[2971] Of Imaginur and Vanilla Sky

There are several post-1990s Malaysian movies that really impressed me. I want to say Malay, but the heavy English-Malay mixed medium convinces me to use the label Malaysian instead. But very, very few if any plays with your mind the way Imaginur does.

Imaginur, showing at the movies now, starts with a relatively linear storyline. But what I noticed first was the aesthetics. Being a child of the 1990s, I love the aesthetics. Equipment and vehicles seen are all quaintly in the way the 1990s is. Old Macintosh, maybe Commodore 64 or something similar, and other machines with yellowing white exterior exposed too much to sunlight decorate the room in which the hero meets a medical expert. The hero drives a dulling white (or was it red?) 5th generation Corolla, with the same sunlight turns the car’s paintwork to the same color as the Macintosh, or Commodore 64, in that room, probably in Petaling Jaya. I actually want to say one of those depilated 1960s homes near LRT Bangsar, but I digress.

The settings, for much of the movie. tells you nothing about the time. You would assume it is in contemporary period. 2023 or somewhere thereabout. After all, the clues in the background suggests all characters appear to have a tough life. A struggling copyeditor not earning enough to buy a new car. A psychiatrist dismissed as a quack by the government and so, failing to get research grants. With so little money. he is unable to purchase decent computers and equipment; hey, government hospitals still use Windows 2000 after all. There are KTM Komuter station, and various MRT running through parts of Petaling Jaya. Yes, it all appears contemporary.

Then things get weird. A Groundhog Day-like loop happens. And then another loop. And another. Each storyline reloops itself, except there are minor changes to it. It is as if there is an unreliable narrator telling the story repeatedly, and the protagonist realizes there is something wrong with his reality. He thinks he is losing his mind.

It keeps going several rounds, making it all confusingly intriguing, that you get suck into it, trying to solve a puzzle. What the fuck is happening?

I have seen similar puzzle before. The presence of a mind machine reminds me of anime Paprika. But Paprika is not a puzzle Inception is, a movie that borrows heavily from the former. I want to draw parallel with Inception, but my mind brings to a time long ago when I found myself watching Vanilla Sky on one miserable snowy Minneapolis night.

Yes, Imaginur plays with your mind the way Vanilla Sky does.

I exited the cinema, humming (really, singing) Peter Gabriel’s Solsbury Hill, because I was convinced Imaginur messed up my mind the way Vanilla Sky did. And I like Vanilla Sky.