'The Discovery': Attempted mind-blower fittingly needs a do-over
One million suicides in six months. Holy crap.
That huge number certainly matches the magnitude of the planet-shaking breakthrough in “The Discovery,” in which Thomas (Robert Redford) confirms the existence of the afterlife (what he calls “a new plane of existence”) through supposedly indisputable proof that the movie never explains. During an embarrassingly written opening scene info-dump, it’s indicated that Thomas has been off the grid for half a year but agrees to an on-camera interview (Mary Steenburgen plays the journalist) after people worldwide take their own lives because of his findings. This apparently includes celebrities, athletes and his colleagues in the scientific community -- and, no, they don’t specify which celebs or athletes, in case there was someone in particular you were wondering about. But you name the type of person; they’re killing themselves.
Imagine how that would impact absolutely everything. How are people processing this new information and spending their days differently? Who are the ones taking their own lives, and how do they evaluate the decision? What small or big things push them over that line? How has this new discovery been commoditized and monetized and addressed by businesses, religions, the arts and so forth? It’s fascinating and demands an at least partially macro examination.
Unfortunately, “The Discovery” (which, weirdly, arrived on Netflix the same day as “13 Reasons Why,” which is also about suicide) goes very, very micro. Where director/co-writer Charlie McDowell’s previous film, the great “The One I Love,” was another exploration of alternate realities very appropriately seen through one relationship, his new movie really shouldn’t have taken that approach.
Two years after the initial findings, suicides have risen to four million and Will (Jason Segel) suffers under the enormous weight of being the guy whose dad caused so many to hit fast-forward in an attempt “to get there.” Except, as Will points out, there’s no definitive evidence that the next existence is better, so it’s way too general to just basically say “A ton of people are excited about something else and go through with it without thinking.” You’d think a sci-fi concept like this would take a more nuanced view of suicide than just “It’s not the answer,” but alas.
Anyway, about that central relationship: Rooney Mara plays a clichéd, messed-up-but-mysterious young woman named Isla, who Will says is totally alive even as he admits that he doesn’t know her very well, two statements that just unintentionally make him look naïve. She does nothing to suggest she’s totally alive, personality-wise, though she is totally alive in the literal sense, as not long after they meet he stops her from killing herself.
As Segel works to put layers into pouting and McDowell struggles to make this couple halfway credible, “The Discovery” hinges on often-painful dialogue like “There’s more than one way to save somebody.” Certain ideas are acknowledged – what about the afterlife for animals? Is it any different for children? – but left dangling. And the vision of Thomas as a cult leader doesn’t hold up with so little detail as to what he actually found out. One disciple, played by Riley Keough, suggests people will start using the notion of a guaranteed afterlife as an excuse to murder, which has less sociological weight than “The Purge.”
The movie is more interested in the notion of facts people aren’t prepared to hear than really diving into the gray area of what would happen if they did. So a snazzy premise winds up being some kind of increasingly contrived mash-up of “The Master,” “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” and “Source Code,” but much duller than that sounds. There’s something pretty depressing about such a conservative take on provocative material.
C