Psychopath

In The Shattered Glass, I wrote that I could not stop thinking about Immortality (Half Mermaid Games, 2022) for a couple of weeks after I played it. I couldn’t tell you why because that was spoilers and didn’t fit in an article which was ostensibly a review.

I had always planned to come back and tell you why I could not stop thinking about Immortality but I could only wave generally in the direction of my emotions. I’ve had to establish an archaeological dig to unearth the right words but they’re here now and waiting for you below.

And, honey, you don’t want to read this if you’re still avoiding spoilers.

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I remember: that final scene where you discover exactly what happened to Marissa Marcel. I watched fire destroy her petrol-drenched body.

I remember thinking: of course this was how it was going to end. And then experiencing anguish. I didn’t want it to be the end. I wasn’t able to let go of Marcel just like that.

But with so much of Marcel a trick, a fiction within a fiction, a figure who cast herself as director, actor and executioner… what was I upset about?

Let me share something. I was lucky and unlucky. I was lucky this scene triggered the credits; it doesn’t always provide such concrete finality for players. I was unlucky because I hadn’t understood what had happened to director John Durick at that point.

When I learnt what happened to Durick I lost my mind.

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Everyone’s experience of Immortality is rife with accidents. Some of these are happy accidents which make the art more pronounced. The final scene occurred at the perfect time for me; I understood its importance.

But there are also sad accidents. Guess what my first scene with Minksy actor Carl Greenwood was? The one where Greenwood turns up after he seems to have been missing in action. The clip ends with Marcel exclaiming “No!” as he appears to move in to kiss Durick. This defined who Greenwood was for me and I struggled to make sense of his more reserved, quiet country boy qualities in other scenes. I wasn’t to have known he had been devoured and replaced by another immortal, “The Other One.”

And here’s the funny thing. Durick and Marcel spent many rehearsals working hard to break the original Greenwood out of that shell because Minsky requires his character to do the same, to transform from uptight cop into someone more permissive and hedonistic. There’s no such thing as acting on the Minsky set, there is only becoming. And Greenwood became something else.

To some extent, Marcel thinks she is doing something positive and fun but she is also an avatar of the soul of Hollywood who attempts to corrupt Greenwood. We’re artists. We break boundaries. We fuck each other.

“No!”

This is a tragic scene as Marcel realises Greenwood is dead. When I rewatch this clip now, I see Marcel’s grief and anger.

Maybe we should be more troubled that an actor must sometimes distort their private personality to better serve a role. Thus the roles edit and sometimes overwrite the person who dwelt there before. It’s not some storytelling accident that as she succeeds in breaking the boy, the boy is eaten. Marcel doesn’t realise she tried to kill that country boy in her own way. Performance as murder. Immortality: a story of how the film machine can kill its willing participants. I feel like I’m going wind up writing this again.

And I keep saying “Marcel”. Even now, I am still wrestling with this.

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Some were disappointed when the ‘secret’ of Immortality was revealed and we learnt the true nature of this strange ethereal figure that dwelt in the rewind – and her relationship to Marcel. Marcel was actually a shapeshifting immortal we refer to as “The One”, who was fascinated with making art – that’s it? Slow clap.

Honest talk. I was disappointed way earlier, when I first discovered that Immortality was a supernatural game. That first time discovering something was lurking in the footage, something that could only be seen when rewinding, something that wanted to be discovered and resurrected was thrilling. But it also forced me to reappraise the journey I had embarked on. I had expected something a bit more grounded, something akin to a gritty detective noir. Watch the scenes. Join the dots. Experience the blinding flare of revelation.

But I acquired a taste for whatever Immortality was and enjoyed searching for meaning behind its lush facade. Everything was a cipher. I developed an attachment to the characters but I cared much less for what had happened. I cared much more about what it all meant.

Perhaps I’m lying to myself here, because I cared about what happened to Marcel. Fuck, there I go again. There is no Marcel, damn it.

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After finishing Immortality, I watched a YouTuber explain “the whole plot”. It was a deep dive into the story but not meaning. The most curious thing was that he had no idea why John Durick disappeared towards the end of the story. What happened to him? And I thought, yeah, me too, dude.

