Review of Cold Souls (2009) by Jake . — 25 Feb 2010

You may think that we are reaching that time, where the only way to make an original screen play is to adapt either a book, graphic novel or tv show but then you watch films like... Synecdoche NY and you realise there is still a lot of creativity left within the form.

Cold Souls, however, played to the defence of those who believe that film is a shallow medium. Dragging Giamatti's one trick yet loveable pony with them, LS played to the same vein as Stranger than Fiction without its whimsy and Eternal sunshine but emphasized the technological/bureaucratic angle.

But more heavily and more annoyingly it claimed the space of Being John Malcovich. It lent on Kaufman's 1999 film about introspection so heavily that it felt like someone trying to adapt it after one viewing -using all the themes but none of the subtext.

Unfortunately the soul is an illusive creation of theological apologia and global philosophy and being as such, its removal or countenance is not one easily or universally representable- unlike memories (Eternal Sunshine), free will (Stranger) or faculty (Malcovich).

Therefore, CS was unable to evoke any novelty or philosophical illumination. I should have known this would be the case when they superimposed a quote from Descartes in the opening scene "The soul has its principal seat in the small gland located in the middle of the brain".

Whenever a film is unable to meld its influences within its narrative without explicit explanation of them that film tends to fail. Then referencing Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, it again illustrated a lazy way approach to providing reference to the protags psyche, setting the tone of the bourgeois without effort.

The concept of autonomy but dualistic interactionof soul and body is one profound to Barthes but ironically she could not identify an interesting or engaging mythos or culture in which to place it. Also its was a waste of some great actors who delivered, again ironically, soulless performances.