MR ROBOT - THE FUTURE IS COMING...

I don’t know about your social circle, but in mine Mr. Robot is pretty much a phenomenon. Everyone seemed to watch it and categorically EVERYONE seemed to adore it. I do not “do” hype as you know but this was coming from so many normally sane and sensible people (ehm, well, relatively so anyway) that I had to give it a shot. So I did. Now, I am only half way through but it has become such a stable part of my life SO darn quickly that I absolutely HAD to talk to you about it. We cannot have anyone else missing out on this, this is big news peeps.

Meet Elliot (Rami Malek). He is a rather extraordinary man for many different reasons. Suffering from social anxiety disorder he finds it extremely difficult to make contact with human beings in real life. What he is good, nay, BRILLIANT at is computers. This talent guarantees him a career at least. 

What it also guarantees, however, is the opportunity to make a difference. It is the 21^st Century after all, we live our lives online, whether we are Joe Bloggs or a crime lord. Elliot is content making a difference in his own little way until he is recruited by the mysterious Mr. Robot (Christian Slater). He is the leader of a band of renegade hackers called fsociety and they are intent on planning a revolution and changing the world one line of code at a time.  The crazy thing is that the way they are going, they just might succeed…

It took me a minute to realize what this was and why it was so good. But when I did, I had to admire the pure genius of it. Ok, so from practically the opening lines, Elliot complains of the capitalist system. He talks about how money enslaves us without us even really being aware of it. The invisible ties of “want”, “need”, “debt”, “credit” that dictates pretty much our every move. Into this world led by “invisible” forces comes an anti-hero with a mentor who lands in a secret force, a group of very diverse people ( kudos on fsociety’s diversity by the way, two men, two women, one black, one middle eastern lady wearing a hijab) who are going to defeat the invisible powers that are ruling the world and free humanity from its enslavement. Yep. Yep you got it. It IS The Matrix all over again. Just in series form so there are more ratings and it makes more money, ingenious really.

Now seriously, if you haven’t seen the series brace yourself. Major spoiler alert. But there is of course a second film this series references. Fight Club. And I actually kicked myself when I realized that Mr Robot was… Well, Elliot. And the formula, here as well, is mirrored eerily. Society being brought to its knees, a group led by a charismatic and mentally unstable leader, the unreliable narrator and Darlene(Carly Charkin) who replaces Trinity in the Matrix scenario and Marla for the Fight Club scenario. She is a perfect combination of the two really - she looks for all the world like a 21st century version of Marla, she is like Trinity in the sense that she is a fighter and a real force to be reckoned with.  I need to say, this being a tv series, the big reveal, which in Fight Club creeps up on you slowly and yet in reality takes only a few minutes is eeked out pretty much over one episode.

It has had a severe revamp, there are none of Neo’s “magical powers” or the nervous, visceral energy of Fight Club that brings the world to its knees supposedly purely through the power of chaos. Here, we have actually thought out a plan that could, potentially, actually work. Pure, rational coding and hacking  is what we are dealing with– and to be honest what with everything that is actually possible on the internet these days hacking is as close to magic as you can get ! All the economic arguments Elliot and Mr Robot put forward are those of a disgruntled generation that are no longer happy with the “old fashioned” way of doing things and think the system is unfair, having got the short end of the stick compared to the boom years (i.e. mainly millennials.  I.e. the main targeted audience). The antagonist is Tyler Wellick (Martin Wallstrom) is cold, charismatic and so drop dead gorgeous that you quite frankly can’t help wanting him to win and lose at the same time. I see the reason for the upgrade from Agent Smith. He is representing capitalism after all, capitalism is slick, glossy and it wants you to buy it.   

Elliot is a lot less dark than Neo and our narrator from Fight Club though. I would say all the characters are. But he is a lot easier to sympathize with as well. His social anxiety makes him very much like us – all our shy, weird, insecure moments mirrored and multiplied, giving him a weak point exactly like us and making his “superpowers” instantly tolerable. He has a “best friend” – Angela (Portia Doubleday) that has always been a little more for him but neither has ever quite broached it – a common (not necessarily omnipresent, I am really not saying that) but common, and relatable issue of male – female friendships. What I am trying to say is Elliot is one of the most tangible and real anti-heroes I have seen on screen. That coupled with Rami Malek’s clear talent and brilliant performance put him squarely in the hall of fame of immortal television characters.  In this respect he gets the better of our narrator in Fight Club as well. Our narrator, though a lot more real than Neo, is still a man of extremes between his attendance of self-help groups as a means of making connection and later on, his emergence as a charismatic, one-man-band leader. Elliot is a leader too – but it’s almost in spite of himself. His “non-leader” persona is a lot closer to us than the narrator ever was.

