Dorkgasm Gonzo Is God

            Take a trip into the mind of a screenwriter. All of the jumbled influences of your day thrown together to form a thousand characters in a thousand scenarios. Sir Anthony Hopkins’ Slipstream gives the perfect insight in to the creation and execution of a movie.

            I had originally heard about Slipstream when watching Inside the Actor’s Studio with Anthony Hopkins. He spoke of the movie and showed a bit of it during the broadcast. I was instantly intrigued to watch a film that seemed to accurately capture the experience of dreaming. I instantly thought of Waking Life, hoping that Slipstream did not fall into the same habit of preaching about the meaning of life and confronting the inevitability of death. Slipstream barely touches these ideas and focuses on the internal workings of the mind. As the movie progresses we are introduced to a number of characters that seem to change façades quicker than you can blink. The movie makes no sense. As one character screams, we have lost the plot.

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            The actors and character names stay the same, but the roles and characteristics of each part change throughout the film. As the main character is writing his screenplay, we get to see the way that he envisions it by using characters that already exist in the writer’s everyday life. We see the main character, Felix Bonhoeffer (Anthony Hopkins), move through his normal day picking up faces and names and influences for the script he is writing. However, we also see the script as it is in production. Some of the shots are reversed and colors or costumes changed slightly, as if he is trying to work out what would be the best way to portray the image he has in his head. Is it better that the car with the assassin in it is yellow or pink or green? Should that actress be wearing a red hat or no hat at all? Hopkins cleverly uses microcuts to rapidly show all of these options. He also inserts stock footage to show the influences in character and situation without having to explain them fully in the script.

            The microcuts add to the glory and confusion of the film. It is not until we see Felix typing the script at his computer that we begin to grasp this idea. As Felix lies sleeping in his office, the characters of the screenplay turn the computer back on and begin to talk to him through the screen demanding the next scene. Because Felix is taking so much influence from the real world to create this new one, the lines between dream and reality begin to blur. Anthony Hopkins does a phenomenal job of showing the true workings of the mind of a writer. We see the inspirations and how they play into the script. We see the way in which writers fill in the roles of the characters with people they know in their real lives. We see the way that he second guesses some parts and rewrites others. As an artist, it is great to see the thought process of the creative mind laid out so perfectly on film. The visions that fly through the mind of the writer and the artist as they both try to create something original from the things they see everyday is captured so perfectly in celluloid in Slipstream. Sir Anthony Hopkins does not disappoint and I eagerly await any other films that have his name on them.