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DIRECTED BY: Gert de Graaff
FEATURING: Bart Klever, Rick de Leeuw, Devika Strooker
PLOT: A screenwriter is hard at work on a film about the impossibility of reality, and begins to incorporate his every thought and action into the script, which in turn directs the action of the writer, which results in the very film we are watching—unless he decides to delete the document.
WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: The Sea That Thinks is a rich, dense text about the intangibility of everything, and it has the guts to put this challenging concept into practice, making for the most self-reflexive motion picture imaginable. An exercise like this should be the height of navel-gazing, and an astonishing amount portion of the soundscape is given over to dry oration about the futility of independent thought, but the mix of captivating imagery and surprising action makes for a fascinating film, regardless of whether you acknowledge that it exists.
COMMENTS: I am writing this review. That’s a thing that is happening, right now, as I type these words on a laptop. I will keep on typing until some point in the future when I have concluded that the words I have assembled to describe this movie and its weirdness are good enough to submit (although, being a writer, I will never think it’s “good enough”). Then I will transfer the words into a content management system, where the esteemed editor of this website will look them over, make appropriate changes to produce a marked improvement in the quality of the piece, and finally choose a day for the review to be shared with the world, forever joining the public discourse…
…except that I can’t be writing this review because I’ve already written it. The present moment is you reading this, right now. Unless, of course, you’re not reading this right now. Maybe you’ve paused, or perhaps you’ve skipped ahead to the comments. It’s possible that no one is reading this at this particular moment. And if they’re not, do these words even exist? Did I even have the thought? Did I watch the movie? Is there a movie? Is there a me? How can you be sure there’s a you?
By now, you should be getting a taste of the mental ouroboros that is the mind of Bart Klever, a writer who is struggling to churn out a screenplay and who is caught in an intellectual loop about the nature of creativity and reality. And while you’re at it, welcome also to the mind of director Gert de Graaff, who has crafted the screenplay for De Zee Die Denkt, which is about writing a movie called De Zee Die Denkt and which includes a character named “Bart Klever” to be played by an actor named Bart Klever. Yes, it’s the infinity mirror gone Hollywood. This is a movie that lays out its challenge from the very beginning and never lets up.
We don’t meet Bart right away. Instead, we begin with the three awakenings of a character named Rick (played by an actor named Rick): first in front of a frustrated camera crew whose latest take is interrupted by a cannon blast of water shooting through the windows; next, the film crew is gone, but when Rick gets up to answer the phone, he is revealed to be inside an Ames room illusion; his final waking seems perfectly normal, except that now Rick has a cast on his leg. But we stick with this one, even into the opening credits, before we finally segue into what seems like a documentary on the nature of reality. But there are rabbit holes still to come, as the participants in the documentary are shown rehearsing and practicing their remarks, while we then cut to a couple at home watching said documentary in a room populated with optical illusions. Is any of this real? The voiceover suggests no, because what we know is only what our brains perceive and construct through experience. Nothing is real, because reality is impossible. Which one would think would make my job easier.
It is only now that we meet Bart and discover that everything we have seen so far has purportedly sprung from his imagination and been transported whole into his script. And this connection only intensifies as he discovers that everything he says and does can become part of the screenplay. Every stray image, every grunt and grimace, every hesitation is reflected in the keystrokes appearing on Bart’s computer screen. This works in both directions, as well; when the script calls for Bart to choke on his beverage, he immediately complies. When you further consider that all of this, the pairing of word and image, is the product of a screenplay that has already been written as the blueprint for this very photoplay, the very notion of sorting it all out seems highly improbable. I’m not sure de Graaff would disagree.
What keeps The Sea That Thinks from becoming a tiresome talkfest is that isn’t so much about a philosophy as it is about reckoning with a philosophy, about coming to grips with the consequences and complications of a way of looking at the world. The voice explaining these concepts is confident and even haughty; he almost seems to mock the very idea of believing in the realness of anything. In response, De Graaff populates his film with famous optical illusions—blivets, forced perspectives, impossible objects—as a warning to avoid becoming too comfortable with your perspective. We see a thought experiment put into practice, and experience the attendant consequences. It brings to mind the fascinating experimental novel Einstein’s Dreams, in which the great scientist’s multiple conceptions of time are enacted by the residents of his imagination.
Film is, of course, entirely illusory. It relies upon the persistence of vision to make still photographs look like movement, 24 of them every second. Fortunately, the illusions of The Sea That Thinks are really quite beautiful. Drawing on his experience as a cinematographer, de Graaff composes extraordinary shots capturing the beauty of both the spectacular and the mundane. A closeup of a mug of tea being stirred rivals any of the stunning landscapes of forests or deserts. And then there are the illusions, artfully staged to catch you off guard so that even if you’re expecting to be fooled, the reveal still holds surprise.
Rene Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am.” The Sea That Thinks offers the contrary view that thinking proves nothing. And if we can’t rely upon thinking, there’s no way for us to be. Which means it’s really generous of you to have spent so much of your nonexistent time reading this imaginary review. Just think how enlightened you’ll be after watching this hypothetical movie.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
(This movie was nominated for review by Pacific Beliefs. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)