Cold Soulsset out an challenging chore : tell a Charlie Kaufman - expressive style tale about a company that extracts and leases human souls . But , tragically , the result is a film more concerned in explaining its approximation than telling a compelling story .
Paul Giamattiplays a fictionalized version of himself , that we ’re presuppose to understand as a composite of his more neurotic film character . He ’s a successful actor , but anxious , deeply worked up — and he suffers . In what room Paul suffers , we never actually see ; we ’re simply told flat - out that he does .
Paul ’s emotions have become an obstruction to his work . He ’s been retch in Anton Chekov ’s Uncle Vanya , but Paul is somehow unable to separate himself from his character mentally , and rehearsal have not been going well . His director is likable , but tells Paul that he ’s taking the role too seriously .
A possible result come one afternoon while Paul is screening his phone call . His agent leave him a message , mentioning an article in this workweek ’s New Yorker that could be the solution to all his problem . Paul digs out the magazine and spots an article about a party that extracts and store human souls , subtitled “ Are New Yorkers tired of carry around their souls ? ” Paul hardly read the article , but immediately and impetuously call the facility and construct an appointment . After a signally awkward conversation with soullessness advocate Dr. Flintstein ( David Strathairn ) , Paul enters the soul separator ( a retrofuturistic MRI that looks like it was stolen from a James Bond film ) and soon has his chick pea - shape soulfulness ( or rather , 95 percentage of it ; five percent of his soul is still in there ) in a jounce .
Cold Souls is practically begging to be compare to the sorts of plastic film Charlie Kaufman writes . There is the histrion playing himself , just as John Malkovich does in Being John Malkovich . Paul impulsively take to a shocking medical procedure that fundamentally interpolate his being , much like Jim Carrey ’s character does in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind . Even Lauren Ambrose as Dr. Flintstein ’s pretty , unquestioning assistant seems to shut a mate for Kirsten Dunst ’s similar role in Eternal Sunshine . But it ’s an unfortunate equivalence , asSophie Barthes , who wrote and directed the film , has run out to channel Kaufman ’s giving for storytelling or Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry ’s visuals and sense of timing .
Barthes has the challenge of excuse what the consequences of lose one ’s soulfulness are , a concept that is n’t as straightforward and pronto understood as erasing a somebody from your retentivity . We could have used a battery-acid of Woody Allen here , with Paul hearing about the function at dinner party parties with a measure of malicious gossip and machination ; rumour could fly that certain histrion had enjoy success after their souls had been remove ; soulfulness origin could be the hot topic on NPR . But Paul put forward to the extraction so early on in the movie that we must bank on Giamatti ’s not inconsiderable acting acquisition to convey the significance of soullessness . Paul stages tests to cipher out what ’s convert . He sniff perfume , weighs himself , takes photos of himself and compares them compulsively to existing exposure . finally , it becomes unmistakable that , without a psyche , Paul is disconnect from himself and from other citizenry . It transforms him into a likely Tao master ( an thought I get the sense Barthes longed to search further ) , but it also makes him a sociopath , unconcerned with his friend , remote from his wife ( a queerly underutilized Emily Watson ) , and incapable of imbuing Uncle Vanya with the proper emotion .
All this metre , we ’ve been see a second theatrical role as well , although her role in the fib has not been apparent . She is Nina , a vendor in human individual . Nina buy souls from poor , dying , and emotionally overburdened Russians , and then functions as a mule , carrying the souls within her soundbox to America ( souls , we are told , are too explosive at gamy altitudes to go outside a human boniface ) . Once in the US , she sells the soulfulness to Flintstein ’s practice so that his client can rent the souls . But , since we see Nina at employment long before we learn that it ’s possible to rent a soul , it ’s not clear what she ’s up to , and Barthes does n’t make it clean when Nina is in Russia and when she is in the US .
The someone - renting portion of the plot of ground , which we get to in the second routine when Paul gain he ca n’t do Vanya without a soul , is the strongest bit of the entire film . Paul winds up lease a Russian soul , which changes him . It ’s a prissy inversion of Dollhouse , examine what happens when you absorb the essence of a somebody without his or her memories , while looking at the exploitation of the alien prole by affluent Americans . Are souls , after all , really that much more shocking than sweatshop handbags and skid ? And Paul finds that have access to a Russian somebody can fare in very handy when performing a Russian play .
Unfortunately , we get little of this notion of trying out other mass ’s soulfulness , before the pesky plot pushes us in haste along to the third human activity along to the third bit , where there ’s mortal steal , a Russian mobster , and a beautiful but talentless scoop opera house ace who wants to own an American worker ’s soul .
Cold Souls is a strangely linear film for one so bursting of ideas , with picayune in the way of subplot or texture . Paul is the only node of Dr. Flintstein whom we see more than in overtaking , and because the entire film is jampack with Paul ’s experiences with mortal , there is n’t way for anything else . We have no sense of what Paul ’s home base life-time is like , who his friends are , what he ’s like when he does have his soul . At some point , Nina recount Paul that he need more levity in his liveliness . We can opt to consider that it ’s honest , because Paul went through this soul extract business in the first place , but we would n’t really have intercourse ; since we never see him in his own skin ( or rather , his soul in his own tegument ) , we do n’t sleep together if he needs levity or not . Barthes examine to compensate for this slenderness by adding small , self - consciously quirky moments , but the attempts total off as awkward try at Kaufman - esque eccentricity , wedged into a universe where they simply do n’t fit .
This is n’t to say that Cold Souls is a tiresome movie , or that it does n’t show a lot of promise for Barthes as a movie maker . Barthes ’ ideas are interesting , even if her insistency at squeezing every notion she has into the movie get at the disbursement of the story , and there are a few moments that are genuinely and uniquely uncanny . And , when one grapheme takes Paul ’s individual from Flintstein ’s storage facility , we see a reversal of the same shot we saw of Paul when he proceed to the facility in the first place — a brand of visual cue I would have liked to have see more . But anyone hoping that Barthes has already revealed herself as the heir to Charlie Kaufman will be ultimately disappointed . Barthes has a voice in there somewhere , for explicate her strange theme , but examine to borrow Kaufman ’s only keeps Cold Souls from heating up .
MoviesPaul Giamatti
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