Resolution

‘All the world’s a stage, / And all the men and women merely players’, Shakespeare said, not realizing perhaps that his words will not lose their power even after a few centuries. But who is the director? Who is the one making the choices that define the existential trajectory of each individual? Obviously, such a philosophical problem may trigger a series of varied discussions about the existence or non-existence of free will, but beyond the fact that ‘Resolution‘ attempts to respond to this dilemma, privileging the individuals’ freedom to assume their own destiny, Dimitris Asproloupos’ short film succeeds in subliming the Shakespearean statement into a dynamic, bizarre and magnetic cinematic matter that places the protagonist’s mental universe at the borderline of a psychedelic hallucination. Indeed, this metaphor of the theatre-world is no longer a novelty either literary (for example, Herman Hesse’s novel, ‘Steppenwolf’) or cinematic (David Lynch’s ‘Mulholland Dr.’), but the intensity with which the spectator will receive the experiment of Dimitris Asproloupos would only be possible due to the speculative complexity the director uses, in order to create his fictional space.

Based on a nonconformist chronology and spatial coordinates that defies the principles of objective reality, suggesting an incursion into the sensible perception of the protagonist strangled by the bureaucratic conventions of his everyday existence, and into his fanciful projections that combine authentic with purely hallucinating elements, this short film depicts through three alternative scenarios Yorgos’ attempts to fulfil the duties of his job and to convince Natalia, the woman he secretly loves, to accept the invitation to spend the New Year’s Eve together. Yorgos must thus overcome his own fears and assume his own choices, even if, in order to achieve this, he must confront the demons of his own interiority who have just stepped on the scene of his own mind theatre.

Avoiding the conventional strategies of a concrete narration (even if the director takes a risk by choosing a closed, slightly moralizing finale that wants to provide a too ‘pragmatic’ coherence to this perpetual hallucination), Dimitris Asproloupos’ project is, above all, a metaphor that synthesizes the inner struggle of the modern human who must gain the right to decide their own destiny, defying the familial / professional / social conventions that restrict their freedom. Thus, this quasi-Lynchian short film (some shooting techniques used by the director of this project recall the grotesque images of ‘Mulholland Dr’. or ‘Inland Empire’) compresses three possible destinies of the same modern (anti-)hero, resigned to his status as ‘a man without qualities’, leaving the viewer to decide the appropriate outcome for the protagonist. Far from being a light experiment for an extremely large audience, ‘Resolution’ is an intelligent and intriguing short film intended to those cinephiles who are looking for a philosophical metaphor and an unpredictable visual and narrative experience.