Absolutely amazing

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

You're always hoping for something good. Whether it's a movie or a song or a plate of spaghetti, you're always hoping it'll be satisfying or fulfilling. That doesn't always happen, of course, but even when things aren't good, they can still be enjoyable. And not just in a Mystery Science Theater 3000 "Let's make fun of how bad it is" way. Sometimes a failed attempt can be more entertaining than a seamless success.Trauma isn't good, but it also isn't bad. Trauma just…isn't.The movie starts out with Ben (Colin Firth) apparently losing his wife in an auto accident that throws him into a coma. He emerges from the coma to find the rest of the world mourning the death of a famous pop singer, leaving him to grieve while surrounded by indifferent grief. That's not an unpromising beginning for a story but it's followed by a whole lot of nothing. I'd almost defy anyone to watch the first half of this film and try to figure out what it's about. There are moments in the first half of Trauma when reality starts to seem unreal to Ben, but those moments don't relate to anything or signify anything or make any sort of point.Things do start to happen in the second half of the film, yet happen is all that they do. Telling a story is like building a chair. There is an almost unlimited number of ways to do it, but some of those ways work a lot better than others. I f a story starts at point A and A leads you to B and A and B flow into C and all three propel you into D and so on and so forth, that's one of the best ways to tell a story. That's the way most stories are told. Folks have been tinkering with that approach, trying to find different ways of getting from A to B to C to D. But whether they go from A to D or D to A or C to X to Q, most good stories start in one place and build a road that takes you to a different place.Trauma is uninterested in building that road. There's no sense that things are unfolding in Ben's life in any particular direction or for any particular purpose. When the film starts to upend Ben's view of reality, it doesn't mean anything to the audience because the revealed truth doesn't alter or have any connection to what Ben and the audience thought was the truth before. This movie is like a 90 minute long, bad twist ending. A good twist ending makes you look at what came before it in a different way. A bad twist ending tells you all the stuff you've been watching, didn't actually happen that way.For all that, though, if you really liked Colin Firth in some of his more high profile roles as the repressed Englishman that hopelessly romantic women eventually realize they should be with, you might enjoy watching give a completely different performance. Firth's Ben is a man descending into madness in a decidedly untheatric fashion. He's not terribly interesting on his own, but it's certainly not the standard "sanity slipping away" acting role. Mena Suvari is also quite lovely and manages to make a shallow character into a real person.This is a British film and like a lot of other British movies, it's an odd visual mix. Modern British cinema, at least in my somewhat limited experience, mixes very ordinary and pedestrian visuals with strikingly artistic images. Sometimes that can be quite compelling and sometimes that doesn't work at all, like when Trauma suddenly lapses into a scene that is a blatant rip-off of the movie Jacob's Ladder.All in all, I can't say that Trauma is a bad movie. It's just that it never amounts to anything…and I'm not sure the filmmakers even wanted it to be anything.

Well, I have to say that this type of movie is not necessarily what I usually like in a "restful, relaxing entertainment value." My reason for watching this was to continue my study of Colin Firth's film career since I saw him in A&E's production of "Pride and Prejudice" recently.However . . . although I have found most of the other movies Firth have played in to be either vulgar, filthy, slapstick or just plain dull for so charming a man and talented an actor (with the exception of "What a Girl Wants"), I can see that in "Trauma" he was shining through as the fantastic, brilliant actor that he is.This type of movie and part that he played can be one of the most challenging for any actor. The actor, Firth, has to believe everything that is going on around him and happening to him for the viewer to find it believable.The character he plays, Ben, starts out in the viewers mind as a sympathetic yet clearly disturbed young man. You are wondering what he is living on and yet how he can afford visiting a psychotherapist so often. You are actually suffering with him in the beginning and furious with his wife's family for their cold behavior.Little by little, the movie tears away the shell until you are getting a more clear view of what is going on and who and what Ben really is. You are wondering what his obsession is with the death of the singer, and how he could be involved. You are also finding out more and more than Ben had been stalking and terrorizing his "dead" wife.When finally his ex-wife unexpectedly makes a return entrance, the viewers are left to wonder at their senses and reasoning. We, the viewers, have experienced every heart break and internal punishment from Ben's mind including some really disturbing dreams. We cannot believe that this woman really is still alive and doubt our own sanity as Ben does.It is not so surprising that when the beautiful next door neighbor Charlotte, played by Mena Suvari, makes a return visit, our character Ben has completely flipped his lid – disbelieving in his own sanity and her very existence. He becomes psychotic about proving to himself and destroying what, in his mind, is telling him that does not really exist – a beautiful woman who seems to truly care about his torment.Our last final hope for Ben dies with his actions against Charlotte, and then with the concluding psychotherapist visit, the viewer realizes he/she has been duped through the entire movie in believing in Ben when there IS no psychotherapist.This was a truly amazing feat for a movie and for an actor, and that really surprised me, considering that I got the secret behind "Sixth Sense" in the previews of that movie before it came out.A couple of points to mention is that I did not understand what happened to his ant farm he was so fascinated by, and frankly, if Charlotte was supposed to be involved with psychics, why didn't she sense that there was danger in Ben at that moment before following him downstairs to nibble on a spider.The "F" word again was unnecessary for emphasis in areas, and the grimy scenes of abandon London buildings and streets, added to the overall depressed feeling from the film. Overall, this can be considered one of Firth's best portrayals, even if not the lovable character we would like to see him in.

It sometimes gives masterpieces:of course "spellbound " comes to mind.But "Spellbound " was made at a time when screenplays were elaborate and there was no place for vagueness."Trauma" turns on the ambiguousness: nightmares,hallucinations, shrink consultation,medium,investigation,TV news,it's hard to find your way through this muddled plot.It borrows sometimes from "Jacob's ladder" ( the nightmare (?) in the hospital)but its conclusion,unlike Adrian Lyne's work, does not make much sense.A man (Colin Firth,28 in the movie,actually 44 when the movie was made)has lost his wife in a road accident and he was at the wheel.At the same time ,a female pop star is murdered.The widower suffers from amnesia and when he tries to find back his past, it will be nothing that he expected of course...As for Colin Firth,why don't you watch "another country" or "apartment zero" instead?

There are many fine films out there where the sanity of the main character was brought into question (SECRET WINDOW, Johnny Depp, for one), leaving the audience to wonder what was real and what wasn't. All that I wondered as I watched this film is when it would end.While Colin Firth gave a fine performance, the story was muddled and confusing. I didn't care who was dead, who was alive, or who killed whom. I watched until the end, hoping I would receive some kind of payoff, as the film would just HAVE to redeem itself by penetrating through the miasma of confusion enough to give the viewer something, but I found nothing. This was a huge disappointment in every way.