The answer to that question squatted there in plain sight but somehow my eyes kept sliding off the ugly truth. There were so many signs. Durick becomes The One when you rewind his chat show interview; Durick, like Marcel, doesn’t age from Minsky; Durick and Marcel have little relationship in the final film; Durick and Marcel turn pages during the table read at exactly the same time; Durick is never present in rewind footage towards the end; the bloody film in the third act is called Two of Everything.

It seems like many players deduced without much difficulty that The One was playing both Durick and Marcel simultaneously but, in a way, I’m luckier because of this blind spot. For me, it became a jaw-dropping revelation, recontextualizing the entire final act, knocking over a dozen dominoes with force.

Oh, that’s why The One was dying! Oh, that’s why Durick kept vanishing! First time I caught screenwriter Barry Gifford dropping the throwaway thought “two of everything” in the compositing test I thought, aha, that’s where Durick got the idea for the movie. The second time I thought, aha, maybe that’s where The One gets the idea to split into The Two.

I don’t think Immortality is making the point that it’s impossible to be an actor and a director at the same time. Kevin Costner won several Oscars for Dances With Wolves, a film he directed and starred in. This did not kill him. There were no scenes where black goop gushed from his scalp. Although this did happen to actors in The Fifth Element.

It’s making the point that if a woman wanted to be a playa in the filmmaking business, they had to go to Hell and back. And they might not make it back. Immortality: a story of how the film machine can kill its willing participants. I said this before, right? Let me rewind and check.

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If you need me to spell out why I didn’t deduce that Durick was as dead as a doornail, it’s because the rewind scenes are fucking confusing. Sometimes they are representational, putting memory in context. Other times they are a literal restaging of events, such as when The One kills and consumes Durick. And other times they are pure metaphor: I can tell you now that The One did not fuck Robert Jones during the table read while the rest of the cast were naked. But it’s not easy to discern which variation of scene you are witnessing, an obviously deliberate choice on the part of Barlow’s team, to keep players guessing.

Some of the Ambrosio rewinds are particularly difficult to unpack, such as when The One plunges a blade into Robert Jones, the star of the film. I assumed this was hypothetical, metaphorical, but some have taken it to be real, that it portrays another dark truth: The One ate Jones and became him. But in later rewind scenes, Robert Jones stays Robert Jones, he doesn’t become The One. Further, no one talks about Robert Jones disappearing after Ambrosio.

Still, there are scenes with Ambrosio co-star Sofia that muddy the waters. Even now, I still haven’t managed to decipher all of this and I’m sure someone will surface some answers in the comments. What happened to many of the other characters? I never understood why Sofia cried in one scene although I had a guess – and she is notably missing from the wrap party.

But Immortality tapped into my Pavlovian response to drip-feed mysteries. It offers answers only for the persistent and patient. For example, there’s one rewind scene which explains what happened to the film Ambrosio and it’s nothing to do with murders or missing actors.

Keep your eyes on the screen. There’s always more to see, more secrets to uncover. Back and forth you perform your task, enacting a grim ritual that breathes life into a dead story.

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At one point, I somehow convinced myself that a red/yellow motif was extremely important.

I felt these colour choices couldn’t possibly be accidental.

I scoured the footage for red/yellow pairings but, generally, ended up spotting a lot of apples.

I just thought I should confess that I had an Immortality apple fixation for awhile.

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Ambrosio is the story of how a chaste Directory of Photography is seduced into losing his soul to the devil. Minsky is the story of a muse killing the Director who sold her talent as his own. And Two of Everything is the story of pretending to be that Director and losing yourself in this charade, an act of accidental destruction. Could The One ever truly be herself?

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Everyone’s seen a social media post or essay that goes along these lines: “I rewatched a beloved 80s film then cringed through the toxic stuff that aged horribly.” Ghostbusters? Bill Murray gets creepy when “investigating” Sigourney Weaver’s apartment. Blue Thunder? Police watch “naked yoga woman” using high-tech helicopter equipment and it’s all just a laugh: there’s no subtext here about privacy invasion. Blade Runner has hero Harrison Ford force himself upon Sean Young.

It was just the time. Quote, unquote.

As if reproducing this arc of film history, there are sex scenes in Immortality’s first two films but not the third. It says something, perhaps, that I didn’t find these scenes to be arousing – especially the most shocking one during the readings for Ambrosio. But time wasn’t the only difference. The third film was produced by a woman.

