TRANCE: revisiting Danny Boyle's stylish hypno-thriller

This week sees the release of Yesterday, the new film and first collaboration from director Danny Boyle and writer Richard Curtis. The film (a light-hearted comedy about a man who wakes up one day in a world without The Beatles) is Boyle’s first since T2 Trainspotting. Even without the next James Bond picture (now directed by Cary Fukunaga and shooting amidst endless production problems) to his name, the Manchester-born filmmaker is a legendary voice in British film. 

A back catalogue featuring the landmark Trainspotting, the groundbreaking 28 Days Later and even the offbeat Millions (a now oddly wistful piece which sees the UK adopt the Euro as currency) has been revisited by any number of retrospectives, but the one feature to avoid any kind of serious consideration is his 2013 hypnosis thriller, Trance.

Even Sunshine, the film ironically killed by the weather in its opening weekend, has seen much re-appraisal by a hardcore of dedicated sci-fi fans (though debates over its final act still rage). Coming hot on the heels of his astonishing work for the 2012 Olympic Games opening ceremony (that established him forever as a national treasure), Trance found Boyle returning to his enfant terrible origins with a visually-arresting romp replete with sex and violence.

James McAvoy stars as Simon Newton, an art auctioneer in cahoots with Vincent Cassel’s no-nonsense thief, Frank. During a heist to steal a painting (Fancisco Goya’s Witches in the Air), Simon attempts to take the prize from Frank to avoid suspicion by his employers, but is struck across the head, incurring a heavy dose of amnesia. When intense questioning and torture fail to produce the Goya’s location, the gang seek the aid of hynotherapist Elizabeth Lamb (Rosario Dawson). 

Initially meant to be an outsider to the job, Elizabeth slowly comes to take on a femme-fatale role, challenging Frank’s leadership of the gang and leveraging control over Simon. Revelations about Simon’s past begin to come to light, and the search for the Goya becomes somewhat secondary to a stylish, seductive puzzle. 

Trance opened to decidedly mixed reviews: while many outlets praised Boyle’s direction and the performances of McAvoy and Dawson, they also found fault with the screenplay and lack of psychological subtext. Just about breaking even with a paltry $24 million worldwide on a $20 million production budget, the film came and went in a flash. Unlike many of Boyle’s previous films, it had no cultural significance (Shallow Grave, Trainspotting), massive Hollywood names (The Beach, 127 Hours) or easily sellable sci-fi spectacle (28 Days Later, Sunshine). Its heady mix of mystery-thriller premise and full-blooded exploitation sensibilities clearly missed the mark with audiences.

For my money, Trance still holds up as one of the most entertaining movies of the decade: three years before making waves with his multifaceted turn(s) in Split, James McAvoy relishes a role that requires layer-upon-layer of repressed memories and duplicitous facade. It’s difficult to illustrate without spoiling the surprises, likewise for Rosario Dawson - Elizabeth is another character who takes unexpected turns as the narrative unfurls, but Dawson plays her with stony conviction from the word ‘go’. Vincent Cassel is having a lot of fun as the sneering crook - who else could give such a great line in shouting and spittle?

They’re all captured beautifully by Boyle’s longtime DOP, Anthony Dod Mantle. Roger Deakins’ may carry the crown when it comes to digital cinematography, but Mantle (who won an Oscar for his work on Slumdog Millionaire) is sure giving him a run for his money. His masterful use of lens flare, reflection and the neon hues of Soho makes this one of the most striking movies ever made - he’s the only cinematographer who can make a traffic interchange look attractive.

Fellow collaborator, composer Rick Smith (frontman of Underworld), joins the fray with an eclectic soundtrack featuring music from Moby, UNKLE and Emeli Sandé, and his own scorching electronic symphony. Bombastic and fizzy is the default mode, but as the story morphs into something more tragic, so does the score: the track ‘Solomon’ is as haunting as anything Vangelis ever composed.

There’s no getting away from the fact that - as many of the reviews noted - the film is little more than empty spectacle: its diversions into the realms of pseudo-psychology and hypnosis remains entirely a method of narrative progression and visual playfulness over any serious depth or analysis on the human condition. The later movements into naked bodies and bloody shootouts do little to avoid these accusations, but there’s barely a director alive who could make that transition feel so natural.

His great command of the brief action sequences and total lack of inhibitions when it comes to sex makes his departure from Bond all the more gutting - there’s no promise that his take on the Ian Fleming icon would be any more feminist (though current script rewrites from Phoebe Waller-Bridge might’ve proved helpful there), but it would at least deliver the adrenaline shot the franchise sorely needs.

Trance is the sort of film that may be under threat in the current market, and its chances of standing up against the latest crop of megablockbusters would be about slim and none. This strange, hypnotic underdog still takes my heart over any number of those - if anything, its financial disappointment makes it easier to root for, to say nothing of its pure technical exhilaration. It’s not big, it’s not clever...but it is a heck of a ride.