MOVIE: The 4th Dimension (2006)

Of the stack of movies my Mom and I picked up last week to watch during my lengthy Thanksgiving vacation at the Wood Family B&B (what we kids call our parents’ house, as it is the most relaxing location on the planet), this was the one movie in the pile that was somewhat dubious. How is that possible?  To wit:  all the cheesy sci-fi and disaster movies were rented (oi!), so much of what we ended up with were, like, “real” movies. LAME!  Who knew disaster movies were so popular for family holiday get-togethers?  Whoever these families are, I would really like to hang out with them next year.  We’ll share our turkey, they can share their bad movies starring Dale Midkiff.  Win-win!

In any case, we decided what the heck, we’ll rent some “films” this time and try something new.  Color us daring!   But we couldn’t escape with at least ONE questionable flick in the bunch and this was the one we picked up that looked the most suspiciously awful.

The box mentioned something about an antiques repairman who is given a clock to fix, and who finds inside said clock Einstein’s notes on his unfinished Unified Field Theory. When our hero discovers these notes, he is quickly catapulted into some kind of mess of time, space, and dimension. Potentially good — most likely utterly ridiculous.

But as it turns out, this movie isn’t really about a mess of time, space, and dimension.  What it is instead is a vivid look inside mental illness, beautifully made and filmed in black and white with lots of extremely interesting camera angles and perspective shifts. As for the actual plot, it wasn’t until the very final scene of this movie (the only one shot in color) that it became clear(ish) what was going on.  In fact, we nearly turned it off about 40 minutes in because it was so thoroughly obfuscating and weird.  But something about the visuals of the film, and the main character himself (didn’t hurt that he was cute), had hypnotized us into sticking with it, and we were glad we had when all was said and done.

I definitely recommend this film to anyone who is now intrigued. Just remember to stay with it until the end no matter how confused or annoyed you might become now and again. The ending will make you think –- it certainly made us do so. And, as it turns out, this film has a very valid and timely point to make about the state of mental health care in the U.S.  Kudos to its writers/directors (David Mazonni and Tom Mattera) for that.

[Netflix me | Buy me]

Genre: Science Fiction, Drama
Cast:  Louis Morabito, Miles Williams, Suzanne Inman

Tags: Drama, Science Fiction