirely unearned, because their relationship is barely established and Claire (a wasted Michelle Dockery from Downton Abbey) is a total non-character.
If you’re looking for a mindless good time at the movies, Self/less is perfectly engaging in the moment, but don’t expect to remember a whole lot a week later.
