In keeping with its title, Dissonance had a very erratic and unpredictable structure. The film rapidly cuts between past and present, which is often very disorienting to a viewer. Adam appears to have flashbacks to his childhood, which was full of abuse at the hands of his father, but it’s initially difficult to figure out who he is. Another character, Sister Mary, is initially shown as a drug addict who picks up men at bars, and it is vaguely implied that she later gives this life up to become a nun, however it’s hard to pick this up. (I initially thought that she was a nun during the day and a hooker at night, which seems like a very odd character.)
I can understand a desire to disorient an audience – after it was done quite successfully in the film Memento, Hollywood seemed to flock toward movies that went against convention and tipped the audience on their heads unexpectedly. The challenge, however, is giving the correct amount of disorientation without making people walk out with a headache. Memento’s concept of telling a story backwards was disorienting at first, but once a viewer got used to the idea it was fairly easy to follow and to watch. Dissonance, however, seems to jump back and forth between past, present, and even imagined futures without any clear structure. At the very least, the scenes from the past need to be identified by some sort of visual cue, such as showing them in black and white or over-saturation. And the cuts need to be specified as well, perhaps with some sort of white flash effect. I realize its very clichéd to do flashbacks in this manner, but it’s something that an audience will easily identify, which is very important if a movie wants to jump around a lot.
(Note to the director – I don’t mean to imply that one must use black-and-white or super-saturated footage and a white flash transition to indicate a flashback, those are just the most common effects used. It’s perfectly acceptable to use something different and unique, so long as one is consistent and doesn’t deviate from the established convention. An audience can usually pick up the meaning behind any new effect, but constantly changing it up will only confuse them.)
Perhaps the trickiest acting job in this film was that of the character of Adam, whom we later discover is torn between two competing personalities – his own and his supposed friend, Dev, who encourages him in acts of mayhem and murder. Once this instance of multiple personalities is revealed, the actor portraying Adam did a pretty good job of switching back and forth, as well as differentiating between the two personalities. On another note, I also appreciated the use of actors who spoke an Afghan language, as it helped to add to their characters.
That being said, however, I was rather disappointed with some of the acting. There were some scenes that were very well done, but others that seemed to be lacking. In the latter case, often the dialogue sounded flat and forced, which makes me suspect that the script is partially to blame for these instances. There is always a temptation to make one’s characters give profound dissertations or dramatic speeches, but in many cases the old proverb is often correct – “speech is silver, but silence is golden.”
