My dictionary defines “aporia” (from the Greek) as “an irresolvable internal contradiction or internal disjunction in a text, argument or theory”. In sci-fi movies such an internal, irresolvable contradiction – like a man who is his own father – is called a time paradox. Ironically, Aporia, a fascinating attempt to weld one aesthetic to another, bristles with internal disjunctions that are all its own.
On one side a familiar, kitchen-sink weepie drama populated with relatable everyday people being put to the test. On the other a machine built by one of them capable of firing “a bullet into the past” to change the course of history.
Those people are played by Judy Greer and Payman Maadi, as a grieving widow and her dead husband’s best friend, deciding whether to delve into recent history and kill the drunk driver who ploughed her husband out of existence eight months before.
What pushes Sophie (Greer) into urging Jabir (Maadi) – an exiled Iranian physicist – into firing up the machine and doing the deed is the increasingly erratic behaviour of Sophie’s daughter, Riley (Faithe Herman), a school kid reacting badly to her father’s death and taking it out on her mother.
The machine: like a big vacuum cleaner with wires hanging off it, located in Jabir’s spare bedroom. The time-travel bit: nothing to see here. No one does any travelling. After typing in some space and time co-ordinates into an attached laptop, the machine is switched on, makes a little whine, gives out a touch of smoke and, hey presto, that drunk driver has been killed at some time in the past and the dead man, Malcolm (Edi Gathegi) is back.
No one says “butterfly effect” in this movie and no one refers to the trolley problem but the unintended consequences of small actions and the ethical decisions (who lives, who dies) taken by Sophie, Jabir and, once he’s back in the picture, Malcolm, are what this film examines for the rest of its running time.
Logic and values to one side, one drunk driver removed from the world’s timeline is not enough to keep a feature-length drama going, so the trio are soon weighing up other interventions in recent history – preventing a killer in a runaway car from ploughing into a group of innocent people sounds like a no-brainer. And here’s where I wheel out the phrase “with disastrous consequences”.
The template for this sort of thing – homely sci-fi with no real attempt to wow us with special effects – is Shane Carruth’s 2004 movie Primer, though Jaron Henrie-McCrea’s ingenious 2015 movie Curtain (a shower curtain was the time machine) also understands that it’s plot that is key. Having actors of the quality of Greer and Maadi in lead roles indicates that writer director Jared Moshé is coming at this from that angle too. This story is driven by emotions and relationships not flashing lights and whooshing sounds.
The arc is straight out of conventional genre movies though. Like the teenage Spiderman, Sophie et al gradually come to realise that with great power comes great responsibility.
The logic does not entirely hold up, but then does it ever? And it does often feel like a sci-fi movie for people who don’t like sci-fi, or are more at home with a breast-beating tearjerker, and aren’t in the habit of trying to guess where everything might end up.
And, really, not an awful lot happens. But it’s fascinating watching Moshé trying to hold the line as the demands of the sci-fi movie and that of the human drama butt heads. No one in this movie seems that overly traumatised by the revelation that a machine in a spare room can alter the course of history. I’d be hyperventilating.
Aporia – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2024
