Far Side of the Moon was once a theatrical one-man show I would have bought tickets to see; now it’s a movie I can’t see myself recommending. “The best reflection of the contradictions of the human soul is poetry,” says fortysomething doctoral student Philippe while recording a contest video about the cosmos. But rather than use the language of poetry to sort through Philippe and his meteorologist brother André‘s joint memory bank, writer-director Robert Lepage employs the stone-cold visual argot of a video installation, using match cuts, circular motifs, and superimpositions to connect the past and present and evoke the contradictions that estrange Philippe and André (both played by Lepage) from each other and the world around them. Philippe’s dissertation on the cosmos argues that narcissism, not curiosity, propels us into outer space. Egotism may also explain Philippe’s perpetual sour puss, not to mention the Kubrickian pretense of Lepage’s aesthetic, which never succeeds at evoking the ostensibly profound rationale Philippe’s fascination with space travel implies, or how this obsession may be part of a larger design. In essence, Lepage has remade 2001: A Space Odyssey without the Kubrick film’s sense of spiritual wonder and elation.
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