The Synthetic Man
John R. Hand’s “The Synthetic Man” is one of the more difficult films I’ve had to review in some time. The story he’s telling, of a woman overcome with anxiety and paranoia who loses herself in a sci-fi fantasy story she begins writing that reflects her own mental state, is a compelling one, as is the performance by April Hand as Iris, the main character. However, April Hand’s performance is also deeply problematic: while her vocal work when we hear Iris, and her acting in general when we see her speak, is really good, the way she conveys Iris’s paranoia physically when she’s silent (which is a lot of the movie) almost threw me out of the movie, and it was all in her perpetual, wide-eyed state and facial expressions. From the neck up, it’s one of the least subtle pieces of acting I’ve ever seen, and almost makes it difficult to recommend the movie. (Almost– as the film moves forward toward its conclusion, her overall performance gets stronger, and is much more engaging.)
Another thing that struck me immediately about “The Synthetic Man” is that it’s the first, real “shoe-string” budget movie I’ve been asked to watch and review in a good long while. I’ve been spoiled of late by watching films that seemed more “release ready,” and in keeping with what we typically see in theatres. This film, on the other hand, looks like a production that had to really struggle to get finished, almost stealing shots whenever it could get them to inch closer towards completion because the money wasn’t always there. This is not a detriment in the least: in fact, it makes the final film, which has some striking visuals and sound design, all the more admirable that it works as well as it does.
The film begins with what looks like a shimmering sun on the water, as a voice speaks passages from Genesis. The next thing we see is Iris asleep, and a largely unseen man groping at her, and then sliding a knife across her face. She wakes up in a panic, and her story begins proper. A lot of what we see is Iris, staring, walking, as if in a trance, trying to process the world around her as we hear some of her inner thoughts. She thinks of a fantasy story about aliens who have place mankind on Earth, and about one man who tries to unravel the mystery, and the more she writes, the more we see of this story.
For a long time, it’s difficult to see how these parallels stories (Iris’s life, and the story she begins writing) connect; we sense that the story is something she uses to cope with things in her life, but we aren’t completely clear about it until this 73-minute film hits the hour mark and goes to a place that is, needless to say, pretty surreal. What we’ve wondered about Iris’s past is confirmed, and the way Hand shows this on-screen ties into the fantasy story our protagonist has been telling in ways that are pretty shocking considering the relative subtlety in terms of the film’s content up to that point. It might be enough to drive some viewers over the edge, if the rough lead performance and technical qualities didn’t do so already, but it does lead to a conclusion that is, ultimately, sad yet emotionally satisfying, considering the subject matter that’s been dealt with. It’s rough stuff, but nobody ever said filmmaking like this had to be easy, be it in the process of creation, or the final product.
