Duncan Jones
Source Code

"What would you do if you knew you had less than a minute to live?"

Looking at the work of the director, Duncan Jones seems to be a son of whom even a father already famous in his own right, like David Bowie, can be proud.

2009 was the year of the debut: "Moon," a visceral, poetic, and philosophical work, with only two actors on stage for (almost) the entire film, and a director who, even in his first movie, comes close to a masterpiece and is even ready to repeat the feat two years later.

Chicago. Images of the city's downtown skyline rapidly alternate with shots of an ordinary commuter train traveling toward the city, in a striking contrast between the view of downtown and the suburbs that gradually become the city.

A man (Jake Gyllenhaal) wakes up on our train, across from him a beautiful girl who knows him even if he does not recognize her; the man claims to be helicopter pilot Colter Stevens but quickly understands that something is wrong, the man in the mirror is not him but Sean, a simple teacher. As he realizes the absurd situation, everything blows up; all the passengers on the train die in an explosion that engulfs a freight train traveling in the opposite direction. Despite this, Colter is not dead; he wakes up in a strange capsule where he undergoes some memory tests and off he goes, repeating the experience. And then again, and again, before discovering that this is the "Source Code" program.

"quantum mechanics, parabolic calculus"

Rarely does such a cerebral idea hide such a pounding heart, this vitality, and this speed. Everything falls into place, yes, but with a hitch requiring adherence to the agreements, to the rules established by the inventor of the Source Code.

But there is more to "Source Code," there is a multi-layered story, a psychological component constantly in motion and increasingly rich, a puzzle to complete, there is time around which everything revolves, there is a future and the conviction that it cannot be changed, there is the challenge that leads to rebirth, improvement, and the much-aspired second chance.

As in the debut, Duncan Jones brings to the screen the nightmare of progress that for some is no longer such, that of a derailment of technological development, no longer the dreaded technocracy or even the self-destruction of the human race through its new toys but the reinstatement of old patterns, the exploitation of man by man. New technologies that lead to new slavery, a black paradox that touches even the unthinkable. New oppressions that lead to a new self-awareness, to new desires and new struggles. Until a hard-fought reassertion after so much suffering.

You can also find more in this increasingly human science fiction contrasted with an increasingly cynical science that one hopes is just a bad dream.