Today, Todd and Mary are discuss Synchronic, the new movie from directors Benson and Moorhead, which is all about time travel, family, and how the past sucks.

Mary: So I’ve seen a few Benson and Moorhead movies, but you’ve seen one more than I have. Do you want to talk about who they are, what this movie is about, and why we watched it?

Todd: Yes! Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead are the rare pair of directors who are not siblings (though they have played them in their films). I first heard of them through their film Resolution (2012) and their follow-up Spring (2014). Their last film, The Endless (where they play brothers), got them a lot of traction and led to this film, Synchronic, which is still definitely an indie film, but features “real” actors like Anthony Mackie, Jamie Dornan, and Katie Aselton.

Mary: I still refer to them as “the director brothers” even though they definitely aren’t related, and I’m sorry for that. 

Todd: I mean, I get it. Synchronic follows two ambulance drivers in New Orleans, Steve and Dennis, who are getting older and are starting to contemplate what it all means, man. They have run across a string of weird overdoses all related to a drug called Synchronic (it’s the name of the movie!) and then things get even weirder from there! Is this where we say things will be spoiled?

Mary: Yes, we are definitely going to spoil things from here, although...I don’t really think we should spoil the ending. I think this film is more interesting in the big questions it asks, not the actual plot. 

Todd: Yeah, I think that’s true. The reason we are talking about this movie is that, basically, we watched The Endless when it came out a few years ago because it is all about cults and weird timey-wimey stuff, and I figured you would be interested. Once we had watched that, we had to watch Resolution, and since I am more or less a Benson and Moorhead stan at this point, I pre-ordered the blu-ray of Synchronic as soon as I can, leading us to where we are today.

Mary: Look, I love time travel stuff. I love questions about time. The Time Traveler’s Wife was a formative novel for me. 

What’s interesting about Synchronic, and what I think is interesting about Benson and Moorhead’s directing style in general, is that they’re not afraid of a slow build up. Sure, there might be things early in the movie that make you go, huh?, but they save their big reveals for the end. I think that Synchronic both does and does not follow that pattern. Yes, there are exciting things in the latter third of the movie, but I think that most of the interesting stuff was paced really well throughout. This wouldn’t be possible without the cast, which was stacked. I don’t know that people consider Anthony Mackie a great actor or anything, but he really is. He’s more than a Marvel superhero. I’m not sure if any of this makes sense. To be fair, we just watched the movie and it’s all very fresh! 

Todd: For sure! Anthony Mackie is so great here, which is good, because much of the film rests on his shoulders, and he carries it off very well throughout. Even Jamie Dornan, who I can’t really think of outside of Fifty Shades, is not a detriment to the film. (Look, his American accent is passable, and he can act, but he is also saddled with an unfortunate character whose main trait is that he feels guilty about not being as happy about his marriage as his obviously-too-good-for-him-wife.)

One thing that I saw written about a lot in the months (year? Obviously, Covid affected the release strategy of this film, which IMDB lists as a 2019 release somehow) leading up to the film’s release is the way that it tackles the issue of race, and while we are both white–as is Justin Benson, the screenwriter–I think we would do a disservice to the film to not discuss its handling of race, especially since Anthony Mackie’s Steve is the one doing the bulk of the time travel here.

Mary: It’s important to specify, I don’t think this movie is trying to make a huge political statement about race, and I don’t think it’s one of the main foci of the story, but with a film set in New Orleans, in the present day, it would be foolish to act like race isn’t an issue that comes up in daily life. What impressed me most was the way discussion about race was woven in almost seamlessly, sometimes in a joking way, but respectfully (if that makes sense). For example, early in the movie Steve attends a party in a park where he ends up holding Dennis’s one year old for a moment. When the baby starts crying, Steve laughs and says, “Racist-ass baby.” This is clearly a joke between friends, and they both laugh, but it acknowledges that both characters are aware that race is a social issue in the world. 

Also, we can’t get around Steve’s time travel, which prompts him to say, repeatedly, “The past sucks!” And, I mean, it would. It would suck in general, but going back in time as a Black man? Awful. Steve travels back to see Haitians in New Orleans. He goes back to some battle in early American history. Not a good place to be. Especially when a man comes out of nowhere calling you a slave. It made me wonder–it’s not really plausible for Steve to stay in the past if he gets stranded, is it? He’s not going to be able to build any sort of life. This isn’t Outlander. 

