What promised to keep becoming more instead becomes less. The film slows when it should gradually accelerate and reduces the import of what it’s been dancing around by delivering an unconvincing resolution to its numerous issues. That Mara and Segel are so oddly matched physically - he looks fully twice as big as she does when they stand by one another - lends odd humor to their often uncomfortable interchanges.īut the low-key touches, visual elegance (courtesy of Sturla Brandth Grovien’s icy camerawork) and persistent interest in what Harbor is up to are increasingly strained by the attenuated storytelling and a gnawing sense that nothing the filmmakers can come up with would somehow satisfactorily address the grandness of Harbor’s vision or the proper fates of the main characters. The rest of the student body, if such it is, consist of pliant, undemonstrative cultists who are not there to question any of what goes on at the compound, first and foremost their own unrewarded servitude.Īs Harbor prepares for his “voyage,” Isla, whose true motives remain hidden, begins toying with the befuddled Will, first in small gestures, then in ways that could rightly be construed as amorous. Harbor has surrounded himself with acolytes, the primary one being his other son Toby (Jesse Plemons), a long-haired hippie dude who helps his father prepare for his own brain trip, which he hopes might take him to the other side and back. The other voyager, Isla (a blonde-tressed Rooney Mara), betrays a compulsive mysteriousness and takes snaky pleasure in insulting the sad-sack fellow she’s stuck with for a while. Having fallen out with his father long ago, the wary and chronically morose neurologist Will (Jason Segel) feels compelled to finally return in an attempt to clarify things with his difficult dad. Two disturbed people find themselves the only passengers on a ferry to the remote location where Harbor lives and works in an enormous Old World-style pile. Redford’s work in the opening scene, in which he addresses his breakthrough and its consequences, is one of the strongest things he’s ever done onscreen. Harbor’s absolute conviction that there is some kind of life after death is undercut by suicides that run into the millions, spurring Harbor to push his research further using himself as the subject. Discovery, India, nature, science, adventure, shows, Bear Grylls, Man Vs Wild, discover, new shows, Expedition Unknown, Josh Gates, Into the Wild, Survival School. The Discovery will fare better, if only because its central premise crosses over into terrain that is traditionally the province of religion but is here claimed by the celebrated physicist Dr. It wasn’t surprising that, after a strong Sundance reception, the film never made a dent or a cent. McDowell’s first feature, The One I Love, which debuted at Sundance in 2014 and was written by the director’s present collaborator Justin Lader, had something of the same problem in being an impressively presented piece, recognizably located in the real world and populated by real people, but veering off into territory not so easy to digest and accept.

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