Now please don’t get me wrong. I am not saying any of this is bad, that Mr Robot is simply a cheap knock-off or something. I am just saying “this is how it was put together”. Mr. Robot is fascinating and fun. I laugh and cry as I watch it and drool over Martin Walstrom. I finished the series and am officially heartbroken – I have no idea how to wait until the second series!  All have to remember though peeps, those glossy things we buy, eat, watch, listen to and – by and large – live are actually cleverly constructed by some marketing and sales people somewhere… The Matrix is out there folks… Hmm… I think I am more heavily influenced by this series than I initially thought… 

ARE YOU READY TO BECOME SOMETHING NEW... "THE LOBSTER"

I saw the trailer for The Lobster some time ago. I thought it was categorically the funniest thing I have seen in years. I then, like a muppet, missed in the cinema. I was overjoyed when it came out in VOD and I actually watched it absolutely ages ago, practically on the day it came out. Its director Yorgos Lanthimos is not a household name yet – but he is getting there. And those who HAVE heard of him tend to give a knee jerk YES! Or NO! response. If you haven’t tried him out yet, you really should give his work a whirl – see which camp you end up in!

The Lobster takes place in a dystopian near future. There (as in quite a few places here, as a matter of fact), being a couple is categorically the most important thing you have to achieve in your life. However fewer invitations to dinners and awkward conversations are the least the singletons of this universe have to worry about. If you find you are single, you have 45 days to find a partner. If you fail, you are transformed into an animal of your choice and released into the wild. Now, of course the process in monitored, the moment you report you have become single to the authorities you are transported to a special facility with other singletons where you have to endeavour to find a partner. Our tale follows David (Colin Farrel) who is recently divorced. He has just started his stay in the facility and has a whole world of new characters to meet, make friends with and hopefully date. Oh the whole place looks like a slightly eccentric holiday village, but David is under no illusions. The real question is whether he will survive – and if he does, in what form…

Yorgos Lanthimos is one of those –black and white – kind of directors. You either adore him and, like me, think he is the best thing since moving images on a screen, or think he is crass, extreme and all together hard to watch. His films are definitely not for the faint of heart. In my particular case I found watching Dogtooth (the first film I ever watched by Lanthimos) a weirdly sado-masochistic experience. Yes, definitely hard to watch. Harder than a lot of things I have ever seen in fact. But also weirdly pleasurable… And why? I guess because he has the rather dubious talent of being able to give you the kind of shock the goriest slashers do, only without the gore and blood and in a very innocuous looking setting. And let’s be honest here – it is rare to find the kind of film that gets that kind of visceral response out of you in the day to day cinematic market. I don’t necessarily think it’s a matter of shocking to get publicity and bums on seats. It actually is the job of all art to make you feel things. To make you react. To make you think. There is a little too much playing it safe, a little too much staying within your comfort zone when it comes to films these days I feel. That is sort of why Hollywood films are less of my day to day consumption and more of an occasional treat. I need the films that I watch actually do something to me – and if you are of the same tribe as me I can promise you that The Lobster will smack you around the head  several times and leave you spinning like a top…

Like all of his other films, this universe of Yorgos Lanthimos is unforgiving. The rules are as harsh as they are eccentric and disobedience is really not an option. Well. I say that, but in this universe – as in, I strongly suspect, most others – as long as you give the illusion of going by the rules, you can get away with, well, a certain amount… This, in the film has hilarious results that I will not be discussing here today as a lot of the film counts on the element of surprise to make it work. The film does, however, become a Kafaesque dance where our characters have to apply an endless set of rules to the most intimate areas of their lives. And what makes the film even funnier is the fact that most of us – without being aware of it – do this anyway. You know those little things called social norms we are all so attached to. Yeah… I am willing to bet you any money that you will be giving them a hefty amount of thought after you have watched this little number.

Of course the brilliance of the actors only adds to the success of the dance – Colin Farrel is the perfect slightly bumbling everyman helping us understand this universe as we try to figure it out ourselves. Ably assisted by the likes of John C. Reily, Ben Whishaw and Rachel Weisz who all participate in this straight faced – in fact deadly serious – dance with conviction and gusto that will have you cringing and crying out for them as the story takes its twists and turns…

In short, the first thing Lanthimos does when he takes you into a universe is tear up the rule book, the second is to throw you into the ring at a no-holds-barred cage fight. It is something you definitely need to decide on for yourself – but if you survive the fight, well, the benefits are absolutely glorious…