Predestination doesn't offer a lot of information when it starts out. We are thrown in the middle of what appears to be a terrorist operation, with an operative trying and failing to diffuse a bomb. That operative (Ethan Hawke) wakes up on a hospital bed covered in bandages, staring at signs with strange slogans. As he recuperates, he is told to prepare for his final, most important mission, which involves tracking down the "fizzle bomber," the man behind an attack in New York City in March of 1975 that leaves eleven thousand dead.
And as it turns out, our operative is a time traveler. When we next see him, he is working as a bartender in some dive. He strikes up a conversation with a customer (Sarah Snook) who has a bizarre story to tell. To say anything more would be to give up the game. It might be worth knowing, however, that the film is an adaptation of the Robert Heinlein story All You Zombies. People who are familiar with the story will recognize what is going on, and the film does a fairly impressive job of translating the story's complex paradoxes to screen.
It’s a strange, completely insular story that only really makes sense within its own twisted dimension. But the film outright acknowledges the absurdity of the premise, and instead concentrates on building flavor. The film gets a lot out of the different aesthetics of each of its settings. Despite what appears to be a pretty limited budget, the film is able to convincingly reconstruct these eras, smartly using signifiers to succinctly suggest the period. The film goes from Norman Rockwell to Space Age to 70s grime with admirable flair.
And the film builds admirably on the barebones narrative of the original story. Again, without giving too much away, the film extrapolates an interesting gender study from the elements of Heinlein’s story. And it makes a nice logical leap in the plot by adding the extra element of the fizzle bomber. It is a nice little wrinkle that works perfectly within the twisty milieu. It’s all still very silly, but the film takes that silliness head on. It doesn’t back away from the more out there elements of the story, and instead just finds ways to work with them seriously.
It helps a lot that the film features such great performances. Ethan Hawke plays the veteran agent with plenty of appealing gruffness. But the real attraction in this film is Sarah Snook, who ably plays what turns out to be a really complicated role. It is necessary to keep things vague here, but much is required of the young actress, and she is pulls it off with plenty of aplomb. She imbues the character with compelling melancholy, even while working with the film’s more absurd turns.
Predestination ends up being a thought experiment more than anything else. The narrative is built entirely on paradox, a strange set of circumstances that simply cannot occur within a reasonable line of thinking. But it’s a real hoot, anyway. It takes time travel logic to its farthest extremes, testing the very limits of causality with a deliciously wacky story that explores solitude in new and confounding ways. It’s all still a bit silly, but it’s the kind of silliness that we really ought to have more of.
My Rating:
