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Strain Andromeda, The
The title is not a misprint. This is Anne McGuire's 1992 video reedit of Robert Wise's 1971 The Andromeda Strain, about a pathogen from outer space. The whole original film is here, with each shot in normal forward motion, but the order of the shots is reversed--hence the title. This somewhat playful "deconstruction" of mainstream Hollywood has its virtues: with narrative causality flipped, one looks for causes of events already seen, questions traditional forms of narrative organization. But while we often hear the dialogue reversed--many lines get only single shots--longer takes contain whole conversations that we hear in the original order, providing a confusing disruption of the film's "backwardness." It is unique, but the interest of this rather mechanical exercise exhausts itself after a half hour. |
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