‘Aporia’ is a science-fiction film focused on Sophie (Judy Greer), - after losing her husband Malcom (Edi Gathegi) and failing to manage her and her daughters grief, she is at a loss for what to do. Partnering up with Mal’s friend Jabir (Payman Maadi), the former physicist will revel to Sophie a machine that could save Mal. After making a big decision, Sophie has to reconcile her thoughts and moral boundaries to achieve her goals.
The core of the film lies with the time-bending mechanism being used as a segue for the characters to start dissecting philosophical and theoretical ramifications of their actions with the machine. Using Jabir's engine to send bursts of energy back in time to kill, initially the perpetrator, Darcy, whose drunk driving resulted in Mal’s death, Sophie and Jabir discuss the choice they have to make in order for Mal to return.
With little hesitation Sophie activates the machine, with Greer displaying a desperate and somewhat reckless persona. Greer’s performance in the immediate aftermath, with the character losing all hope and feeling foolish for having believed such a far-fetched idea, is what adds value to the film. The movie is not groundbreaking in its ideas regarding time travel, and how people trying to fix the past inevitably goes to pot. Rather, the magic lies with its characters, with Greer carrying the bulk of the emotional weight.
Not overburdening itself or the viewers with the theoretical physics and science behind how the equipment works, the film rather spends time on discussing the group's plan of action. By choosing to kill someone to bring Mal back, Sophie investigates the consequences of that. Uncovering that Darcy’s death resulted in a broken and devastated home, she focuses on helping out that family.
A little brash with its decisions, the film and characters seem to jump from one test of the machine to the next, and by making further alterations to the past, inevitably change the present. By further eliminating another person in the past to help out Darcy’s family, Sophie and Mal lose their daughter, and in her stead are now parents to a son. Realising they must right all of their doings, Sophie, Mal and Jabir agree to use the machine for one last run to save Jabir’s family back home from an incident years past.
The film shows the emotional ramifications this has on Mal and Sophie, as they both agree that they cannot live the new lives they’ve created. Panning to a shot of the city, the film closes out with Sophie returning home after work one night, not uncovering who or what waits home for her in this new timeline.
Perhaps a little redundant, the film goes through an already familiar path of turns that can be expected from a time-bending story. Obviously Sophie was going to use the machine to get Mal back, and that it was going to cause further issues. What seems slightly disappointing is the rushed game of catch-up that Greer’s Sophie is playing thereafter. Trying to rectify her decision to kill Darby, she opts to kill another man, with the film skirting the moral issues in that decision.
As if to justify its characters, Jabir is revealed to have tested the capacity of the machine to execute another man who had caused many more to die. Playing out a sort of exercise in philosophy, the characters seem to be running past with ease the power which they hold and the responsibility that comes with it.
As if to wipe the slate clean, the final time the machine is used acts as complete vindication for what the group had collectively decided to do beforehand. Even though everybody does understand the consequences of their final choice, the film doesn’t seem to address everything that had come before it, disregarding with ease the lives that the characters had deemed expendable.
Garnering great performances from Greer, Gathegi and Maadi, the actors deliver a cohesive and intimate connection as a group, inviting the viewer to really feel for them as they go through the changes in their lives. The limited exploration of the moral rights and wrongs of the trios' actions detract from the story somewhat, ultimately providing for a surface-level examination of the quandaries surrounding the awesome power that they wield.
Score: 2/4
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