False remembering, impossible vision
déjà vu and contemporary cinema
pp. 186-189
in: Roy Ascott, Gerald Bast, Wolfgang Fiel, Margarete Jahrmann, Ruth Schnell (eds), New realities, Berlin, Springer, 2009Abstract
Déjà vu (2006), directed by Tony Scott, is a film which, despite its title, never deals with the most stimulating keypoints regarding the eponymous perceptive phenomenon. It is just an ordinary action movie in which a few agents work with a revolutionary instrument that allows a sort of visual analysis of previous events. The technology adopted by these agents is related to a wormhole that offers them the possibility of examining the past, in order to re-live traumatic or violent situations (here, an explosion on a boat) modifying their developments. Utilising complex devices, they witness only once, and with a delay of four days and six hours, a number of events. But this is a superim position of different time levels, nothing strictly referring to déjà vu.