Left Field Cinema

The Director: In the short sixteen years since David Fincher’s directorial debut, he has only made one film that has fallen below what was otherwise a consistent level of excellence. Critically, different viewers may have more negative opinions on his work, especially Alien 3. After building a successful career in the world of music videos, Fincher attempted to move from the world of pop stars to the world of movie stars. It’s a transition which is often made in the MTV generation and one that makes sense with the direction that western cinema was taking in the early 1990’s and still today. Of all the directors to make this move, Fincher is the strongest, for one reason and one reason only, he brings with him as much substance as he does style. Although critics and audiences viciously attacked Alien 3 on release, there was certainly more going for the film than there was for Fincher when he was hired for the job. It was generally considered such a massive failure that Fincher would probably never work in film again. But he bounced back with the first of three modern classics which he has to his name, Se7en, the grim, horrific serial killer movie which was as visually moody as it was uncompromisingly downbeat. Next came The Game, continuing Fincher’s dark, colder approach to films; the more unique feature of the film is its dedication to the central character, who is present in every scene and knows as much about the mystery at any one moment as any one member of the audience. In this sense Fincher managed to achieve a participatory film experience, by maintaining a first person perspective throughout. Cinema-goers were asked to get on a ride with Michael Douglas and see where they all might end up, only an audacious final twist in the tale would divide viewers, on the one side the audience who wanted a conventional ending would leave disappointed, on the other side - an audience seeking something more original would leave pleased with the knowledge that they had been as completely fooled as the protagonist had been. The second of Fincher’s three modern classics is Fight Club, an intelligent, (and at the time) modern look at society and how materialism is infecting our lives. The master of deceptive marketing, Fincher knew that audiences who had not read the source novel would be unaware of the sort of film they were about to see or the message of the piece which was far from surreptitious and yet still subjective in its final moments. Fight Club is arguably the last great American film of the 20th Centaury, correctly deconstructing the psyche of the pre September 11th America. Fight Club asked the bigger questions which are only asked in art when a society is as far away from survivalist principles as possible: Why am I here? Do I have anything worth living for? I have everything I want, so why am I still unhappy? Fight Club asked the questions, and then gave as conclusive an answer as it possibly could. Only Fincher could have made broad philosophical posturing commercially viable and he did so at just the right point, a brief two years later and the world would change significantly, The end of the Clinton Administration (when the ludicrous exploits of Kenneth Star actually meant something) to the Bush administration and the global war on terror. Zodiac would become his third contemporary masterpiece, returning to serial killer themes. A true story, Zodiac is not a rehash of Se7en, in fact it’s the reverse in many respects. Zodiac takes subtlety to a new level within serial killer films, releasing its menace to the audience slowly through almost microscopic cues. Although violent in places, Zodiac proves, if proof were needed, that Fincher does not need violence to propel his films. Zodiac is one of the strongest films of 2007 and his subtlest, finest work to date.

This year saw the release of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, not surprisingly Fincher was nominated for a Best Director award at the academy awards, not surprisingly because this is Fincher’s weakest film to date, the main problem is it is around an hour too long for the story it is telling. A completely unnecessary framing device is so tedious it beggars belief, the whole story is told through flash back as a dying woman's daughter reads Benjamin's journal, the two strands might be tied together in the end, but alas they are not and the presence of hurricane Katrina is totally pointless and needlessly distracting. There's also a misguided sequence about a man building a clock that runs backwards as if in some wayward attempt to explain the protagonists condition, but again this proves superfluous and unnecessary. The plot is repetitive, predictable, and conceited. Boy meets girl, boy leaves girl, boy gets girl back, girl leaves boy, again and again and again. Every time they meet up there is a moment of "oh my God how much you've changed!" which is boring the first time, so you can imagine what happens on the eighth time! Benjamin is a very passive protagonist, there are many shocks and horrors thrown his way through the narrative, not least of which is a battle with a German U-boat in World War II, at all stages his simply gorks, lets his jaw hang loose and accepts what life has thrown with him. Good for Benjamin - not so good for the audience who'd like to see our hero express some sort of emotion – at least once. The film features good set-design, art work, costumes, cinematography etc, but the performances are pedestrian. There is the occasional instance of humour, but overall it feels like Fincher is trying to crow-bar in "magic" when actually "magic" just comes from making a good film - something this is unfortunately not. One excellent sequence shows how a combination of minor events conspire towards a character getting hit by a car, but the outcome of the incident is insignificant and does not justify such an interesting sequence. Of all seven films Fincher has made this is the least deserving of a Best Picture Oscar, thankfully the academy realised this as well.

