Amanda: The Tracey Fragments

“My name is Tracey Berkowitz. Fifteen. Just a normal girl who hates herself.”

Ok, if you’ve already heard me ramble on about this film this past week I apologize, and it would be in your best interest to stop reading right now. For those of you who have yet to hear my reaction to this film, this is your final chance to turn away from my ranting.

You’re still with me? Alright. Let me preface this by just getting this out in the open: yes, I am slightly obsessed with Ellen Page.
Quickly moving on, The film “The Tracy Fragments” is a wonderful work of art, extremely experimental, and of course, very well acted. In particular, this film incorporates an interesting technique I have never seen before, which is to use multiple cameras as well as intense editing after shooting to create, as the title suggests, fragments on the screen.

This film style enables the story to become somewhat of a mystery, almost never fully revealing straight on shots of what is occurring in pivotal scenes of the film. By doing this, as well as telling the story in a jumbled manner (think “Momento”), the viewer must create the truth of the story in their own mind.
“When things happen to people, they radiate a light. Because they have a picture caught inside them. Because they were there and you weren't. And because you only got a piece. And because all you can do is shrink and blow up that one tiny piece.”
This film gives viewers many fragments of the life of Ellen Page’s character, Tracey Berkowitz, and it us up to us to put them together.

While all this great and challenging imagery is going on for the viewers, Tracey is struggling with her own idea of what the truth is, so in a sense we are in this crazy mess together. This immediately made me think of Wenders and Kieslowski’s work which both do a great job of making the audience an active part of their films. Because the story is told backwards and it is not obvious what exactly is happening in every shot, the fragments must come together in the viewers’ minds rather than on the screen. It blurs the lines of reality and fiction, and calls to question many of the topics we’ve discussed in class about philosophy and the search for meaning.

The film touches on many religious questions and Tracey’s character brings up aspects of eastern philosophy such as re-incarnation and the oneness of all living things.
“When a horse falls, foam comes out of its mouth. When it falls, the legs of the horse thrash and the horse is no good... So somebody shoots it. The horse turns into glue. A machine puts the glue into bottles and children squeeze the bottles to get the glue out and stick bits of paper onto cards. Glue gets on the children's hands and the children eat the glue. And the children become the horse.”

Now to give a brief overview of the strange story depicted in the film.
Tracey is a teenage girl completely neglected by her family and constantly made fun of at school for her androgyny, referred to by most of the student body as an “it.” She struggles with her hate for her parents, unable to decide if their ignoring her is a just reason for feeling so abused and alone. To deal with this torment Tracey creates a great fantasy in her mind of the new token “rock and roll/ rebel without a cause” boy in school falling in love with her. She exhibits much more independence and courage than an average 15 year old, and her recklessness towards life is apparently due to the fact that she has no one in her life to rely on or care about her. That is, no one except her young brother, who suddenly and mysteriously goes missing. This is where the story both begins and ends, and it is up to the audience to put the messy story of Tracey’s life to understand what actually occurred on the day her brother disappeared.

I would highly recommend this film although I would give the warning that although it still has the mature and incredible wit of Ellen Page, this is certainly no “Juno.” It is a quite dark and depressing tale of a messed up teenage girl who is facing the rough and awkward time of being a teenager completely on her own. No friends, no family and no edgy, artsy boyfriend to help out along the way. Tracey must discover for herself how to understand and deal with truth and reality while facing the ultimate question, “how do you know what’s real and what’s not when the whole world is inside your head?”