Here’s Dark Matter in one word: tragic. Not that shootings aren’t, but this one does it superbly well, that is, until the final few minutes. Based on the 1991 University of Iowa shooting, Dark Matter attempts to narrate this event from the perspective of Liu Xing, the shooter, culprit and victim himself. After all, there’s always a story behind any kind of bloodshed.
There’s a whole host of reasons why someone would go on a shooting spree – a history of bullying and revenge being the most heard of. But from the first to the last frame, Liu Xing (played to perfection by Liu Ye) is nothing but a promising, brilliant, aspiring, dedicated and ambitious student. When an opportunity to work with cosmologist Professor Reiser shows up in the promise land known as America, Liu snaps it up with dreams of winning the Nobel Prize. And boy, is he passionate and daring enough to be a candidate. So begins the fatal and downright dreaded walk to the finish line when this well-mannered boy leaves his homeland to venture into foreign territory, driven by nothing but his dreams. A family movie would thus take the route of self-discovery to a happy ending, but this isn’t a family movie.
Should it be any coincidence that the film has a title like “Dark Matter”? Probably.
Is it because of bad writing that the film reeks like a fish-out-of-water story, giving little to zero hint of the tragedy to follow? Liu, together with the other Asian students, have to navigate their way through an English-speaking and unfamiliarly blunt culture. They’re working under the not-very-grateful, somewhat arrogant nose of a white professor, whose work ethics are a contrast to their own. One would think the film as some kind of a cultural study, a clash of opposite values and beliefs. Perhaps even a comedy when words are misunderstood and attempts at learning the foreign language become unintentional gags. (Liu, for example, says, “Up the bottom!” for a drinking toast.) Ignorance, even, with ones’ first language also make great humour opportunities. (“I’m a student here, studying cosmology.” “Oh yeah? Well then, you can give me a makeover.”) Dangerously sliding into off-topic areas, the film’s final moments sneak up so stealthily, it’s hard to say if one would enjoy the “shock”, or be baffled by the sudden turn in direction. But think about it – the sense of failure, of rejection, of one’s dreams going up in smoke. The ending may come abruptly, but who is to argue this isn’t the nature of a breakdown? And this, dear reader, is the flaw that makes Dark Matter a like-it or hate-it movie. A better guiding hand would have steered the movie away from this pivot point, but without that luxury this one deserves a pat for good effort and gold stars for its leads.
(First published at InCinemas)
