The tortured male scientist is a character that popular culture revisits endlessly, from Victor Frankenstein to Gregory House to Tony Stark. Burdened by greatness and destined for misanthropy, he will do whatever he must to realize his genius. He is often an addict, often attracts women who he should, in reality, repel. All of these conventions are at work in the sci-fi indie thriller “Minor Premise,” and yet director Eric Schultz has created a film inventive and engaging enough to stay afloat in a sea of tropes.
The amoral inventor at the center of “Minor Premise” is Ethan Kochar (Sathya Sridharan), a neuroscientist working to outrun the legacy of his recently deceased father, Paul. Though he completed work on Paul’s groundbreaking invention, a machine that visually reproduces memories, Ethan was never given credit for his contribution. Plagued by anger and grief, Ethan drinks, gives condescending lectures to students in some remote lecture hall, and tests his newest invention on himself. With this latest machine, Ethan hopes to be able to isolate and remove his own undesirable behaviors. Instead, he becomes entangled in a Jekyll-and-Hyde race against his own fragmented consciousness.
Much like the fuzzy memories captured by Ethan’s first machine, “Minor Premise” unfolds translucently, relying on Ethan’s neuroscientific jargon and skipping freely between timelines and characters. While this method of storytelling is far preferable to the alternative of beating viewers over the head, “Minor Premise” occasionally drifts into complete opacity. The main figures in Ethan’s life are his father, his ex-girlfriend, and his father’s business partner, yet we are left to glue together context clues to understand who these people are to each other and what their pasts have been. The scientific pursuits outlined in the film are often impossible or inscrutable – it takes ages to understand that the old and new machines even do different things.
The script’s most glaring flaw, however, is its portrayal of Ethan’s ex-girlfriend, Alli (Paton Ashbrook). Apparently a renowned scientist herself, Alli has absolutely no sense of self-preservation when it comes to her hideously pitiful ex. She moves mountains to save him from his own self-destruction, often by sacrificing her own bodily safety. Alli performs Herculean scientific feats, but at the end of the day, her sexuality is her most valuable weapon. At a pivotal moment, she saves the day by distracting Ethan with a kiss. Plenty of women (zero of which, it’s worth noting, made this film’s three-man scriptwriting team) would have left Ethan to his pitiful fate at the first sign of violence, much less stuck around for a kiss. To insinuate otherwise is insulting at best.
Luckily for Schultz, the film’s central conflict is so interesting as to nearly outweigh these other failings. Ethan and Alli discover that Ethan is behaving like ten different versions of himself within the course of one hour, giving them a limited number of rotations through these personae – some of whom are deadly unhelpful – before Ethan’s brain shuts down completely. What follows is a tense, engrossing ride, a kind of “Memento”/“Inception” lovechild where the very ideas of personality, consciousness, and identity are destabilized. It is a powerful showcase for lead Sathya Sridharan, who shifts between personalities with enough nuance and dexterity to pull off the film’s central question: Who are we really?
With gripping visuals, a capable lead performer, and an ambitious script, “Minor Premise” is as artful as it is occasionally clumsy. But in this film, much like in the average human psyche, the good just barely edges out bad. [B-]
“Minor Premise” arrives on VOD on December 4.
