directed by:
James Dubbeldam written by: James Dubbeldam genre: Thriller |
Look. I’ve never professed to be the sharpest knife in the drawer, and it wouldn’t do me any good even if I did…you’d all see through that pretty quickly on account of reading my reviews and realizing I’m not always the swiftest thinker when it comes to figuring out what I’m actually watching on the screens in front of me. To be fair to me in this particular instance, “Take Me Back And Tell Me More” is a short film by James Dubbeldam – a filmmaker that happens to be one of my absolute new favourites working within the industry today, even if I only ‘get’ what he’s creating about fifty percent of the time. I know that I’ve had a few times where I’ve watched something he’s written and directed only to come out feeling like I had no idea what I just experienced, and I’d reckon we can add this latest offering to that side of the scorecard. Did I like “Take Me Back And Tell Me More?” YES! Did I fully understand it? Probably not!
That’s somewhat the Dubbeldam effect when it comes to how he thinks & how difficult it can be to keep up with him. Maybe I’m not as much of a dullard as I’d have you believe…maybe it’s really that James is light-years ahead of the rest of us when it comes to creativity. More often than not, the guy has come up with something completely & totally new – and in a world increasingly filled with reboots & remakes, I’d be the first to tell you that we need a whole lot more of Dubbeldam’s energy and artistic integrity in the biz. As I sat here and marvelled at “Take Me Back And Tell Me More,” knowing that I had about a one in ten shot of coherently understanding what it was I was actually watching, I smiled at that fact. I’d love to claim that I NEED to be able to figure out everything from point A to point B in all that I watch, but I don’t feel that way. In fact, I relatively love being fascinated by all the things that I don’t know. In watching Dubbeldam’s newest short film, I felt like this was the kind of experience that has you really appreciating how the sausage gets made. From the automatic tension he applies onscreen through the way that it’s filmed, the ominous intensity of the music surrounding & enveloping each scene, the mysterious messages we keep seeing on a cell phone being shown to us, and the potential dangers of an unknown pill, it’s like we’re tasked with piecing together a puzzle that James retains a piece of at all times. That piece is the same one that all visionary artists have, whether you’re a storyteller or an artist who likes to write concept records – the advantage you maintain is that you know what your story is really all about, and the rest of us are merely doing our best to somehow catch the signal of your frequency. Visual artists like Dubbeldam, combined with his uncanny knack to create compelling stories that genuinely feel authentic & like they’ve never been told before, make this man a significant talent who will always find work in this industry. We might clamour over our sequels & franchises & whatnot, but behind all that mainstream fanfare, this guy James has been carving out a career built on excellence. From the clearest shots to those distorted with effects, we feel a growing pit in our stomachs as we watch “Take Me Back And Tell Me More,” because it’s very apparent that something just ain’t right, even if it’s kind of impossible to put our finger on what is actually wrong. I don’t know that I’d go as far as to say that it’s filmed entirely backwards like Nolan’s “Memento” was…but it does have an adjacent type of storytelling…almost like this film is presented to us in layers if I’m getting it right. That’d be one theory anyway…that we’re told this tale of love gone wrong with pieces of the present and the past interlaced to the point where it intentionally blurs the lines between which is which. You might also view something like “Take Me Back And Tell Me More” as something of a supernatural story too – I could see that being another take on this film – where perhaps you’ve got a version of the main character, Mallory, that has crossed over the proverbial rainbow bridge, but he’s still trying to fully grasp what happened in life to send him there. Or maybe there’s an overlapping of the multiverse of some kind, where there’s a version of Malcolm that’s travelling just slightly behind the main one by like, two or three minutes. That’s a possibility too. Because there’s gotta be some sort of explanation for that giant BLACK HOLE that seems to have localized itself right in his backyard, right? I don’t know why people get frustrated when they can’t figure something out, when, personally, I find it exciting. Who wants to watch something that’s so straightforward it won’t stir up conversation or debate about what we just witnessed? I want films like this guy makes, where we might ALL have different theories about what we watched, or react entirely differently to what we’ve seen because we’ve come to totally different conclusions. That’s the kind of stuff that we should be celebrating a whole lot more in the art of film.
Dubbeldam has such a natural gift for being able to do so much with so little…his budgets are never extreme, but his stories are never all that demanding for them to be – he knows how to create legitimate entertainment in a cost effective way, which I could only imagine is going to be another part of the reasons he’ll be sought out for project after project in the future ahead. The acting from Jack Vecchio, who plays the film’s only character, Mallory, was fantastic overall…I have zero complaints when it comes to what he did with what’s arguably a very complex role…or…two roles…or…one role with two perspectives…you get it. No matter how you slice it, I don’t think you could get more outta the guy than we get – I felt like he did a great job with this. It really had me wondering about how much Jack himself would have known about what “Take Me Back And Tell Me More” would be about – like, how many concrete details did Dubbeldam give him, or was he meant to be just as perplexed by all this as we are when we watch it, in which case, maybe Jack only got a limited amount of information to play his role. I could see it going either way and still producing the kind of noteworthy results that we see in this film…kind of like how we’ve heard many times in our lives that there’s always more than one way to tell a story…and it just so happens that Dubbeldam decided to do exactly that, but at the very same time. The ultimate point that I suppose I’m making, is that we’re all too happy to be spoon-fed the answers to what a movie is about most of the time, that we forget how satisfying it can really be to not know everything or anything at all…to think…to consider…to come up with your own theories as to what something might be about and debate that with our friends and like-minded movie-goers. It’s FUN to be mysterious…and I suspect that James Dubbeldam loves to embrace that part of his artistic personality. Before you even ask – YES…I did watch this film multiple times, and NO…I’m still not entirely sure that I’ve got this story completely figured out…but that’s okay. I’m not only patient and generally curious about all things in life, but I’ll probably go back and watch this a few more times to see if I can crack the code one day. It’s like, what, barely over four minutes in total run-time? You can find a moment or two to check something like this out…I guarantee that no matter how much time you end up spending on it, it’ll still be well worth it. I’m going with four stars out of five – I’m relentlessly impressed by the skillset of James Dubbeldam. From his outstandingly unique storylines, to the cleverness of his presentation, he’s operating on a level that most of us would kill to have even the most rudimentary grasp of, and yet he wields his uniqueness with fluidity, confidence and a keen eye that sees things that the rest just can’t. |
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