Even though The One seemed to enjoy rather than endure her roles, she realised that she was making herself the avatar of other people’s work. In her words: “A camera decides who has sovereignty.” That’s why, even if the murder of John Durick was not premeditated, she did not hesitate to step into a dead man’s shoes.

This turbulent journey through Immortality shook something loose and I realised that I had largely accepted that sex scenes in intellectual films were justified without much question. It’s art, right? I’m not a big student of film but I had been confident that avant-garde work that transgressed boundaries in the 60s and 70s would not have inserted nude scenes without careful consideration. Immortality woke me up. They might be just as compromised as all that stuff that had gone rotten in my nostalgic 80s favourites.

After Minsky, even though The One didn’t need to present scenes for the institutional male gaze anymore, men had taken Marcel from her. She was still playing a man’s game, as a man, instead of playing a woman’s.

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“Later they made two Marys,” The One says of the Christian story, “but there was really only one.”

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Our emotional investment in celebrities is termed a “parasocial relationship” because it is a fake relationship, a self-delusion. I might think the world of Michael Sheen, especially as we both grew up in the same town, but he doesn’t know anything about me. But I probably don’t really know anything about him.

Although social media makes us feel we have closer, more intimate electronic relationships with cultural icons, these are all just projections. We construct entire identikit personalities from mere scraps – imagine trying to work out who someone is from promotional events, let alone any fictional portrayals. But then something goes wrong. Oh my God, they cheated on their husband. Oh my God, they shouted at a reporter. Oh my God, they’re actually a piece of shit.

The trouble is they were this real person all along and we have no way of really knowing them.

Sometimes I think that’s why who Marissa Marcel was doesn’t actually matter, because Marcel was (largely) her performances caught on camera. An actor is not immortal, but their image is. The fact that The One pretended to be Marissa Marcel makes no difference to Immortalized Marcel. “Vous vivre en moi,” The One told the French girl in the barn that had Marissa Marcel’s face, just before she ate her. “You live in me.” The industry wears artists as masks; the masks live on forever. You live in me.

But I only think this sometimes.

The rest of the time I feel something akin to grief. I had held onto the idea that Marcel was merely attached to The One, like a vehicle, and the self-confident and joyful Marissa Marcel I pieced together from the video clip confetti was a separate person. When I saw her body burn, that fiction collapsed. I could not ignore that they were The One and the same. I knew the Marcel fiction I had believed in was dead.

It shouldn’t matter. But it did. Does.

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I have much sympathy with Reno’s critique “Sam Barlow’s Immortality Was Interesting Until it Told Me What It Was”. The One is a powerful, monstrous entity that happily devours other women in pursuit of gain, all in the name of art. She has far more genuine freedom than any person in the story, aside from The Other One, which is a point she almost makes herself as part of an interview for Ambrosio. “I think as a young woman, you are expected to behave in a certain way. And there are cinematic types that are actually quite freeing.”

Perhaps there is still a truth here: that women were encouraged to dump on one another to further their own career. I don’t know too much about this but I’ve read more than one interview of women from a previous generation who think modern women just need to get a fucking grip; in particular, an interview with the late Diana Rigg in the UK TV magazine Radio Times, that I don’t have a copy of right now, is my touchstone here.

Viv Groskop has written about the time she might or might not have been a groupie for a Ukranian band, and going on a bit of soul-searching journey, asking what it meant to be a groupie and the negative connotations that went along with that. And whether you were used.

If you dig into any of these accounts of that time, you find women arguing about which of them were the “baby groupies” (with a lot of vagueness about who was underage when) and which were the “serious” muses. Few people want to be told that they were victims when they don’t see themselves like that. Des Barres has said: “I was the muse and I don’t care what people say about that. Groupies enhanced these people’s lives in a huge way. And if it weren’t for us, they would not be who they are.”

Perhaps Immortality’s worst crime is that The One could almost be read as a stand-in for the industry itself, corrupting its story about women in film. Can she really play the role of both the all-devouring film machine and its artist prey? Surely, you can’t have your cake and eat it? You can’t have two of everything.

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It’s never stated why The One is dying. Or even if she is actually dying as opposed to going through some form of breakdown.

The One admits that “When you take on too many forms it can make you crazy or powerful.” Plus, she has not rested for a long time – having been active for several decades – and is trying to juggle two different forms. The story implies that she has pushed herself beyond breaking point. She cannot survive after what she has done to herself.

