Wild Mind
WILD MIND
Written by FujioTorikai | Review by Antonio Rozich
Wild Mind by FujioTorikai is a Sci-Fi drama screenplay featuring a mysterious town called Heartland. Heartland is considered to be a “paradise for the disabled“, a place where no matter of your physical disabilities, you can live an equally fruitful life thanks to the technical advancements. When Kate and Patrick enter the town at the story’s beginning everything seems ideal, but as you might guess, things take a different turn as the story progresses. What you probably won’t gu ess is what this turns into. Wild Mind isn’t another story where a seemingly perfect town has a dark secret in which the unsuspected protagonist gets entangled in, none of that Wicker Man vibe. People here are truly happy and Heartland truly enables everyone to do as they please. Still, you might wonder how this isolated town came to be with its advanced technology and that’s what Wild Mind is about. Without spoiling anything, let’s just say Torikai managed to pull off a great intrigue without the need for someone to get murdered in a dramatic fashion – something that’s been a conventional approach to creating drama in any story. And that isn’t a small feat in any way. And everything would be even better if somehow Torikai managed to add supernatural in the whole mix, or even existential philosophy? Well, if you think so, then this screenplay turned into a movie would be your dream becoming true! The script has a good start and it setups up the stage quite well. The introduction clearly paints the town’s visual and I can only imagine how it would look if the town of Heartland was brought to life on the big screen. From the beginning, Torikai creates a picture that automatically intrigues and then makes you want to know more. But like any decent writer, Torikai doesn’t give you more until it is climax. As it was said, Heartland is a Utopian town, and its origins are found in various scientific failures filled with equally failed human relationships. Although the story has the previously mentioned supernatural element, Wild Mind is foremost a realistic story that perfectly explores the vastness and craziness of our mind, hence, the title is more than fitting. Is the faith of every individual just to work, socialize and simply wait until his final day comes? Or is there a bigger meaning to our existence? Are the decisions we make completely ours to choose, or is there an omnipotent force subtly pulling our strings without us ever knowing? The city of Heartland was built on these questions, or to be more exact, it is a result of these questions.
We all experience sudden twists in our lives, ones that change our own story completely and force us on an entirely different life path no matter if we like it or not. The only thing we can do, is deal with the new life path we’ve been given and try to get the most out of it. Some of us fail, the same way as some of the characters in Wild Mind fail. But some manage to rise above and accomplish great goals, and creating a Utopian town certainly falls into the latter category. Wild Mind approaches these and many other topics in an insightful manner and considering the increase of interest for this kind of stories in the last few years, Wild Mind would be a nice addition. Not because the skeleton of the story is something that is never seen before, trust me, it isn’t. But because this script takes many great storyline aspects and somehow manages to combine them so it all makes sense. In order for Torikai to pull this off, he had to create a lot of characters and from the first few pages, you are already introduced to a big number of them. But each one is introduced subtly, without interfering with the development of another. Except for the places where the interference is needed for the story to progress of course. With that being said, the complexity made simple, which is the case in Wild Mind, is a great feat that comes with high risks, but also with possible big awards. A writer can easily get lost when he tries to create many characters, many sub stories that feed the main story and make sense of it all. It can either become a complete mess or a great story that will capture the minds of many. But by using a couple of quality writing tools such as flashbacks, nonlinear storytelling, and separate storylines the story line slowly progresses towards the same goal. This attempt to make a great story line is more than achievable. Wild Mind is a story that would make a perfect movie in this day and age. It gets even better when you realize how with a few tweaks and upgrades, the story could be even better. One that creates an influence that will stay with us for ages to come. Maybe, it can even influence someone to do something truly meaningful without the person even realizing it. We all have our own path in life, even stories. And the path of Wild Mind is one to look forward to see how it will unfold.
Antonio Rozich is working as a copywriter for a filmmaking startup called Try Cinema. Besides his usual copywriting, he also helps filmmakers with their screenplays by editing them and finding the ways to improve the initial filmmaker’s idea. When all of that is done, he turns to his true & original love: writing flash fiction, which he posts regularly on his site Syeta Stories.