The Film: As far from the big questions asked in Fight Club and the over indulgent scope of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button as possible. With a minimal cast of characters and in a single location; it is Fincher’s simplest film to date, but as with other Chamber pieces – simplicity conceals a complexity hidden beneath.

The plot follows Meg Altman and her teenage daughter Sarah. Meg, recently separated from her husband, moves into an exceptionally large Manhattan apartment, they view the house in the morning and are living in it the very same night. The swiftness of this move is due to how quickly a property as appealing as this one would be snapped up. As they settle in for the night, three burglars break into the house, looking for Millions of Dollars stashed in a secret safe by the previous (now departed) owner. Not expecting anyone to have moved into the house, the thieves are shocked to find the small family, already sleep in their new abode. Realising there are intruders in the house, Meg and Sarah lock themselves in the titular Panic Room (an area of the house designed to be impenetrable to intruders, with complete surveillance equipment, supplies and phone lines to the outside world to call for the police. The idea being that during a home invasion the occupant can lock themselves in the Panic Room call the police and wait for them to deal with any undesirables lurking around the premises). However the safe the thieves are after is located in the securest area of the house – the panic room. So a game of cat and mouse begins as the thieves attempt to get inside and then coax the mother and daughter out of the panic room, whilst Meg and Sarah try to scare them off and contact the police.

The tone of the film is set immediately by an impressive opening title sequence which features a series of beautifully composed images of New York City, and impressively incorporated into these images are the credits, as the credits run David Shire’s dark and brooding score sets us up for a serious film, infusing the otherwise neutral images of New York with a menace which they would otherwise lack. The following sequence sees Meg and Sarah arrive at their new house along with real estate agents who briskly shows them around the building. The potential house is spacious, however extremely dank, with not much in the way of natural or artificial light; again the music and the location set a tone of serious-mindedness. However there are hints of the comedy to come, the two real-estate agents are presented as aloof characters – so aloof that they can’t help but be seen as comical. Indeed the male estate agent is played by Ian Buchanan an actor best known for playing one of the most overtly comical roles in the second series of Twin Peaks. The female estate agent is played by Lydia Lynch, Meg can’t control Sarah who begins messing around with the elevator, the female estate agent shouts “Kid! No elevator!” to comic effect, this happens on two occasions, her abruptness is naturally funny material and at odds with the serious tone, it is naturally funny because of how deeply her behaviour contrasts with the mouse like and rather timid Meg who clearly lacks the confidence to discipline her own child.

However these minor comic precursors are completely overshadowed by the dank and dark mood Fincher has created. This is not to say comedy is immune from darkness - far from it. But the expectation that all comedy should be presented in a more cuddly form is a symptom which points towards a less complex cinema audience, an audience who presume genre by the font of the titles and the tone of music. Even with some of the more recent edgier black comedies like Gus Van Sant’s 1995 film To Die For, there are still numerous visual/audio signifiers to indicate that the tone of the film is just slightly less than serious. Panic Room by contrast maintains a completely serious edge throughout, it never collapses into absurdity or making light of its characters or setting, it never compromises the sense of danger and it never pauses for the audience to get over hysterical fits of laughter. An audience member could easily sit through the entire film and not let out so much as a smirk – and most of the time, this is exactly what audiences did. But every now and then an individual audience member finds themselves more in tune with David Koepp’s screenplay than David Fincher’s film, and when this happens, hysterical laughter is almost certain to follow (as are the confused looks of every other audience members who sit wondering what sort of hallucinatory drugs this cinema-goer has taken in order to facilitate laughter at this of all films).

