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[Contains plot spoilers]
Upon leaving the theater, there's a lot of puzzlement. It feels like, especially in the end, you've witnessed a barrage of temporal paradoxes. But upon calm reflection, you realize, and this is one of the film's great merits, that it more or less all comes together, and the many paradoxes and time jumps have an overall consistency. So from a screenplay perspective, it's undeniable that Predestination is something truly ambitious for the world of science fiction. It's a fascinating labyrinth of time jumps; if you've lost the thread, I point you to this handy timeline.
Not innovative but very well played is the card of the character meeting themselves. Obviously, don't read if you haven't seen it yet, but I think it's the first time in cinema history that a woman mates with her future self, who has meanwhile become a man after childbirth. Sure, it's an impossible paradox (and there are many others), but it's a really amusing gimmick. In the end, you discover it's always the same person doing everything, and we're fine with it: it's a loop, a "snake biting its tail." It doesn't matter much if it's logically contradictory; we like cinema that knows how to ignore realism when it would dampen the spectacle.
If we want to find the reasons why the film doesn't quite achieve masterpiece status, then we need to talk about the direction, structure, and tone. Told from the end, it’s all very cool, but in reality, for a good half of it, we have to endure the story of Jane/John, narrated in an absolutely linear, almost verbose way, and rendered with glossy and tearful tones. The directors push too hard on the sentimental side of things, exaggerating details that are not important and jarring in a film that wants to be science fiction. There's excessive use of color in differentiating the various time planes. The insistence is a sign of insecurity and distrust, as if the Spierig brothers were afraid the audience would have a hard time understanding and thus everything needed to be made very evident, almost caricatured. Moreover, this tendency conflicts with the complexity of the finale, which on the contrary would have required a few more minutes of explanation.
For example, it's not perfectly clear why Ethan Hawke (calling him this to distinguish from John) knows Fizzle Bomber is in that particular place when John gets burned in the face. And then, if [spoiler] he himself is John, he should know that person is himself at another time in his life. This point is quite problematic, maybe I didn't quite understand it. Another slightly awkward thing is the change in facial features between John and Ethan. I mean, they are too different to be the same person.
Considering the limited budget, Predestination is indeed a good film. Hollywood should take note: you don't need countless millions to make an intriguing film, you need ambitious scripts like this one, which, by the way, faithfully respects Heinlein's story.
7/10
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