In the Vortex Trilogy, Adam Egypt Mortimer has created a truly personal vision; a unique mythos imbues his work. There was a time when what Mortimer is doing wasn’t such an outlier. Before the bottom line’s centrality reigned supreme, directors and writers took financial risks as they fashioned immersive worlds; storytellers weaved narratives; they rolled the dice on the strength of these stories alone.
On the periphery of popular culture, Mortimer and a handful of filmmakers are bucking trends. With luck, these mavericks will continue to find funding via seditious stalwarts ensconced in #show business. Actor Elijah Wood and producer Dallas Sonnier being standout examples of men brave enough to put their money into small, independent works that don’t tread the same tired ‘socio-cultural sensitivity’ route every Zeitgeistian clout chaser infrequently succumbs to. Wood has stated that the intersection of high and low culture or size of budget isn’t the priority; it just so happens that today, largely, smaller films take storytelling seriously, while the normalisation of blockbusters leans into total reliance on excessive CGI (of varying quality) and 101 star power.
Mortimer’s work is substantially different. Archenemy (2020) and Daniel Isn’t Real (2019) share the same universe and associative metaphysics: their essence is, at heart, about ‘unbelievable’ men. Both respective protagonists - Max and Luke - exist on the edges of society, considered crazy and beyond redemption. They must prove their worth through a great, sustained struggle: Polemos; and, ultimately, sacrifice themselves in Homeric silence… Just to be believed. Whether intentional or not, Mortimer has tapped into a contemporary dilemma; men always carried the dark, fixated on a light somewhere along the tunnel’s way - but this hope laden light flickers tenuously; all that’s left is a dim haze obfuscating a luminescent, healing glow.
There is, certainly, a horrific monism lurking under the surface of both films. This cosmic terror belittles anthrocentric arrogance through the external intrusion of a devilish outsider in Daniel Isn’t real, and via the internal meddling of Archenemy: opening up of multiple realms via high-technology endangers man’s understanding of spatial and temporal reality and his place in it. The inescapable force of the vortex - Mortimer’s primary motif - is fitting. For his film universe is vortexed all the way down. Man’s task is to accept the direction in which they flow.