Key to understanding the comedy that is Panic Room, is an understanding of situational irony. One of the Merriam-Webster definitions of irony requires “an incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the expected result or an event or result marked by such incongruity. Incongruity between a situation developed in a drama and the accompanying words or actions that is understood by the audience but not by the characters in the play.” Situational irony is slightly different, as described in Wikipedia: “Situational irony is the disparity of intention and result: when the result of an action is contrary to the desired or expected effect.” Their example of situational irony is the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan, Wikipedia expands this point: “When John Hinckley attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan, all of his shots initially missed the President; however one bullet ricocheted off the bullet-proof windows of the Presidential limousine and struck Reagan in the chest. Thus, the windows made to protect the President from gunfire were partially responsible for his being shot.” Now if you don’t at least giggle at that story then there’s something wrong with you. From John Hinckley through to the reference in David Fincher’s Se7en where the main character of Detective Mill’s mocks Hinckley as a generic “Whack-o” excusing his behaviour with the statement “Jodie Foster made me do it”, back to another David Fincher film staring Jodie Foster and the subject of this weeks analysis – Panic Room.

Panic Room has so many layers of situational irony that they’re hard to keep track of, it is noted and mocked by the lead thief Junior played by Jared Leto, as one of his accomplices (a man named Burnham played by Forest Whitaker) states: “I spent the last 12 years of my life building rooms like this specifically to keep out people like us”, Junior berates him >“yes, I know it’s so ironic”. But this is actually a smaller example, the most obvious example is that the money the thieves are after is locked in the Panic Room, thus rendering the room the focal point of the crime. Where the Panic Room would have protected the mother and daughter in any ordinary home invasion, here it simply serves to exacerbate their danger, causing all members of the criminal gang to focus on the single objective – to get inside the panic room. Were there no Panic Room, the thieves would have doubtlessly tied Meg and Sarah up taken what they wanted and left – no one would have come to any harm and the entire event would have been far less dangerous and traumatic. At every point in the film expectations are reversed and central to this is the panic room, an area designed to create safety, actually creates danger, putting the lives of its occupant at risk at nearly every point whilst never doing anything it is not designed to do. The panic room functions perfectly throughout, it never lets the intruders in, yet still maintains a constant level of jeopardy for our protagonists, every supply that Meg and Sarah could need are present in the room except the two supplies that they actually need – a working phone to contact the outside world and insulin to stop Sarah from suffering a diabetes related death. Without these two items everything else is rendered irrelevant, they’re trapped with no way to call for help and it’s only a matter of time before Sarah dies without the insulin. Of course this dilemma is what drives the story forward and the mother daughter duo attempt to communicate with the outside world using other means at their disposal, these often coming about because of the actions of the thieves; the thieves attempt to gas them out of the room, hooking up a canister of profane gas to their air sources, in an attempt to breath Meg and Sarah get to the lowest point in the room and find a small air vent; after the gassing crisis, they use a torch to attempt an SOS signal to a man living in a flat across the street, the action is futile as the irritated sleepy man simply closes the window blinds and goes back to sleep (a comical moment in itself), but had the intruders not attempted to gas Meg and Sarah then they would not have discovered the air vent. The gassing sequence leads to one of the funniest reversals in the film as the lead robber Junior played by Jered Leto hears movement inside the room and places his ear against the adjacent wall; the movement he can here is Meg shuffling around an air vent with a gas igniter, whether this move was an attempt to burn up the gas or to blow up the intruders is not certain – but the outcome is both as the wall explodes and Junior violently catches fire. The sequence ends with Sarah shocked in disbelief at her mothers actions, Meg says “Promise me you will never do anything like that” Sarah nods in shock, this moment often gets laughs possibly more to do with the relief that the tense sequence is over and also possibly because it is a joke most parents will appreciate.

At other points in the film, Meg attempts to communicate with the outside world, the thieves begin to bicker so she uses the opportunity to sneak out of the room and grab a mobile phone, this is of no use to her as the walls are to thick and the cellular signal is too weak, at another point Meg manages to hook up the disconnected panic room phone to the still connected main line of the house, her first instinct is to call the police, but the police put her on hold – a joke also used to great effect in John McTiernan’s Die Hard With A Vengeance - but no less funny here.

