Psyche
The theories of Charles Darwin often simplified and summarised as “survival of the fittest,” the truth is more complex, and while there are many species with attributes which are undeniably superior to that of even the most athletic human being, the cheetah able to run faster, the great white shark able to swim faster, the black widow spider with its venom more deadly and birds able to fly, it is the adaptability of homo sapiens which has made them the dominant force on Earth.
The ability to foresee outcomes and make contingencies almost unique, an intellect able to make informed decisions has an advantage over any challenger, yet en masse humans seem incapable of making other than short-sighted and self-destructive decisions; alone, in a strange desert, her only companion the black cube of the computer terminal which gives her instructions and the keyboard with which she enters her responses to its interrogations, will Mara fare any better?
Conditioned from her childhood to gather knowledge, to believe in her competence and abilities, against a ticking clock she is aware she must not waste time, set a series of challenges to make her way across the uneven desert terrain towards the northern mountains, her success dependent on reaching the checkpoints but warned that it is unsafe to travel at night when Shadow Entities are active, though can she truly trust anything other than herself?
An abstract oddity of survival and self-examination directed by Stephon Stewart from a script co-written with Gibran Lozano who provides the voice of the computer interface, Psyche is a long journey from the damp forests of his 2012 feature debut Bigfoot County, in practical terms a one-hander starring newcomer Sarah Ritter as Mara, any deeper story of her life beyond the immediate superfluous as she makes her way in the direction she has been assured is forwards as darkness swiftly falls around her.
Shot in Death Valley, the desert scenes punctuated by images of rolling waves, photonegative effects make the landscape alien, black skies crossed by still blacker vapour trails, the repeating formations of the landscape and the discordant strings at times reminding of Dave Bowman’s journey through the Stargate of 2001: A Space Odyssey, the square monitor framed as once was the Monolith which prompted that evolutionary leap, the yin-yang of the token Mara carries a circle of complementary interlocking opposites, rolling into the future while repeating the past.
A slow motion car-crash on the superinformation highway haunted by a lurking plague-masked figure (Rodrigo Varandas), Psyche plays like an eighties episode of The Outer Limits, a feeling amplified by the retro-tech, the sharp editing and disinclination to explain itself smoothed over by Mara’s conviction and composure, frustrated but never broken, an anchor in the unravelling convolutions alongside composer Tom Hawk’s soundtrack, amplifying the emotion and overlaying the jagged confusion with coherence, a film stark and defiant yet fascinating in the inexplicable challenge it presents.
Glasgow Film Festival continues until Sunday 9th March
