Feature: The Infinite Man

Hugh Sullivan’s debut feature The Infinite Man is an intricately conceived comedy about the thin line between self-improvement and self-destruction. Dean (Josh McConville), a socially awkward but brainy inventor, is a firm believer in the adage that practice makes perfect. When his attempt to stage a perfect romantic getaway with his girlfriend Lana (Hannah Marshall) goes awry – caused in part by the unanticipated appearance of her macho ex, Terry (Alex Dimitriades) – he develops a time travel device that allows him to go back and tinker with the events of the weekend until he can make them right. But as he travels back, Dean finds himself tangled up in a time loop, and has to grapple with the competition of his past and future selves, as the possibility of neatly patching things up with Lana grows increasingly remote.  

Shooting for thirty days in a desolate looking South Australian motel on what seems to be the edge of the desert, with a cast of only three, Sullivan has made a film that is woozily romantic and dryly funny, as well as a stellar example of conceptual ingenuity in the face of limited resources. In the wake of a successful first screening at the Melbourne International Film Festival, I spoke with Sullivan about The Infinite Man’s complicated inception, and the meaning of time travel.

The metaphorical possibilities of time travel are, Sullivan tells me, “quite rich”, but the film wisely doesn’t linger over just one. Instead, the central conceit is pushed and bent so that it gathers meaning as the story goes along. The time travel gimmick begins as a way for Dean to go back and correct past mistakes, but pretty soon he’s locked in a contest with past and future versions of himself, and his consequent insecurity delves right down into the heart of the problems of that which lie between him and Lana.

Another thing on Sullivan’s mind was the issue of mistaken assumptions: “[s]ometimes you might operate under a certain basic misunderstanding or misreading of a situation and then later you come to realise that the truth was in fact quite different than you perceived it at the time.” As he loops back over the same weekend, Dean (and the audience) is given ample opportunity by Sullivan’s script to learn that there is nothing simple or clear about the solutions offered by travelling back in time, or about the impulses that got him there.

Sullivan credits the “forward thinking” people at the South Australian Film Corporation for The Infinite Man’s existence. The project was funded through SAFC’s FilmLab initiative, which also produced this year’s acclaimed gender-transition drama 52 Tuesdays. FilmLab finances projects to the modest tune of about $350,000, and with one key location, three actors, and minimal frills; The Infinite Man is a film of modest means. Nevertheless, it appears energized by its limitations.

As Sullivan points out, although the time travel story is a metaphorical means for exploring Dean’s faults as a character, it is also a way to work to budget. For instance, the production was able to limit the project to one primary location in a way that stays narratively motivated. It’s easy for a low budget film to feel constrained by a lack of resources, and there can be a distinct discomfort as an audience member in watching a film’s reach so obviously exceed its grasp. But Sullivan and his crew seem to have worked conscientiously to turn The Infinite Man’s restrictions into advantages.

This layering of meaning took time to develop, but the film does feel rigorously thought-through as a result – despite the headaches the story’s tangled, interlocking chronology presented. Even minor changes to a scene during the development process had what Sullivan’s refers to as a “terrible knock-on effect”, necessitating further changes to all the scenes that play off it, which in turn necessitated even more alterations; a process of “continual complication”.

As Sullivan describes it, “the story becomes richer” as it goes along. The narrative has been designed to circulate around and re-contextualise the same handful of events. Dean, Lana, and Terry find themselves re-playing the same scenes, or observing them from afar, as they dodge around the various temporally distinct versions of themselves. As these moments repeat, the characters’ (and the audiences’) understanding of the motivations and subtext in each is continually revised.

Sullivan admits that this made for a challenging experience for McConville, Marshall, and Dimitriades, who had to keep track of the very non-linear journey their characters make, and even, in some cases, play scenes opposite themselves. Much of the film’s rehearsal process was apparently spent poring over diagrams, helping the actors map out each scene’s placement in the film’s circuitous time-line.

The story is tightly nested into itself, with each scene playing off and repeating key elements from a previous one, and if any footage from the shoot were out of balance the whole thing would fall to pieces. But the film is confidently pieced together. Despite the complexity of arranging the various narrative pieces, Sullivan characterises the four-month editing process as “surprisingly smooth”, a benefit he attributes to the film’s thorough development: “[w]ith a film like this you can’t go messing with the chronology too much. It has to fit together. So that kind of made it easy. There wasn’t so much room for experimentation. It had to adhere to a certain order.”

The film had a much acclaimed world premiere at Texas’ South by Southwest festival in March, and has since played at the Edinburgh Film Festival. Sullivan’s pleasure at warm reception it received is still palpable. “At every step of the way we had no idea how it would be received by an audience. It was really very hard to tell with this film. So we were incredibly relieved when they seemed to connect right away.”

But this reception is hardly surprising, given the thoughtfulness on display in this film. The Infinite Man is an elegant puzzle, skillfully assembled.