CHRONOVISOR Review: Book Detective Becomes Something More

Treading somewhere between a documentary and fiction, academic research and conspiracy theory, Borgesian labyrinth and schizophrenic episode, Jack Auen and Kevin Walker's Chronovisor feels like some cinematic equivalent of an uncovered dusty relic that concerns the greatest story never told.

The film revolves around proving the existence and tracking down Chronovisor, a machine that shows ancient events on screen --- the founding of the Roman Empire, the crucifixion of Jesus, and so forth -- which was said to have been invented by a Benedictine monk with the help of renowned scientists in the 1950s, at the insistence of the Vatican.

It is the main drive of Beatrice Courte (played by a real life academic, Anne-Laure Sellier), a university lecturer, who stumbled upon the subject in books and articles. There she discovers Father Pelligrino Ernetti, a Benedictine monk in the center of it all, who remained mum about Chronovisor's power and its whereabouts most of his life, until his death in the 90s.

Feigning a posthumous award as a connection, Courte tracks down anyone who knew Ernetti, in order to locate the machine that may change the course of human history. Many dead ends and red herrings later, she is sent Ernetti's belongings in a box with newspaper clippings, magazine articles and a bunch of VHS tapes, with one its ribbon in tangles outside the broken casing. She finds out that there was a grand conspiracy to suppress the knowledge of Chronvisor's existence by the Vatican under the direction of Pope Pius XII, in fear of the device falling into the hands of 'evil entities.'

Shot on grainy 16mm in dimly lit rooms, directors Auen and Walker embrace doing things an old-fashioned way. In an interview from New Directors/New Films this spring, they revealed that 'thankfully' there were no research materials online when they searched for Chronovisor, which was a real life phenom, so they decided against the use of computers or mobile devices' screens displayed, which is usually quite boring.

Instead, they opted for Courte going to libraries and doing old-school research through reading stacks and stacks of books and magazine articles. And we, the audience, read the information with her, displayed on screen with the books' passages directly translated in English over the top of original texts in open books. This physicality provides a different kind of intimacy than what we are used to in our digital age of moviegoing.

The spaghettied VHS tape Courte carefully reassembles holds the key. In it is taped footage by Ernetti's nephew, who informs the viewer that Chronovisor is stashed in Portugal, and warns that upon viewing, it changes the viewer because it doesn't only show past events, but also the memories of the people who were present, which then meld into the minds of the viewers.

As a consequence, some viewers lost their minds. And Courte, who has played an armchair general in the comfort of her cozy academic surroundings up until then, needs to embark on a journey to find the device that can change the world.

The grainy, pixelated, borderline abstract images of figures and faces of Chronovisor doesn't have the creepy effects of Ring or some found-footage horror, but are nevertheless unnerving. As Chronovisor charts a horror film territory at the end, we are left with the feeling that the film is not about what Chronovisor can show us after all, but more about the burning desire to uncover the knowledge that has been denied to us.

Chronovisor opens September 4, only in movie theaters, via Grasshopper Film. Visit their official site for more information. 

Dustin Chang is a freelance writer. His musings and opinions on everything cinema and beyond can be found at www.dustinchang.com