D Paul Cox | Australia, India, 2015
Force of Destiny follows the story of a middle-aged sculptor, Robert (David Wenham) who is diagnosed with cancer while falling in love with an amateur sculptor, Maya played by Indian actress Shahana Goswami. The cinematography style involved long tracking shots and staging the actors around the camera. This staging and acting style is reminiscent of theatre performances however this method makes the audience aware that they are watching a film. Also, in some places the acting was clunky and over emphasised especially the scenes in the hospital where non-professional actors were used.
There were recurring motifs throughout the film such as the use of stock footage of birds flying and a recreation of an adolescent Robert with his mother in a park, before she passed away from the same disease Robert has been diagnosed with. These motifs do provide a sense that Robert is contemplating his own existence however they are repeated several times throughout the narrative and disrupt the flow of the story.
The narrative itself contained drawn out sequences and long scenes with dialogue involving complex ideas presented in abstract ways, such as the description of the geometry of a black hole. It was an interesting detour in the narrative and almost poetic.
Force of Destiny is a slow burning, romantic drama and overall the film has a coherent narrative. However the theatrical style used was distracting to the story and the long scenes with drawn out dialogue evolved into abstraction.
