Then might I recommend Compliance! Craig Zobel's movie is about the urban legend you've heard – we are told that it is based on true events – in which a man calls a fast-food restaurant or some other establishment and then requests that a manager strip-search one of the employees. This leads to worse and worse things... although how we get to those things is (I guess?) the "thriller" part of this film.
I should say that the performances in Compliance are excellent across the board, not least of which is a really lovely lead performance by Ann Dowd as the manager. She is truly great in this part.Compliance is about the banal violences we are willing to enact upon one another and the relative ease with which we can come to see someone else as less than human. It is also a movie about what the filmmakers see as the deeply misplaced sense of power we have given to the authority figures around us. Near the end of the film, a police officer asks the protagonist why she did what she did even though she didn't want to do it. She responds, I just knew it was going to happen. This was, for me, perhaps the most striking moment in Compliance: the moment I expected least and perhaps its only moment of profundity.
I think the trouble I had with this film is exactly what the pleasure of watching is supposed to be. The entire thing struck me as vaguely prurient. Are we expected to enjoy watching these people be tricked and do things they do not want to do but are willing to do if they are told they "must"? Are we expected to enjoy watching this man get away with masterminding such a scheme? Or is it that we enjoy him (later) getting caught by the real police? Do we hope that the crisis will be averted and everyone will come to their senses? Do we hope it continues so that we get to see more? I am not sure about any of this, honestly. I think this is because I can't figure out where the pleasure in this movie is supposed to reside.
Compliance is, as its poster promises, chilling, unnerving, and terrific. But these were chills I couldn't enjoy, and terror I'd rather not have experienced.
I'm excited about this film. I was really kind of hoping that Ann would get nom'd so that I'd have to watch it, but now I'll have to put off viewing it for awhile.
ReplyDeleteI just watched this, and I think it's interesting that all of your questions about the film utilize the word 'enjoy'. And 'pleasure'. You're operating under the assumption that film is inherently, and always should be, pleasurable. Which I'm not sure I agree with. I didn't 'enjoy' watching this film, but I don't think that's a bad thing. I found it interesting and stimulating and abhorrent, and I think that's enough.
ReplyDeleteWell I am not necessarily saying that the film should be fun or happy – certainly film has many pleasures that are unrelated to happy endings: Lincoln for example I found very pleasurable to watch. But I think what I was trying to point to was a problem with the direction. The film takes pleasure in the trick that the man pulls on these people. I thought Compliance was duly horrified by the coercive sex act that takes place, but in a way the film asks us to hope that it happens, to hope that the whole thing hasn't gone as far as it will go. I found all of this problematic and distasteful.
Delete(This may be a question of genre, too, Julie. You like horror movies, and I do not. Remember?)
I know you didn't mean fun or happy :) But you're right, I got some kind of perverse pleasure from watching it go as far as it did, and I suppose that's a tiny bit of why I "enjoy" horror films as well. But to be clear, what I really like about horror is not the violence (because the actual violence in most horror films is not at all interesting), but being afraid. The tension and suspense of 'what's around the corner'. I'm not a fan of the genre referred to as "torture porn" -- THE HOSTELs of the world are just disgusting and uninteresting. I didn't find COMPLIANCE disgusting. I found it shocking in the moment -- but then, in reflection, less shocking. Because like the protagonist, I knew it was going to happen. And that's the scary part -- just waiting for that horrific moment to occur -- that I enjoy.
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