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The last time anybody heard from Marissa Marcel was in 1999.
But this film, like her last, was never completed.
Accessed within a virtual editing suite designed to resemble an old Moviola, this cache holds nearly 300 clips.
You dont view these clips in chronological sequence.
At first,Immortalityis disorientating, an associative cavalcade of images, objects, and dialogue.
And then, step by step, something verging on a meaningful arc emerges.
But Barlows titlesare altogether different beasts.
Intricate and more profoundly interactive, they thrive on the ambiguity and space afforded by nonlinear structures.
Barlows games combine the presentation of genre movies with the flexibility of video-game structures.
You are constantly watching and constantly doing, namely fiddling with digital interfaces.
You are essentially editingImmortalitysstory on the fly, albeit with a detectives eye.
Immortalityis rich with cinematic details to obsess over.
With Marcel directing your focus, it becomes clear these films reflect the uneasy misogyny of their eras.
It is, but Durick also stands for a broader set of eyes.
Barlows game satisfies the male gaze while attempting to skewer it.
But there is more to chew over inImmortalitythan the ethics of onscreen violence.
Rather than a horror or a tragedy,Immortalityis perhaps best thought of as an elegy.
PlayingImmortality, an ingenious, slippery and utterly absorbing work, the answer is a resounding yes.
