Film Review: The Portal (2019)

Twenty minutes into The Portal, you’d be forgiven for not knowing what you’re watching. By this stage, director/writer Jacqui Fifer and co-writer Tom Cronin have introduced the audience to nine people – one of whom is a cartoon and another of whom is a slow disembodied voice, subtitled in a cursive font. Each character seems to have their own thing going on and their connection to one another is unclear.

If this were an experimental art film, maybe such evasiveness could be justified. But The Portal is an earnest documentary. And ironically, amid all the confusion and discomforting narrative flow, it’s one advocating for the calming benefits of mindfulness. This much only becomes clear around the forty-minute mark, but by that point you may well have given up.

One can’t fault the intentions of The Portal, which takes the case studies of six Americans to argue for the life-changing impact of meditation. The execution, however, feels scattered. Viewed on their own terms, the stories of Heather Hennessy, Due Quach, Amandine Roche, Daniel Schmachtenberger, Mikey Seigel and Rabbi Ronnie Cahana are engaging enough; the hardships they describe in their lives, while not always monumental, help us empathise with what they’ve been through. But much like watching television with a friend addicted to channel surfing, it’s hard to truly care about any individual episode; as soon as you feel close to understanding someone’s relevance to the film’s holistic goals, the director substitutes them for another. It’s a disorienting feeling for the audience, who are always withheld more information than what they deserve. For a poorly written thriller or suspense, such a technique is forgivable. For a documentary, it feels onerous to be given so much work.

Adding to the confusion is the inclusion of three university-educated talking heads and a robot, whose contributions on the topics of evolution, psychology, artificial intelligence and love muddy the film’s contention. Even once you’ve sat through all 90 minutes, their additions to the discussion seem tenuous at best, as they attempt to articulate the broader ramifications of our six protagonists without ever referencing any of them directly. Their meditative habits are apparently the only thing tying them all together, however the film prefers to spend time on adjacent topics and personal tangents.

If The Portal‘s grand manifesto is to get people invested in the mindfulness revolution, it unfortunately misses the mark. The most worrying thing is that the film is not calming in any way – it’s a sensory overload with animations, voiceovers, stock footage and wacky titles constantly interrupting the flow. It feels more like a third draft than a final product, held back by what feels like five editors fighting to include the latest gimmick they recently learned at their respective film school.

It’s a shame the film is as scattered as it is because the central thesis it eventually reaches – that unlocking the untapped power of the mind can help fix some of society’s biggest problems – is quite compelling in its own right. The Portal demands to be a significant piece of a cinema, but unfortunately is just another example of a production team trying to bite off more than they can chew.

The Portal is released in selected Australian cinemas from 17 October.

1.5 blergs

 

 

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2 Comments

  • It felt like an MTV intro to meditation and was made by someone young who just got introduced to it. It was an ordeal to sit through and the bits that stood out had nothing to do with meditation! The rapper was great, the rabbi’s story was awful, the rich guy’s giant moles on his face were distracting – worst movie ever.

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