Where Koepp’s script really manages a remarkable maneuver is at the films mid-point: desperate for her daughters insulin Meg has to get out of the panic room, desperate to get into the room and with the arrival of a hostage in the form of Meg’s estranged husband, Burnham and the more violently volatile third thieve Raoul trick Meg into thinking they’ve both left the adjacent room. Meg leaves to get the insulin and when she returns finds the thieves in the panic room with her immobilised daughter. Meg only has enough time to throw the insulin kit into the room before the secure door closes locking two violent men inside with Sarah and trapping Raoul’s fingers in the door in the process. But during all the confusion the single gun the thieves have is left outside the panic room. Now Meg is outside of the panic room but can’t leave the house because they’ve got her daughter, the thieves are now inside the panic room with the money but can’t leave the room because Meg is outside with their gun. This is scriptwriting genius of the highest order, a total reversal of the situation which maintains the situational irony and in fact through maintaining it increases its potency. Meg finally gets what she’s after, the police arrive at the house but now she has to get rid of them or the thieves will kill Sarah. Plus this reversal only comes about because Meg called her husband after being put on hold by the police, he’s come to help them and in doing so has inadvertently exacerbated the situation, everything that Raoul, Junior, Burnham or Meg and Sarah do to help themselves in this situation actually makes things worse.

Of course not all of the irony is comical, some of it stings, Burnham was going to walk out were it not for the surveillance tapes which had already incriminated him, once the thieves are inside the panic room, he realises their were no videos in the surveillance recorders so their was no need for him to stay, not only that but Meg takes to destroying all of the cameras in the house with a sledge hammer so that the thieves won’t be able to track her movements to which Raoul states: “why didn’t we think of that?” Truly the irony is not that Burnham designed the panic room to keep thieves out, but rather that despite knowing the intricate systems of the panic room so well, he is oblivious to the more blindingly obvious solutions to their problems.

Fincher doesn’t direct the film for laughs, but he does seem to be aware of the films comic potential, as he plays up various other humorous aspects but never changes his tone. When Raoul gets his fingers trapped he screams like a little girl, later when the door is opened he picks up his severed fingers as if part of some comedy of the grotesque - John Webster or later Shakespearean dark comedy about human mutilation. Comedy comes in the form of the daughter mother relationship, Meg being more subservient than Sarah, when threatening the thieves over the intercom system Sarah instructs her mother to say “fuck” when threatening the thieves with the police, it’s a very funny moment, as is Junior’s attempts to shout back at them only for Burnham to inform Junior that the page system is only one-way – Sarah and Meg can’t hear him. The various levels of incompetence within the small gang of thieves also conjures incidental comedy, Junior in particular posing as a criminal master mind, and braiding his hair like a “gang-star” when actually he’s nothing more than a spoilt rich kid in over his head, Burnham’s knowledge of the panic room systems and yet inability to spot the blindingly obvious and Raoul the bus driver posing as mercenary criminal with a ruthless attitude but is ultimately proven ineffectual when pitted against a defenseless mother and daughter.

Panic Room is exceptionally well-made; the only real negatives in the film are Leto’s occasional tenancies towards over-acting and an unnecessary final scene (but even this is but a minor quibble). Panic Room shows off David Fincher’s amazing use of space, light and movement within an environment he maintains total control over, Panic Room has some of the most interesting uses of CGI to enhance rather than overwhelm, as Fincher’s camera glides through every crack and hole, and explores every corner of the newly bought house. Jodie Foster is as usual exacting in the lead, conjuring vulnerability by downing a single glass of red wine, but also a woman blessed with natural and believable resourcefulness, the script doesn’t resort to creating some CIA agent/ex military back-story for Meg, she’s resourceful because she’s resourceful, not because of any special training. Kristen Stewart as Sarah is an interesting depiction of a teenage girl, a tomboy with just the right balance of brattiness and fear. Whitaker is also convincing as the thief with a sense of humanity, although perhaps his character exposition is provided in somewhat clunky intervals which are the rarer moments of unsubtle script writing as ultimately the scripts blending of black comedy and human drama through situational irony remains its strongest element.

M.Dawson