Really Surprised!

One of my all time favorites.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Ben (Colin Firth) is in a coma at a London hospital. He wakes to find that his wife has died in the same horrific accident that injured Ben. Not only that, the funeral is long over and there is only a video of the proceedings. Needing to change his life completely, Ben finds an apartment in a former hospital undergoing renovations. In the basement, there is an empty morgue, where patients who died were kept until arrangements were made. Ick. Overseeing some of the remodeling is Ben's neighbor, Charlotte (Mena Suvari). She is young and beautiful, a good distraction for Ben. But, something is amiss. For one, Ben thinks he spies his ex-wife, Elisa (Naomie Harris) on the street, more than once. Well, well. Also, a detective comes to see Ben, telling the widower he is a possible suspect in the murder of a singer. Well, well, again. Ben is also seeing a psychiatrist, hoping to work his way through his grief. But, is Ben a murderer, going crazy or what? This is quite a good thriller, not especially bloody, but more of mental horror show. Firth is terrific as the conflicted, complex Ben, while Suvari, Harris and all of the other cast members are great, too. The old hospital setting, complete with plastic, remodeling curtains that sway and the basement morgue, is absolutely creepy. Script and direction are appropriately full of twists and turns. However, the ending is a bit confusing, resulting in this viewer having to read others' plot summaries to fully understand its meaning. If you like thrillers and/or Firth, do add a little "Trauma" to your life soon.

If you think you know director Marc Evans because you saw "Snow Cake", exercise some caution before getting into "Trauma". If you saw "My Little Eye", however, you are safe, though due to be a little underwhelmed, I must say. This may be partly due to the fact that it is not written by the same person, does not have the same overwhelming grip on the audience as "My Little Eye" had, and does not have the same clarity (though it is easily argued this is intentional), but it would be unfair to say it is not a convincing piece of writing, as apparently confirmed by a professional psychiatrist, and not a film worth giving some attention."Trauma" is about Ben, a man who suffers a car accident with his wife Elisa, and upon emerging from his coma, discovers she is dead. His accident coincides with the death of the famous singer Lauren Parris, who we discover was connected to Elisa. Ben moves back to his apartment, is befriended by a neighbour named Charlotte, and proceeds to try to get on with his life with the aid of sessions with a psychiatrist. Unfortunately he is haunted by visions and a growing feeling that there is something wrong, that he is missing something, a huge piece of a puzzle he seems to be part of.This is a film that suffers from various problems: a lower quality sound mix that one might expect, a rather unremarkable turn from Mena Suvari (American Beauty) as Charlotte, Naomie Harris and Brenda Fricker being given fairly little to do, and a sense that Richard Smith, the writer, was so intent on telling a strange story, he perhaps lost his way with some of the finer details. All that said, Marc Evans brings it in at 90 minutes, and manages to create a tense, exciting experience, if not a wholly satisfying one. It seems to be an issue for a lot of people that there are more questions than answers, and that the film is unnecessarily confusing. The thing is, though I do agree it is flawed and certainly not technically on the level of Evans's previous work, I don't think the direction is as unruly and ill-disciplined as these people believe."Trauma" is not supposed to be a story with a beginning, middle, and an end where you get all the answers; it is not a story where everything is crystal clear, which once finished you can then forget about. To me, it became clear that it was Evans' intention to tell a very subjective story, through the eyes of our protagonist. The hook of it is exactly that question of doubt about Ben, and the questions you have to ask, some of them questions that even he has himself: Is he a victim of some game, is he really missing a bigger picture, is he paranoid, is he losing his mind through grief, is he schizophrenic? Evans's use of tone, editing, and pacing, and his ability to blur the line between reality and delusion really do put you in the piece with Ben. You are not supposed to go away fully understanding it all, but rather having experienced the character's fears and possible delusion for yourself, having been dragged through the film, regularly as confused as Ben is. In this regard I would draw a comparison to David Cronenberg's "Spider", though this does play out as a thriller rather than a drama.Whether this sounds like your sort of thing or not, there is one reason above all else to watch "Trauma", and that is Colin Firth. He said himself the film jumped out immediately; amidst the numerous proposals landing on his mat to play the next romantic lead, it is easy to see how. Firth has finally got recognition for his role in "The King's Speech" and quite rightly, but even with that he is playing "proper British", a royal, respectable and high-class. "Trauma" is your rare chance to see him showing exactly why he is a leading British actor, with a performance that goes to a shockingly dark place; it is surreal and you have to keep telling yourself it's Mr Darcy, but if anyone needs convincing that Mr Firth has range as an actor, this would most certainly be it. His performance alone makes this a worthwhile experience.

I watched this all the way through, though I cant pretend I liked it. The overwhelming impression of this movie was confusion. I had zero idea of what the hell was going on. All the effects of a shocker movie were there, the insects,the momentary glimpses of things undetermined, to raise the tension, the creepy caretaker, the muted colouring, the mutilated corpse, flashbacks, the almost abandoned building which was an ex hospital with, handily, a morgue in the basement ! etc etc. For me a movie must have entertainment value, there was none here, the story was nasty all the way through. Acting ? Colin Firth, Mena Suvari... first class as you would expect when you manage to acquire actors of their standing you want to put them in a better vehicle than this movie.

There are many fine films out there where the sanity of the main character was brought into question (SECRET WINDOW, Johnny Depp, for one), leaving the audience to wonder what was real and what wasn't. All that I wondered as I watched this film is when it would end.While Colin Firth gave a fine performance, the story was muddled and confusing. I didn't care who was dead, who was alive, or who killed whom. I watched until the end, hoping I would receive some kind of payoff, as the film would just HAVE to redeem itself by penetrating through the miasma of confusion enough to give the viewer something, but I found nothing. This was a huge disappointment in every way.