This Indie 'Oppenheimer' Looks at the Moral Cost of Second Chances

By Sara Clements | Film | August 17, 2023 |

By Sara Clements | Film | August 17, 2023 |

In philosophy, an aporia is defined as a conundrum. It’s a fitting title to use for Jared Moshe’s latest film. Aporia, in theatres now, is the best embodiment of the ultimate conundrum, of the quantum and emotional kinds. The immense psychological struggle that the film’s characters experience comes with a once-in-a-lifetime leap. Exploring both the beauty and cruelty of the universe, the film grapples with the consequences of actions that offer one family a second chance. It’s a human story about the power of love, grief, and its influence on our lives when everything has been stripped away.

A score, space ambient in influence, fills Aporia’s opening frames with a cosmic rhythm. Working the scene with it are close-up images of the nuts and bolts of a machine. This futuristic device of rusty metal and wire is, for many reasons, the film’s main character. Its existence propels the story and characters forward, as it presents the only hope Sophie (Judy Greer) has of seeing her deceased husband again. Imagine you lost your husband to the negligence of a drunk driver and are now presented with the existence of a machine that is a gun that can fire a bullet into the past — a killing time machine. If you could save your husband by killing the drunk driver first, would you do it?

Coping with her husband Mal (Edi Gathegi)’s death has been unbearable for Sophie, especially as she sees how grief is affecting her daughter, Riley (Faithe Herman). She’s no longer doing well in school and is unmotivated to keep pursuing her hobbies. As a physicist with a love for space, Mal inspired Riley to love it too. But now, it’s just a reminder of her father — the corner of a torn-down space poster on the wall is the only thing left of those memories. Sophie is struggling to connect with Riley, who is pushing her away. This is a pair drowning in grief, felt effectively by the profound, grounded performances of its players; Greer especially, who can evoke immense emotion even in the stillness of the piece.

The path to moving forward from grief seems way off in the distance for Sophie and her daughter. The desperate mother seeks comfort in Jabir (Payman Maadi), a friend of Mal’s, who reveals to her that he’s been building something: a life-changing invention that could bring her husband back to life. It’s a ridiculous, mathematically complicated idea that seems too insane to believe, and too good to be true. Sophie expresses how impossible the resurrection of her husband is, but Jabir responds, “What harm is there in trying?”

As the film demonstrates for most of its runtime, there is a lot of harm in trying. Much happens in the film’s first 30 minutes and it makes the story feel like it’s moving at an unusually quick pace. There isn’t much time to process the before and after pressing the kill switch, but getting a lot out of the way early does create a deep exploration of guilt and consequence. This is a film all about consequences, not unlike another recent title, Oppenheimer. Now, this machine may not be at atomic levels, and this is a fictional story, but it does dive into similar themes. Both J. Robert Oppenheimer and the characters in Aporia must wrestle with the moral cost of their inventions — both becoming Death, the destroyer of worlds. The former is on a much larger scale, of course, but the latter still plays God. And as a result, twists their own fate. In Nolan’s masterpiece, we see Oppenheimer wrestle with the consequences of his actions by being overwhelmed by flashes of destruction and the vision of an assembly audience melting into charred carcasses around him. His grappling with the moral implications of his actions is visual, wordless, and internal. In Aporia, we hear and see all the conflict externally and for a much more dedicated time frame.

You can’t mess with the cards that the universe has dealt, Aporia proves as much. Sophie’s life becomes almost unrecognizable as a result of trying to do what is believed to be a good thing: saving people. If you have the power to do that, why not use it? The fear that Sophie feels, as well as the guilt she carries as a result of her actions, messes with her immensely. She becomes twisted in an unmanageable web, and it’s distressing to watch, with the open ending speaking to how we often forget or chose to ignore the actions of our past. Instead of putting them to bed, they fester and linger until a time comes when we make the same mistakes again when we already know the consequences. Something that’s meant to advance our lives or to save others may have more moral complications than we could predict, so how do we flip the switch?