With Danny Boyle fresh off the Olympic ceremony gig, he proves he’s still got it, as people flock to see his latest picture ‘Trance,’ which is so very Boyle-esque, fans will not be disappointed. It’s a high-pace crime drama, with flashing colours, thumping action music and of course, blurring boundaries between reality and imagination/insanity.
Beginning with the awesome heist of a priceless painting from an art auction, ‘Trance’ hits the ground running when a hitch in the plans leaves the gang’s insider Simon (James McAvoy) a concussed amnesiac, and unable to remember where he stashed the loot. After a good dose of torture by his boss Franck (the suave badman Vincent Cassel) fails to jog his memory, the gang takes Simon to a hypnotherapist in a last ditch attempt to recover the painting.
At first, they sell some story about lost car keys to try and deal with the matter discreetly, but when it turns out hypnotherapist Elizabeth (Rosario Dawson) knows more than they had hoped, she is initiated to work with the gang in regaining Simon’s memory of the painting’s location. On the way to making this discovery, a downward spiral of secrets, deceit and other ‘forgotten’ incidents unwinds as we piece together what really happened during the heist, and the precedents behind it.
In a series of cuts back and forth in time to explain each step of the plot, ‘Trance’ is somewhat reminiscent of ‘Fight Club’ (1999), and every bit as Boyley as ‘Trainspotting’ and ‘The Beach.’ The crime action is actually exciting, contrary to many pictures of the genre that often plunge me into severe tedium. The pace is fast, electric, and highly intriguing.
The subject of hypnotherapy, it must be pointed out, is only portrayed semi-accurately though. A close family member of mine has been a hypnotherapist for years, and in this time I not only learned a lot about the practice, but also utilized it on several occasions, so I am fully aware of the procedure. As a nice aide to the plot, it is said that hypnotherapy (disagreeably frequently referred to as ‘hypnotism’) can make a suggestible person do almost anything. This is not true: successful hypnotherapy requires absolute willpower of its subject, meaning even if a smoker has hypnotherapy willingly but does not really wish to quit, the results will be negligible. Hypnotherapy is still a very misunderstood practice, and plotlines like this don’t help this image, so I feel it is important for the truth to be emphasized.
Mise-en-Scène – that is, all the elements that go into the scene – is used so perfectly in this movie. Bass lines shake the very floors during the action sequences. Set design is stunning and contemporary, and there is some very beautiful lighting work. Performances are strong and intense, with McAvoy and Cassel standing out particularly. McAvoy’s native Glaswegian accent, seldom heard in his bigger movies, brings a nice edge to his character, and reminds us of another of Boyle’s leading lads- Ewan McGregor’s Renton in ‘Trainspotting.’ Here is a Danny Boyle film, that seems almost a tribute to other Danny Boyle films.
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