Title: Doctor Strange
Director: Scott Derrickson
Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Mads Mikkelsen, Rachel McAdams, Tilda Swinton, Michael Stuhlbarg, Scott Adkins, Amy Landecker, Tony Paul West, Pezhmaan Alicia
‘Doctor Strange’ is a Marvel-ous psychedelic trip! Benedict Cumberbatch plays the titular superhero role, a skilled neurosurgeon who loses control over his hands after a car accident. Doctor Stephen Strange’s journey of healing will draw him into the world of the mystic arts, through a series of visually spectacular adventures.
Doctor Strange must act as an intermediary between the real world and what lies beyond, utilising a vast array of supernatural abilities and artifacts to protect the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The ingredients are diverse, as faith and rationality find a meeting point, whilst wandering through the unification theory, the string theory and quantum gravity.
The secrets of the universe are revealed with imaginative erudition. Thus, audiences confront the mystery of consciousness, and are reminded of the answers we still seek, the questions we haven’t posed yet, and the phenomenas for which we may never have the cognitive capacity to understand.
Metaphysics and science coalesce in a kaleidoscopic experience, where Lewis Carroll meets Joseph Murray. The topology of time is moulded into a mind-gobbling mise-en-scène, where special effects intertwine with Aristotelianism and Platonism. Reductionism and Absolutism with Respect to Time become the grounds for a fantastical film directed by Scott Derrickson, in which world-bending scenes, witty dialogues sprinkled with comedy and a talented cast (Benedict Cumberbatch, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Rachel McAdams, Benedict Wong, Michael Stuhlbarg, Benjamin Bratt, Scott Adkins, Mads Mikkelsen, and Tilda Swinton), entertain and provide food for thought.
The blockbuster charms with the beauties of the real world (Nepal, Hong Kong, London, New York), that morph into a prismatic wonderland, where Comic book characters face an epistemological battle.
Technical: A*
Acting: A
Story: B+
Overall: A-
Written by: Chiara Spagnoli Gabardi
