It is a shimmering world of Bosphorous mansions, clubs and parties soaked in raki and hazy with cigarette smoke, a world the author knows only too well and has been a part of. The Istanbul that Pamuk has hitherto written about is the one inhabited by the Westernised, educated, affluent Turkish elite. Winning the prize at the relatively young age of 54 has made Pamuk, on the other hand, roll up his sleeves, flex his novelistic muscles, and get down to some serious business.īecause seven years after the towering achievement of The Museum of Innocence now arrives the hugely ambitious A Strangeness in My Mind, a sweeping, soaring, swooping bildungsroman, in equal parts a loving homage to Pamuk’s own city, Istanbul, and a celebration of the magic of the quotidian in that city. “I have told my friends that I think I will be remembered by this book,” Orhan Pamuk agreed.Īfter they won the Nobel, writers such as Ernest Hemingway, VS Naipaul and Alice Munro (to name only three) produced hardly anything comparable to their pre-Nobel oeuvre. I told him as much when I interviewed him for Hindustan Times.
#MYMIND REVIEW SKIN#
But it is in this examination that we get to see how close it is to our own, and how close we are all to teetering out of our own skin at any given moment.In 2008, two years after he won the Nobel Prize for literature, Orhan Pamuk published his monumental novel, The Museum of Innocence - a funny, canny, capacious book that, in wide screen and high definition, depicted a tale of unattainable love, obsessive longing and irrevocable loss. There are no easy ways to look at this world with all of its easy access to pain and disruption. This tension between self and other, science and emotion, control and loss is what is at the bloody heart of Possessor. His sense of self ebbs and flows in nearly every moment he is on screen and this man sells it for each of those seconds. Abbott, not to be out-acted, matches her by delivering the transformative physicality of a man who is no longer himself. She is woefully under appreciated as one of the greatest working actresses today and we get to see exactly why she deserves that praise here. Riseborough deserves all of the accolades for playing a woman who is losing control and being torn apart.
Even with all of the high-concept science in the film, it feels like an intimate exploration of what it would feel like to be in someone else’s skin, and more terrifyingly, leave your own. Not represented literally mind you, but using her skin and the frame of the film as a canvas to create emotions through light and shapes. As Vos travels in and out of bodies, the transition is projected on Riseborough’s face.
While there is an incredibly strong dose of world creation and sci-fi dreaming here, that is just the framework around which the visual artistry and aural inventions are draped. It would be a disservice to an artful, soulful film to give the impression that it relies heavily on its plot. However, in the world of Possessor, the ways that things can go wrong stretches far beyond our current reality. As with all “I was one week away from retirement” dramas, not everything goes as planned. Vos takes a short break to see her estranged husband and son, but then is back for another job.Ĭolin (Christopher Abbott) is the next body for Vos to jump into for a kill.
#MYMIND REVIEW PROFESSIONAL#
Girder is professional but kind, and has no interest in burning out her business’s greatest asset. The implantation and transmission process is risky and limited, and she is pushing herself far too hard. As her boss Girder (Jennifer Jason Leigh) does her post-hit interview, it is clear that while Vos is of sound mind, there is a struggle to keep all of her wits about her. In this scenario Vos (Andrea Riseborough) is the skilled assassin, but she may be coming to the end of the line. These assassins inhabit the body of someone close to the target, and then take their handsome pay home after the killing is done. The science is imperfect, and it has been corrupted for malicious purposes. This all takes place in a world where brain implants make it possible for someone to completely take over someone else’s body.
The panic is jarring and her behavior perplexing, but Possessor wants it that way. Soon after the violent deed is done, the woman pleads, “Pull me out!” while struggling to kill herself. However, unlike your run of the mill guy in a suit with a silencer, or a geared-up sniper, this is done by a woman in a tracksuit who belongs exactly where she is. Possessor is that very movie, but it is personal and emotional, and questions the boundaries of self, all while sitting in a nest of speculation. A high-concept tale of futuristic assassins and brain implantation might sound slick and flashy, though it need not be.
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