In the Blink of an Eye

Best known for directing Pixar favourites like Finding Nemo and WALL-E, Andrew Stanton brings his eclectic touch to In the Blink of an Eye. His ambitious drama sees the lives of three people across history converge and interconnect.

It’s Pixar does 2001: A Space Odyssey, along with a hefty dose of The Tree of Life. The film opens with a stunning, overt allusion to Kubrick’s classic: a scene of prehistoric familial life. This story parallels that of Claire (an excellent Rashida Jones), a palaeontologist researcher in the present day. She struggles to stay afloat as she juggles her career with a new relationship (with a man fondly referred to as Gregg from Statistics, played by Daveed Diggs) and her ailing mother. Meanwhile, hundreds of years into the future, scientist Coakley (Kate McKinnon, excelling in a dramatic role) travels in a spacecraft to start life on a new planet. In place of the austere Hal, there’s Rosco, an AI bot that’s developed some sense of empathy, and Coakley’s only friend.

As with the aforementioned Terrence Malick film, there’s much existential rumination. The central character in each story experiences a loss. For the Neanderthal family, this means finding solace through community. For Claire, it enables her to realise what matters most. Coakley’s loss is perhaps the most resonant, as she ponders how we continue to nurture each other long after we die.

At a time when doomerist discourse is pervasive, the film is a welcome antidote to the rhetoric of despair. It champions living in the moment, embracing the ephemeral rather than searching for meaning through grandiose pursuits. And, as with Stanton’s WALL-E, there’s pertinent, albeit subtle, commentary on the late-stage capitalist destruction of Earth; at one point, for instance, Coakley notes that she’s been tasked with finding life on another planet, hinting that Earth has become uninhabitable.

On occasion, the philosophising on life and death veers a tad too far into the maudlin. For a feature with such lofty ambition, a modest runtime of 90-something minutes feels insufficient, as some of the relationships seem a little abridged. That said, Stanton’s vision is admirable and expands on evocative themes touched upon in his previous works.

A heartfelt, humanist meditation on meaning and purpose, In the Blink of an Eye tackles the eternal questions of existence. Best of all, it offers some much-needed hope during these particularly volatile times.