Trauma

It’s rather interesting, and somewhat scary, to watch a feature film written by one’s Screenwriting tutor and then to review it like any other film. There is a sort of pressure to be either too kind or too harsh, and it bears a very slight resemblance to ‘telling off’ one’s father! However, Richard Smith is a skilled writer and an even better teacher and I have much respect for him as either. Therefore I feel it would be right and fair to review Trauma as I would any other film since in reality that is what it is.

Trauma tells the story of a man who wakes from a coma to discover his wife has been killed in an accident and as events unfold he begins to fear that he has lost his sanity. It is well-written, with quite convincing performances, and thrilling enough to keep the viewer interested. The psychological thriller is a genre we are able to handle quite well over here in Britain as it is, by its nature, low-budget. It’s a bit like what we do on this course but to a larger scale. We are given some money and instead of trying to replicate what the ‘Big Guys’ (in our case the industry; in Britain’s case Hollywood!) do, we simply make the best film we can with the means and the money at our disposal. So Trauma did what it did, and it did it well; it was a good thriller.

However, my main criticism would be that it did not contain enough significant story. Not enough happened. We didn’t take enough twists and turns; we didn’t travel down enough roads leading to dead-ends; we didn’t start to drown in a sea of confusion which gradually morphed itself into a cohesive and comprehensive beast. It seemed that everything was hinging on the end, the final twist, without there being enough twists within that overarching twist. There were not enough pay-offs set-up, and worse; some set-ups were not paid-off. In fact it was a recurring motif that tension would be built up and then released without anything happening. I felt manipulated for no reason and it felt like there were too many anticlimaxes and not enough resolutions.

Colin Firth in the lead was a huge casting mistake. Clearly a delighted Producer realised there was not much in the script demanding a huge amount of money so made the decision to get hold of a star. In my opinion they got the wrong one. His performance was, as ever, very good but he did not fit the character; partly because of the preconceptions surrounding him as an actor but mainly because, in my opinion, the role required someone with less ability and more charisma. Nevertheless, the structure and the characters were pretty sound and, despite being hyper-analytical because it was my tutor’s work, I was rather impressed.