Premonition
For me, “Premonition” is open to some interpretation. It’s hard to explain my position verbally, as the pieces don’t necessarily fit (but personally, they don’t fit entirely taken the other way, either), but it allows for a different interpretation that is, in a way, more intriguing than the film promoted in advertisements. Spoilers will be gone into, although I doubt I’ll be going into much more detail than trailers did.
Sandra Bullock stars as Linda, a housewife and mother of two whose husband (“Nip/Tuck’s” Julian McMahon) dies in a car crash on Wednesday. But there’s a certain level of mystery to this in that Laura was in a psychiatrist’s office on Tuesday claiming he had already died, even though he was still alive.
There are a couple of ways to look at this story in my opinion; unfortunately, neither really hold water in close examination. The first is as a supernatural thriller, which is implied in the trailer. Because it’s when she falls asleep or wakes up when she has the “visions” of her husband either alive or dead- and the story alternates between the two- it’s reasonable to suggest that she’s dreaming all of the events from the time she learns of her husband’s death on Thursday and beyond, and that all of the events she goes through up until the accident are the film’s reality, infused by the knowledge she’s fed in her “visions.” This is the way most people will accept the film, as Bullock’s character finds her sanity tested as the two alternate without rhyme or reason.
But regardless of how you view the film, that’s a severe flaw in the film’s structure; of course time in such a story is not going to be linear in movement, but the parallel timelines- before and after the accident- don’t even move linearly. Days are reconfigured for pure dramatic effect of revelations instead of revelations being timed to follow some sense of story logic and storytelling, even more important in a story such as this than a regular escapist film. Even if you take it as sort of a time travel thriller, there’s no ground for the story to stand on. Look at the “Back to the Future” trilogy (which followed some sense of science fiction rules) and the recent Tony Scott thriller “Deja vu.” Though the filmmakers of the latter are more known for mindless action films, the script always follows an intricate timeline that works both cinematically and dramatically. It may not be logical in the real world, but the film always works as drama and as cinema. As a result of its’ problematic structure, “Premonition” doesn’t always work as either, though it does maintain interest thanks to Bullock’s grounded and emotional performance.
There is another interpretation I’d like to pose. It’s one I began to consider during the opening scene, which is when Linda finds out her husband has been killed. Isn’t it reasonable to consider that the days from the time she finds out that her husband is killed are the reality, and that the days leading up to it- while full of truths (their troubled marriage, their daughter’s injury)- are the product of a grief-stricken mind trying to set things right as she tries to cope emotionally with an unexpected tragedy? The expression on Bullock’s face when the policeman tells her is what you would expect from someone who’s just been told a loved one was taken from them in a split instance, and the visions of Bullock trying to put the pieces together before the accident trying to find a way to keep her family together at a moment when it’s being torn apart. It helps put the unorganized time structure into more focus (though it does still deviate in terms of the order the days come in), but even this interpretation doesn’t hold water because of a moment where she’s committed by the psychiatrist she saw before the accident after the funeral. Still, it’s an intriguing idea in a movie that poses a few, even if none of them stay afloat.
