Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Alexander Skarsgard, Salem Hayek, Michael Mando, Johan Heldenbergh, Ayisha Issa, Mark Slacke, Sarah Goldberg, Frank Schorpion, Kwasi Songui, Conrad Pla, Julian Bailey, Jessica Greco, Robert Reynolds, Anna Maguire, Ryan Ali, Amada Silveria, Kaniehtiio Horn, Tyler Elliot Burke, Clara Nicholas, Bobo Vian, Igor Ovadis, Bonnie Mak, Bruce Dinsmore, Jonathan Dubsky, Anton Koval, Adam Bernett, Trinity Forrest, Nicholas Fransolet, Christian Jadah.
We live in an era when speed is a new god and the pursuit of the Dollar, the Euro and the Pound is driven by the extra gained fragment of Time, speed is the new face of divinity and it devours the soul as well as the mind as we chase the dream of finding quicker ways to make an extra buck.
That fragment of a second, so miniscule that you cannot even think a positive thought in the same time, is to a growing number of people all that stands between them and the opportunity to make millions; on the same scale as being impossible to witness the intricate beat of a hummingbird’s wings unless you caught it on film and then slowed down the action to marvel in its natural glory. So to the masses, to those with more important beliefs than digging up the Earth and laying down an electrical wire which will earn one person a fortune in the time it takes a wing to flap, unless you slow it right down, unless you see the numbers for what they really are, then it remains a mystery to which it doesn’t matter if there is an answer.
Time is money, so Time will have you believe, and in The Hummingbird Project, time is of the essence, it is the star of the show and whilst the film is not particularly based on any certain event, it has all the hallmarks of being true, of being a study in factuality; and it is to the reverence of Time in a more shaded way, a darker, more insidious religious type of experience that the film explores its own heartbeat.
When offered a deal to create a superfast line that will cut a millisecond of transactions, Vincent Zaleski and his cousin Anton Zaleski plough their considerable energy into taking on the landowner, the corporation they used to work for and nature herself in a battle that the only winner to surface is Time itself.
The film explores a deeper understanding of Time than might be first perceived. In both men, played with a certain sense of direct fascination by Jesse Eisenburg and Alexander Skarsgard, Time is a consequence of their actions, a potentially fatal illness and a concerned family life, the two paths that cannot be ignored, compete for the men’s attention, they loom over the project like sirens, but instead of luring the two entrepreneurs to their doom, they offer a solution that Time cannot steal, a life being cared for; a lesson that the film thankfully chooses to explore rather than relegate as most often do.
A film that asks the watcher to understand that Time doesn’t care; that a millisecond in the scheme of things means nothing, that the journey is not made up of millions but of the pleasure of being alive to savour the days and years ahead.
Ian D. Hall