TIFF 2010: YOU ARE HERE Review
The advance materials on Daniel Cockburn's You Are Here - described as a meta-detective story - have openly invited comparisons to the work of Charlie Kaufman and while that's true to an extent Cockburn's work makes Kaufman at his most abstract and elliptical feel as mainstream as a Chris Columbus family comedy. Cockburn's history is in the world of video art and gallery installations and, in most ways, You Are Here feels as though it has never really left that world with the film eschewing any sort of conventional narrative in favor of a series of thought experiments and a playful deconstruction of information and how we process it. The correct point of reference seems to be more Kafka than Kaufman, with Cockburn embracing the same absurdist point of view that marks much of Kafka's work albeit with a bit more of a smile.
The film asks a very simple question. How do you know where you are? For that matter, how that you know THAT you are, at least that you are in any significantly different way than anyone else. It plays with issues of perception, language and information processing as it skips between a seemingly disparate group of characters - a university lecturer, an archivist collecting seemingly random 'documents', an office whose sole function is to track the location of a group of people walking through Toronto - who prove to have some unexpected links to one another.
The film plays out almost in sketch format, the structure not at all unlike what you'd see in an improv comedy show, the film slitting from character to character and situation to situation until slowly, gradually, the links between them begin to become at least a little bit more clear as the thought experiments loop back upon themselves and begin to intersect with one another.
Students of philosophy and semiotics are going to get off on this, there's no doubt about that. There's also no doubt that Cockburn is a unique talent. Unfortunately there's also no doubt that the audience that will appreciate this is tiny. That said, thanks to Cockburn and You Are Here I have now adopted the practice of referring to all crowds as Alan and for that I am grateful.
The film asks a very simple question. How do you know where you are? For that matter, how that you know THAT you are, at least that you are in any significantly different way than anyone else. It plays with issues of perception, language and information processing as it skips between a seemingly disparate group of characters - a university lecturer, an archivist collecting seemingly random 'documents', an office whose sole function is to track the location of a group of people walking through Toronto - who prove to have some unexpected links to one another.
The film plays out almost in sketch format, the structure not at all unlike what you'd see in an improv comedy show, the film slitting from character to character and situation to situation until slowly, gradually, the links between them begin to become at least a little bit more clear as the thought experiments loop back upon themselves and begin to intersect with one another.
Students of philosophy and semiotics are going to get off on this, there's no doubt about that. There's also no doubt that Cockburn is a unique talent. Unfortunately there's also no doubt that the audience that will appreciate this is tiny. That said, thanks to Cockburn and You Are Here I have now adopted the practice of referring to all crowds as Alan and for that I am grateful.
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