The Cell
|In her white feathers she crosses the desert plain on her jet back steed which solidifies to become a statue as she dismounts, climbing the red dune to her rendezvous, seeking an audience with the scared child who waits by the waters, hiding in the trunk of a fallen tree, yet none of it is real other than to the two who share the dream, Doctor Catherine Deane and her patient, a young boy in a coma who has not responded to conventional therapy.
Housed within the Campbell Centre, Doctor Henry West has been working on the experimental process for seven years but now the clock is ticking to a much closer deadline; a serial killer has been identified and captured, Carl Rudolph Stargher, but following a seizure likely linked to the disorder which drives him to commit his acts he is now also in a coma; eighth victim Julia Hickson kidnapped only hours before, there is a chance she is still alive, but her location can only be ascertained by entering Stargher’s mind, something only Catherine can do.
A veteran of high-profile commercials and pop music videos, among them REM’s Losing My Religion, director Tarsem Singh made his feature film debut with The Cell, written by Mark Protosevich and starring Jennifer Lopez as Doctor Deane, signed to the film just before her rise to fame, Daredevil’s Vincent D’Onofrio as Stargher, Freaky’s Vince Vaughn as FBI Special Agent Peter Novak and In Fabric’s Marianne Jean-Baptiste as Doctor Miriam Kent, a technician within the facility.
A friend of Michael Bay and Zack Snyder with whom he attended film school, the style of Singh could not be more different than that of his classmates, The Cell filled with references to classical and modern art and sculpture, a film of astonishing visuals like a travelogue of the mind, at times mesmerising and enrapturing, at other times obscene and repulsive, Catherine attempting to control the flow of thoughts and memories but trapped in a hostile and damaged mind where the previous victims exist as a parade of manipulated mannequins.
The first of four collaborations between Singh and costume designer Eiko Ishioka, returning for his surreal masterpiece The Fall as well as the more commercially conscious Immortals and Mirror, Mirror, her work on The Cell echoed her earlier work on Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula in the suspended immersion suits, displaying the same ribbed texture as Dracula’s armour, while also emphasising the essence of Catherine in her pure whites and Stargher’s delusional grandeur.
The megalomaniac ruler of a twisted kingdom, Stargher’s first appearance in his dream form has his body physically linked to the environment in the swathes of royal purple silk which enfold him and line the walls of his throne room, his later robes the sickly yellow of madness and disease, while Novak’s entry into the nether realm moves him from the formal suits of the Bureau to what Singh conceived as a low-key cowboy, riding in to save the day.
A serial killer technothriller of huge ideas and imagination, despite its visual magnificence The Cell is let down by occasionally flat dialogue, possibly kept simple to make the plot accessible to a broad multiplex audience, the early digital effects used for some of the transitions less effective than the simple repetition of images in different contexts of the earlier scenes and in the presence of Lopez who never manages to make Catherine an interesting character, ostensibly the lead but with events driven by Vaughn and D’Onofrio who is fearless, menacing, playful and tragic, while her recreation as beatific saint as the film enters its Biblical phase less than convincing.
Restored in 4K for Arrow, their new edition of The Cell features the theatrical and director’s cuts, only marginally different, and another alternative version in a different aspect ratio and colour grade, director of photography Paul Laufer explaining the reasoning in his interview, as well as two new visual essays on the film, archive features and commentaries and a new feature length interview with Tarsem Singh, a fascinating gentleman bursting with ideas and enthusiasm.
The Cell will be released on Blu-ray and 4K UHD by Arrow Films on Monday 20th January