Todd: Yeah, what I really appreciate about the film is that it doesn’t present time travel as a fantasy. It is truly a nightmare almost every time. Even moments of connection, like Steve sharing a fire with an Ice Age-era man, mostly just prompt him to remark on how awful the past is. The movie does not treat the characters, or its story, as colorblind, but instead it manages to integrate race in a realistic way without talking down to the characters or the audience.

Along with its depictions of race, I really enjoyed the way that the film portrays New Orleans. It often feels like the city is treated as a caricature of itself, all vines hanging from porticos and people dancing and constant parades, but that’s not really the New Orleans we see in this film. Instead, it is mostly a dirty, kind of shabby city where people are just doing the best they can to survive. In a lot of ways, it reminded me of one of my other favorite depictions of New Orleans in recent memory the Freeform show Cloak and Dagger. It really felt like Benson and Moorhead had a real love, or at least appreciation, for what the city is really like, and they didn’t come in with their own view of what the city is. They just let the city speak for itself, without exoticizing it. 

Mary: Oh, definitely. I’m not going to market myself as an expert on New Orleans or anything, but Synchronic both treated the city as its own distinct area of the world (unlike a lot of films that use New Orleans for a location but strip any of its individuality), while not making it a fantasy. There’s a darkness to New Orleans here, but it’s not in the way you’d think. No witches or Voodoo, not really. Just people ODing on drugs, lots of drinking, and one sad strip club. 

I think Synchronic is doing something that all of Benson and Moorhead’s work seems to get at: thinking about family and relationships while throwing a little science fiction in there, just for fun. The time travel stuff figures heavy in the plot, but is the movie really about time travel, or is it more about a friendship between two dudes? A man trying to hold onto his family? The science fiction aspects of it are almost secondary.

Which, like, this is why I go on about science fiction so much. When it’s done well, it’s a great vehicle to pose bigger questions about the world. Did you have a favorite part you want to talk about? Anything that really stuck out to you?

Todd: Gosh, yes, I agree with this so much. There is a certain camera move that repeats a lot throughout the film that sort of knocked me on my back each time. The camera would be looking at a character (usually Steve) and then flip up until it is looking at the night sky, a constellation arcing its way through our character’s point of view. One of the things that draws me back to Benson and Moorhead is that they really know how to shoot a film in a way that is both interesting and also thematically important.

But to get back to your idea of what this film is about--yes! It does feel like the film is trying to say something about family and friendship and what one should really value. It is also using its time travel conceit as a way to talk about grief and the inability to let someone go. To keep from getting too spoiler-y, several characters are dealing with grief and trauma, and the time travel aspect works as a way to help them figure out those emotions.

Mary: Um, what about my favorite moment? 

Todd: Oh, yes! What was your favorite moment?

Mary: Thank you for asking. Anyway. It’s kind of a cliché, but my favorite moment comes late in the movie, during a big emotional breakthrough for Dennis and Steve. Again, I don’t want to give too much plot away, but there’s a moment when Steve looks out across the river at New Orleans, all lit up at night and kind of twinkling over the water, and he talks about how the present moment is a gift we don’t always think about. I mean, yes yes, we always hear people talk about how being in the present is important, but it’s nicely framed when the person saying it has literally travelled through time throughout the whole movie. The present is a gift both in terms of it not being the past (which sucks, as Steve tells us many times), but also because of all the moments that led up to the present. I think the film communicates some themes that a lot of middle aged moms try to tell us about in our daily lives, but like, without being too mushy or saccharine. This does, in a lot of ways, feel like a “guys being dudes” movie with a little bit of feelings thrown in. That’s not really being fair to it, but you know. 

Todd: 100%. At one point, Steve and Dennis shake hands, and I almost laughed, because I wanted them to hug instead. But it’s not who they are. They’re bros, and they’re friends, and they’ll be there for each other. Allways. 

One thing that strikes me as true about this film and all the other Benson and Moorhead films I have seen is that they are even better the 2nd time around. Something tells me Synchronic might be playing in the back of my mind for a while, and I cannot wait to sit down and watch it again some day.

Mary: Oh yeah, I’ll definitely be thinking about it for a while. After watching Synchronic, it kind of made me want to revisit The Endless. 

Todd: And we still need to watch Spring! Look, these guys make good movies!

Mary: Oh, for sure. Synchronic is available to rent online, or you could go old school and just buy the Blu-Ray like old Todd here. 

Todd: *tips hat* Top o’ the mornin’, ol’ chap! I’m old!

Mary: And with that, we are off to go time travel.