Writer and director Jared Moshe’s Aporia recently screened at Fantasia International Film Festival. The film stars Judy Greer and Edi Gathegi, and poses some interesting moral quandaries which are explored through the age-old science-fiction staple, the time machine.
Since losing her husband Mal (Edi Gathegi) in a drunk-driving incident, Sophie (Judy Greer) has struggled to manage crippling grief, a full-time job, and the demands of parenting her devastated teenage daughter (Faithe Herman). When her husband’s best friend Jabir (Payman Maadi), a former physicist, reveals that he has been building a time-bending machine that could restore her former life, Sophie will be faced with an impossible choice—and unforeseeable consequences.Aporia will next arrive in US cinemas from 11th August. Ahead of the release we spoke with Jared Moshe to discuss Aporia in more detail.
Why do you think audiences are so fascinated by time travel stories?
I think there’s two things that play into it. I think one is there’s nostalgia and a mystery of the past. We romanticise different periods in our head and people are really interested in understanding them because of that. It’s why people go to Renaissance Fairs. There’s this wanting to understand what the past was and where we came from. We see stories from the past so there’s an idea to experience it.
I also think as a society people think about the past and wonder what choices they could make. I think it’s very human nature to be like “oh man, did I say the right thing,” or “should have taken this job?” “Oh my God, what if I had been this major in college instead of that major.” All the little things “what if I’d gone out on that date?” or “what if I didn’t go out on that date?” It’s natural to ask questions about the different paths we could have taken and I think time travel is a way to explore that.
Was it those sorts of thoughts and feelings that inspired the idea?
A little bit. I had this idea in my head – what happens if you had a gun that could murder people in the past? – but I never really knew what to do with it. I was never really interested in doing the, “okay, let’s go kill baby Hitler” kind of thing. That didn’t really appeal to me. It felt kind of trite. But when my son was born, the world became a lot scarier and a lot more uncertain. I found myself wrestling with suddenly new feelings of uncertainty. Wondering “when do I get my health insurance? Where’s my next paycheck coming from? What’s going on?” Everything feeling really scary and dangerous. I wanted to try to explore those feelings through a story in a film. As I was trying to find a way to do that, the idea of the gun that murdered people in the past sort of appeared. I wondered what happens if your family is broken and you try to use that machine to pull it back to the norm you know, as a way to control and fight against that uncertainty that’s out there.
With such a rich history of time machines on screen, how difficult was it to devise some sort of pseudo science, at least for how your machine was going to work?
I always like to call it a time travel movie that never goes back in time. The pseudoscience… I tried to come up with something that felt somewhat possible. The idea of we have particle accelerators, we have to find ways to move particles at speeds almost… and what happens if you could send a particle back in time and then is there a way to use that to actually affect the past. It was trying to figure out what a particle could do, and how we could explain it in a way that felt reasonable enough that it made sense.
At the same time I wanted the machine to also feel like a hunk of junk that could burn down the building at any second. So often in these movies it’s the rich and powerful who have these machines. This is in Beverly Hills and the billionaire put everything he could to do this. I like the idea of, nah, this is the Uber driver and the nurse and the dad on disability. They don’t have a lot of… they don’t have extra money. They have this idea and they’re scraping it together from salvage, car parts, junk they grabbed from the guy who drives around and picks up scrap metal and made this thing that probably caught on fire a hundred times before it even slightly worked. You know that’s just as likely to burn down the building than it is to actually affect the past.That’s how I really wanted it to feel.
Something important that the film highlights is Jabir’s new life. A former physicist in his own country, he now works as a cab driver. This is a common immigrant story, why was it important to you to tell this side of his story?
It was really important. I wanted this machine to be built by a guy you probably wouldn’t give a second look at. Jabir from the earliest point in the story… it was really important to me that we have this immigrant character who is the genius, who is the guy who can make the most impressive machine in the world, but he does it in an apartment that you wouldn’t give a second look to. I always sort of thought, what if the story takes place in those streets that you cut down on your way to work or something. The places that are cut through streets. There’s nothing there, but in fact, the most powerful machine in the world is behind this wall and it’s built by a dude who you think just drives you around.
It was also really important to me that Jabir never become a villain in this movie because I think there’s a really easy way to make him into the villain. But I wanted people to empathise with him and have his story be as emotionally impactful as Sophie and Mal’s, which is why I wrote it. I always wanted Payman Maadi to play that role. I was so excited to get him because he brings that depth and humanity to that character.
Judy Greer is better known to many for her work within comedy, what does she bring to the role of Sophie?
I always sort of think that this is a story focused on people you don’t expect to be paying attention to. I think Judy’s background as the person who’s always the sidekick, the comic relief, is always the best friend, we’re turning the camera on the person who never gets the camera on her. I think that brings a lot just for the audience to understand who she is.
I think part of the reason Judy gets so much comedic work is well, she’s a very funny person, but she’s also got a very expressive face and she can emotionally show emotion on it really quickly and turn it really quickly. David Gordon Green did that really well in the first Halloween, when she’s scared and terrified and suddenly her face shifts and she’s tough as nails. He used that to his advantage there. I think that her ability to show emotion on her face is actually really rich for drama. I was really excited to be able to work with her and give her this opportunity because Judy is such an incredible actor. I hope more people will see her as the talent in the lead role that she should be.
What do you hope the audience takes from Aporia?
I think you’re going to seek this movie out because it’s going to make you value the people you love. I think at the end of this movie you’re going to value the people you love even more. We had a notes screening of the movie early on and one of my friends who was a filmmaker was giving me all these notes and blah blah blah and then he texted me after he got home, “I went home and hugged my kid.” That’s exactly what I want people to do. I think the world is really scary. We’re bombarded with how awful the future is going to be and how dangerous it is, and I think this movie is aspirational in the positivity, and hopefully at the end of the day, even in its sadness.
Aporia is released in US cinemas on 11th August 2023.
