I love a good pun. Part of the reason being that the people who don’t outright think it’s clever and funny will unabashedly hate it. There is no middle ground on puns. I personally don’t feel the bad rap puns get is fair. In fact, it’s downright pun-fair. The point I’m trying to make is that if you do not like mere puns mixing in your paragraphs, then you’ll probably dislike when your religion and your science try to meld, like they do in I Origins. Oh, you’ll also dislike the running pun throughout the movie.
Wherever there is a secular, fact-driven man who bases his life on the scientific theory, there will always be a person who puts their beliefs into a spiritual entity. Dr. Ian Gray (Michael Pitt) is that secular man. He has always been fascinated with the human eye, disregarding the spiritual notion that it is considered the “window to the soul,” and focusing on the uniqueness of every eye. He devotes his time researching ways to ultimately give anyone/anything without vision the ability to see. During an awkward Halloween party, he finds the yin to his yang in Sofi (Astrid Bergès-Frisbey). After a string of coincidences (or fate) he comes across a billboard with her eyes on them, finds out who she is, and stalks his way into her heart. Their passion burns intensely until an accident claims the life of Sofi, the day before their wedding. It takes the help of his best friend Kenny (Steven Yeun), and his lab assistant Karen (Brit Marling) to bring him back to his work.
We then go several years into the future with the now wildly successful Dr. Gray, who is married to his old assistant Karen, and expecting their first child. After their child is born, they find out that the new eye imaging software has already found his son on file, but as a different, older, deceased person. Ian finds out that other people are looking into this “coincidence,” but ultimately discovers that the man who showed up as an identical match to his son’s eyes died around the time his son was conceived. In an attempt to prove his hypothesis, Ian uses his variety of pictures to see if the database comes up with any other matches. There is one: Sofi. Ian must go to India and find the little girl whose eyes match Sofi’s, but more than that, he must come to terms with the possibility that his finite view of the universe could be wrong. It’s hard to tell which realization will be more Earth-shattering. For us, nothing in this film will be.
Writer/Director Mike Cahill attempts to introduce a new argument in the battle between science and religion. The key word in that sentence is “attempts.” The movie is interesting, introducing what can be best described as ocular fingerprints. Like snowflakes, every one is unique, and no two are the same, speculatively speaking. All the scientific jargon aside, the story eventually takes a predictable turn when they make a leap (of faith) in trying to marry the two ideas. It comes off as shallow, predictable, and just a bit too irresolute in its statement. More morally and spiritually ambitious than Another Earth, it fails trying to persuade us that the two ideas are mutually exclusive when it ends on a note of blind faith and ambiguity. Where it does succeed is less on the sci-fi front and more on the dramatic and romantic aspects.
The love story between Dr. Gray and Sofi alone makes this film worth watching. It’s so intense and destined for disaster that you can’t help but watch when you should be turning away. Also, the professional relationship between Dr. Gray and Karen is delightfully quirky, verging on awkwardly cute. The performances and character development haven’t proven to be a problem for Cahill in the past, and this film is no exception. This is Brit Marling’s second collaboration with Cahill, and for a good reason too. Michael Pitt rises to the occasion, delivering an incredible performance throughout.
Conceptually, I Origins is nothing eye-opening, but the story has its brow-raising moments even with some eye-rolling plot developments. Even though the eye/I puns are overused, and the over-reaching attempt at some sort of metaphysical morality meld may be too much to bear, you won’t want to miss seeing the performances. Sometimes you have to take the good with the bad and have faith that it will all work out.
RATING: ★★★★★★(6/10 stars)
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