There are movies made from books after the book creates a current and a following of its own and catches the eye of an actor or a director. Then there are books written to be movies, like Recursion by Blake Crouch. Never heard of him before, I blindly picked the book from my public library's Overdrive, sorted by 'Most Popular at the Library', filtered to 'Available = Yes' and then read a quick blurb to make sure I can finish it off in a night or two. I was in a fiction reading mood after years, can't let that slip.
Blake Crouch is an interesting name, my thoughts went a full circle from William Blake to Crouching tiger tiger burning bright back to Blake, W. Maybe this Blake will be exciting. The blurb had enticing statements about a time travel/memory puzzle box.
Recursion has Christopher Nolan written all over it. There are three main characters - an NYC cop named Barry, Helena a neuroscientist/inventor and a billionaire technocrat - Marcus Slade. These characters embark on several repetitive cycles of time travel using a chair (which can also be considered a character) invented by Helena. The outsiders, which is everyone except the primary players, consider this groundhog day years as a syndrome called FMS - False Memory Syndrome. Helena was Helena Bonham Carter and Slade was Elon Musk in my mind the whole time I was reading the novel. Russell Crowe could be Barry.
The first 1/3rd of the story is amazing, the second 1/3rd is alright, but things are starting to venture into a Nolanesque maze of multiple timelines and the characters are glitching out. The last 1/3rd is the reader realizing none of these timelines matter, as we say in Indian Sanskrit, sarvam maya = everything is an illusion. Overall it is a fun ride, if you don't try to make sense of the groundhog years.
Further research into the cinematic prospects of Recursion brought up news stories that Shonda Rimes and Matt Reeves are adapting the novel to a movie and a series for Netflix.
....and then I watched the movie Boss Level. Its story line is extremely similar to Recursion except Boss Level has a video-game skin on top. In Boss Level it is only the day that repeats endlessly just like Bill Murray's day in Punxsutawney, not several years as it does in Recursion. Will review it as a separate post.
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