Lost Spiderhead What makes a story beautiful

The dark story of the company’s compliance got Miles Teller and Chris Hemsworth – and he lost his teeth.

There are good reasons why Spiderhead – Joseph Kosinski’s adaptation of George Saunders’ brilliant short story “Escape from Spiderhead” on Netflix – is the only feature-based feature film to win a Booker Award. All Saunders characters try to live a decent life under the clutches of careless institutions and have to make an ideal film plot, because who wouldn’t know? However, entertainment conventions call on our heroes to revolt, fight and then shine in the territory, as if injustice could be prevented by changing the landscape. Saunders is more honest about the possibility that one of us will come out, but his art lies in his ability to bring black humor out of bad and always hopeless situations, the ironic difference between talking corporations and the usual brutality he obscures, the ways in which language fails. . to measure the depth of our experience.

Among Saunders’ many early jobs (as a janitor, working on the construction of an oil company in Sumatra, in a slaughterhouse), he worked on writing reports on scientists who tested new drugs for the pharmaceutical company, an experience that is still reflected in his fiction. . When I interviewed Saunders in 2000, he thought of the “dead lord” used by scientists to describe the diseases that laboratory animals visit during cancer treatment research. “There was a monkey,” he said, “that no matter how much they gave him did not affect him. He is a monkey of Christ. He has a certain dignity. Of course, no matter what, they will always kill. But it’s a unique touching account. ”

The anecdote, told from a monkey’s point of view, is Saunders’ short story and is not very different from the “Escape from Spiderhead” plot, in which the narrator Jeff is a prisoner of a crime. Starring Miles The Teller in the film, he agreed to serve as the subject in a series of drug experiments that control human emotions. Drugs can make people more grateful for their natural beauty and being able to express their thoughts. They can also make people fall in love for a while, but they are crazy in love with whoever is in the room. In a Jeremy Bentham-style panopticon, Chief Investigator Abnesti (Chris Hemsworth) sits in “Control,” a center-like room in the middle of a circle of observation rooms where criminals like Jeff go through the effects of name drugs. . . as Verbaluce and LuvInclyned (Luvactin in the film).

To later evaluate the long-term effect, Abnesti ordered Jeff to choose which of the two women he had previously loved artificially would receive a dose of what was called Darkenfloxx. The drug caused severe emotional pain because Jeff was well aware that he had given it himself. As with all Spiderhead benefits, prisoners should agree to the process by saying “familiar.” If Jeff did not show a willingness to save women, the experiment was considered successful and Darkenfloxx also failed. But later Abnesti called Jeff to explain that the results were not good enough. Now they want – an invisible plaque that Abnesti says he took his orders – to hand over the medicine to one of the women, because Jeff describes his reaction under the influence of Verbaluce’s driving language.

At first, Spiderhead watched the story very carefully and had a shocking appearance. In the film, the lab is a brutalist concrete base on an intact island. The prisoners lived a comfortable life in private rooms, ate nectarines and prosciutto, and played arcade games in a common room that looked uncomfortable in the student canteen. According to the unattractive and enthusiastic Hemsworth, Abnesti pursues an open door policy and reminds his subordinates that their presence in the facility is a privilege they deserve by allowing them to have “MobiPaks” filled with multicolored drug bowls. on their backs. Researchers are adjusting their doses using smartphone apps that appear to control Nest thermostats. Medicine may still be in the testing phase, but it’s easy to imagine a world where everyone spent all day healing their emotions on their phones. But it later turned out that the film lacked the courage of Saunders’ story. The filmmakers show a love interest for Jeff, Lizzy (Jurnee Smollett). If Jeff says he doesn’t want to see any of the other women he’s associated with at Darkenfloxx, even though he’s not special in defense, you know that around Abnesti, he let him. when dosing Lizzy. An experiment can be a silent test of romantic love. One is easily identified by a bad person. There was a triumphant turn of the tables, there were also fight scenes and a chase and a final shot of complete freedom. And soon it will be.

On the other hand, the film also lacks the story’s nervousness. He will destroy Jeff’s criminal past, so he is more guilty of manslaughter than of manslaughter. And he felt the awful part that he wasn’t a bad person, even though he was convicted, right? In Saunders’ story, Jeff kills another man during a drunken brawl when the embarrassment of losing a fight with anyone he knows leads to a mad rage. (In the film, he drove drunk and crashed into a tree, killing two passengers, including his own wife.) “I don’t even know why I did it,” he admits. “It’s like drinking and being a child and almost losing, they call me on a drip set, like TemperBerst or something.” Sometimes human impulses are as random, extreme and destructive as Spiderhead drugs.

When Jeff refuses to participate in Darkenfloxx’s second-wife administration, Abnesti tries to convince him by telling him about the terrible crimes he has committed. But as Jeff of Saunders said, whether someone is “bad” or not, whether they like it or not, does not affect their resistance to the Darkenfloxx experiment. “I don’t want anyone to do that,” he realized. “Even though I don’t like the man, even though I hate him, I don’t want to do it.” It is easier for our loved ones to suffer than for bad strangers.

The film makes Abnesti a dishonest scientist, an individual whose schemes may be thwarted by revelation, but Abnesti in the short story is only half a man, part of a system that cannot be reversed because it is everywhere. In a stupid rush at the end to reassure the audience that everything is going well, the film delivers breathtaking news that Jeff and Lizzy have already served themselves, even though Abnesti’s frustrated police assistant arrives at the lab – not positively. I can imagine the development of Saunders’ whole story, but it is discussed here as the arrival of the knights. Then the villain smoothly takes over the damage of his own equipment as Jeff and Lizzy take off in a speedboat to meet new life. Jeff’s short story meets Saunders’ more believable but serious fate. After refusing to give permission for the experiment, Abnesti goes out for a bowl of another drug that will follow him. (In the film, Abnesti tries and fails to come up with a cure for humiliating people – a bit of a mistake for all the average people out there who believe they deny conscience in the Milgram Obedience Experiment, which Milgram even needs medicine to prove otherwise !) Jeff decides that the only way to get out is to commit ODing suicide in Darkenfloxx himself. As serious as this last hearing is, Saunders makes it a transcendental, real escape. Yes, the monkeys were all killed in the end, but at least this one came out lifeless.