Borrowing its name from the famous M Night Shyamalan thriller, Split presents us with a story that deals with a similar theme as well - a protagonist who battles dissociative identity disorder. As we are taken into his world, we realise the precarious balance on which his life rests, after having been isolated from everything else, owing to the hallucinatory image of a man that plagues him now.
The film is marked by the repetitive appearance of the character who represents the protagonist's hallucination, making it a shared experience between two people. The presence of the same face as before makes it unclear what the true intentions of the film are - is it dealing only with a mental disorder which is specific and unique to each individual, or is it conveying that after witnessing a traumatic experience another person suffers from a fracture in his cognition too? Or is the hallucination simply a metaphor for inner demons that acquire a corporeal form for its characters? The film would have benefited from more lucidity on some of these questions that it raises.
Read LessThe film is marked by the repetitive appearance of the character who represents the protagonist's hallucination, making it a shared experience between two people. The presence of the same face as before makes it unclear what the true intentions of the film are - is it dealing only with a mental disorder which is specific and unique to each individual, or is it conveying that after witnessing a traumatic experience another person suffers from a fracture in his cognition too? Or is the hallucination simply a metaphor for inner demons that acquire a corporeal form for its characters? The film would have benefited from more lucidity on some of these questions that it raises.
