The Jacket (2005 John Maybury)

Emma Hickox told us she really wanted to make this film and pitched hard for it, and that the lab told her she had more cuts in the first quarter of the film than most films have in their entirety. It certainly is a dazzling piece, though we did wonder whether she managed to set a most unwelcome trend for in-your-face editing that marred such programmes as Whitechapel. And when she isn't racing seventeen clips a second at us she does some very elegant dissolve work, like this:

As to the story - screenplay by Massy Tadjedin, story by Tom Blecker and Marc Rocco - a Gulf War vet with brain injuries (Adrien Brody) is witness to a roadside murder and unjustly sentenced to a mental institution, where he's experimented on with mind bending drugs by Kris Kristofferson. What seems to happen - and we're in murky waters here - is that he appears to go into the future, meets the grown up version of the little girl he befriended (Kiera Knightley) and finds out that in the past he only has four days to live. It doesn't really make any sense, in fact, but is delivered with such panache by an interesting cast that it doesn't matter, and the ending - though incomprehensible - is sweet.*

Clooney and Soderberg were producers. Photographed by Peter Deming. That's Iggy Pop doing "All the Time in the World", incidental music by Brian Eno. The leads are as good as always, though every time I see Brody now I think "Rhinocer-oose?" Rest of cast - Jennifer Jason Leigh, Kelly Lynch, Daniel Craig, Steven Mackintosh, Brendan Coyle, Brad Renfro, Laura Morano (young girl).

It reminded me a little of Groundhog Day (though perhaps more of its predecessor, 12:01).

Hadn't heard of Maybury, a former pop video director specialising in gay bands, and director of a film about Francis Bacon, and a couple of episodes of Rome. To claim the credit 'A John Maybury film' is hubris indeed. Massy wrote and directed Last Night, also with Kiera, and an episode of Berlin, I Love You, which has simply terrible ratings.

Deming shot Evil Dead II, Mulholland Drive, Married Life, Last Night, Cabin in the Woods and the new Twin Peaks. Filmed in Canada and Scotland, thus the presence of various Brits.

* I read that in one of the endings, he wakes up and is still in hospital, which actually is the only ending that makes any sense, though would have pissed off the audience. Actually I expect nobody who went to see it understood it anyway, so who cares? It's - I mean - what script was green lit, for Wilder's sake?