Breaking Infinity

One of the great things about science fiction as a genre is that you don’t need a big budget or a lot of experience to create something which will make an impression – just a strong idea and sufficient skill to flesh it out effectively. Marianna Dean’s ambitious feature début isn’t wholly original in its ideas but it makes a better fist of them that most of its peers, whilst confident direction and solid performances ensure that the audience will get something out of it regardless.

Time travel often seems like easy material for the inexperienced writer. It isn’t. it’s very easy for someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing to end up hopelessly tangled or just bore viewers to death with repetition. This film is, thankfully, smarter than that, with David Trotti’s well considered script acknowledging from the outset that a strong, engaging narrative is more important than an endless sequence of twists. Although what’s happening may be hard to grasp during the film’s initial scenes, it comes together quickly enough, and the characters keep us involved as the central mystery develops.

That mystery begins – as the film does – with a grey-robed old man sitting by a fire in a rocky gully, looking towards the dawn as if waiting for something. It’s a trope borrowed from any number of fantasy films, but is used here very differently, even if other aspects of the film may occasionally remind you of the work of TH White. We cut quickly to a younger man lying in a bed in what appears to be a deserted hospital ward, his head swathed in bandages and stitches along a gash in his right cheek, before flashing to what seems to be his memory – crawling along through burning rubble as the old man calls out to him.

This young man, we soon learn, is Liam (played by Neil Bishop, who does a good job of managing to make him likeable despite him being quite aggravated and therefore quite demanding for most of the running time). He’s a researcher in a military facility, and that’s where he has been looked after ever since his mysterious accident. Nobody can tell him quite what this was because the electromagnetic pulse (EMP) involved also wiped out the log file – they don’t know what he was doing at the time. Something is definitely wrong, though, because we keep seeing him with and without the bandages and stitches in back to back scenes (and this isn’t a continuity error).

As Liam tries to figure out why he’s having such strange experiences, he has further encounters with the old man, who keeps responding to his requests for advice by saying simply “Listen.” (It does not occur to him that they might not share a language, and that the man might simply be repeating one of the only English words he knows.) He also develops a complex relationship with his doctor, Emma (Zoe Cunningham), who opposes his investigations because she wants to protect his health, but who is also sympathetic to his developing suspicions.

Healthcare workers watching this film may raise an eyebrow at some of the dialogue, but the way Emma handles the situation – including her final professional decision – is realistic enough. Similar things could be said of the physics and maths described here. There’s an odd reference to string theory and a curious understanding of what is meant by the phrase ‘quantum state’. There are also some cute little in-jokes around the numbers used in the film, and a nice idea related to the Ancient Celtic use of spirals. Liam’s exposure to the EMP (which is repeated over the course of the film, so no spoilers there) owes a lot to Highlander’s ‘quickening’.

Despite all this, Breaking Infinity stands on its own two feet. It’s impressively polished given its modest budget, and is elevated by a score which adds an epic element to scenes with only a handful of people in them. An effective little thriller with committed performances, it punches above its weight.

Breaking Infinity will be available on Digital Download from 3rd July and can be pre-ordered here.