There are many ways of looking at the ending but the one that interests me the most is how The One talks about the “human story” being “one of decline”. Not only is there a hard limit to how much art you can create but age and experience change you. That youthful exuberance, a lack of recognition of boundaries and embrace of imagination, changes as more lines are drawn on your face and around your life. But there is a difference between learning from your past and wallowing in its nostalgia.

The One is desperate to make art that will have power beyond the network of her many lives. Did she ever create the epic she wanted to? As John Durick, she created some successful films but she was still searching for a form of high art, something that was truly hers. The thrall of Ambrosio era Marcel is what propels The One to her terminal artwork. Has she betrayed herself by attempting to be that person again rather than who she had become? Wasn’t being the author of the great Christian story, told and retold across centuries, good enough?

Even immortals, it seems, have their limits.

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“And I was reborn.”

When I saw the resurrection of The Other One after his destruction through fire, I immediately realised how Immortality was going to end and the “purpose” of the assembled footage. The Other One was gifted new life through the audience, through being watched. But Marcel was never captured on the big screen thus it was only when “Sam Barlow” helped build computer software to ensure Marissa Marcel’s performances were not lost, could The One finally be resurrected through an audience. And this was to be the player’s fate.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the in-universe Sam Barlow was The Other One.

Of course, it’s apparently not all bad, because The Other One confesses that Amy, who he was reborn into, was not gone, that this revival was a fusion of immortal and the witness. But I’m not sure I want to carry The One around in my head–oops, too late–

Instead of “You live in me,” The One twists this line at the very end, “I’m part of you now.”

The immortals discovered the only way to be genuinely immortal is to be captured on screen and live on through generations of audiences. This is foreshadowed through Marcel’s bizarre suggestion during an Ambrosio interview that “if we’d make movies that show more of the body, it could be a powerful magic.” Perhaps being finite is the only way anything is beautiful, because you are unique and transitory, never to return again. And you can really seal the deal if you’ve fallen to a tragic end. You know, like Marilyn Monroe, who, well gee wouldya look at this, shares the same initials as Marissa Marcel. And The One even sings Happy Birthday Mr President to circle the reference.

Die young, live forever. That is Immortality.

As long as your films aren’t full of cringe that makes them difficult for future generations to appreciate. Maybe this form of immortality is just as vulnerable. Cultural momentum will eventually kill you.

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Last year, I watched Brand New Cherry Flavor. It’s a bizarre show, incredibly gross, and Rosa Salazar is excellent.

While a very different story, I was struck that it shares common ground with Immortality. It asks, for example, what a woman has to do to make it in the film industry. It also asks: is it worth it?

Sometimes, Brand New Cherry Flavor replies, it isn’t.

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God, I should stop typing but I’m not done. These words I’ve written and nudged and shaped into something for well over a year, still wail that they are unfinished and not ready to be revealed. I want to expel the words “The End” and be done with it. Publish and escape otherwise black goop will leak from my head. But no. It won’t let me go. Under the thesaurus entry for ‘keyboard’, they ought to add the synonym ‘handcuffs’.

So, here we go. This is what Immortality meant to me. The words I have been digging for, although the hole I’ve created feels more like a 3,000-word grave.

I saw The One as the artistic impulse, that drive to make the sublime. Many may fail, but a few of us will fly. And in her wake, she leaves broken lives, exhaustion and death. Like an addiction, the need to make something compels artists to cross boundaries, push themselves beyond physical limits and sometimes do questionable things. Keep going. She does not ask ‘Is it worth it?’ A few more words in this coffee shop and you’ll be done. Don’t go home yet. Just one… more… sentence…

I didn’t have as satisfying an answer as to the meaning of The Other One. I eventually settled on the lurking demon of imposter’s syndrome, always pecking at your heels, ruining every project you set your mind to. The procrastination anti-impulse. The why bother? The night terrors of doubt and the self-sabotage instinct. A demon that can never be truly vanquished but why would you want to? You are not a machine and all of that inspiration comes from your flawed and unreliable heart.

But the brutality of this compulsion to create. Its disregard for your health and sanity. The torment it inflicts if you try to walk away and take a break. It doesn’t love you. It just wants to use you as a vessel. Art is a fucking psychopath. And she won’t let me forget it.