"Any sufficiently advanced technology
is indistinguishable from magic."
-Arthur C. Clarke "Profiles of The Future", 1961 (Clarke's third law)
WARNING! Please go see "The Box" in theaters now before reading the following. SPOILERS ARE EVERYWHERE.
When "Donnie Darko" came out in 2001, then 26 year old Writer/Director Richard Kelly was hailed (on the DVD cult circuit anyway) as the came-out-of-nowhere-prolific-auteur of the new millennium. It goes without saying that anyone reading this blog entry is at least familiar with "Darko" on the surface with all of its allegories, transport tunnels and that Gary Jules "Mad World" track. "Darko" has embedded itself in the post 9/11 pop culture psyche (its hero even meets his demise/fate by airplane engine) to such great heights that Film4 listed it #9 on the 50 Films To See Before You Die compilation hailing it "an astonishingly imaginative, poignant, genre-defying tale of teen love, insanity and time travel." Not bad for Kelly's feature debut.
I should quickly point out two things. I too consider "Darko" a work of staggering loyalty to singular vision and a tremendous accomplishment as a film in its mastering of technical bravura. The other thing I want to point out is that I ran away from Kelly's second film "Southland Tales" for reasons of being let down and having to possibly marginalize "Darko's" brilliance because of it. So then why go see Kelly's third feature film "The Box"?
I knew other things: Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson was not going to be in "The Box" and that I am a fan of 80s "Twilight Zone" episode named "Button, Button" on which this new film is based on (a piece that draws its source material form Richard Matheson's short story).
Here's a quick recap of that episode: Norma and Arthur Lewis are a financially oppressed married couple who are met with a bizarre offer. A strange man by the name of Steward offers them (well, Norma in particular) a small box equipped with one button. Should they push that button they will be given $200,000 in one lump sum. The catch is, by pressing this button someone they "don't know" will die. To make a long story short (after the pair quibble about the morality of this offer) Norma abruptly pushes the button on a whim. When Steward returns to pick up the box he gives the couple their cash reward and mentions that the same box will be reprogrammed and given to another individual, along with the same offer. The episode ends with Steward saying: "I can assure you it will be offered to someone whom you don't know." Thus, the big scare comes with the audience's realization that Norma (and probably Arthur too) will die next, assuming the next individual pushes the button.
Now that episode gave me some genuine chills when I first saw it. Was Steward a finely dressed murderer who liked to play fucked up psychological games (like the box/cash reward offer) with his victims before coming back to kill them (and presumably retrieving the money to use it on the next poor individual)? Or was Steward part of a bigger network of diabolical individuals who were doing this in other places too?
Kelly obviously is convinced it's the latter. In his 2009 film adaptation the opening act more or less mirrors the 80s "Twilight Zone" episode. Here are some tweaks: 1) the money is upped to $1,000,000 2) it's the 1970s & the married couple have a young son and 3) the setting is Langley, Virginia (the Twilight episode seems to take place in California). Aside from the prize money upgrade the other narrative changes are very significant. First, Richard Kelly was born on 1975 in Virginia. Second, Kelly's father during this time worked on the Mars Viking Lander Program (where the first pictures from the Mars surface came from) for NASA in Langley. In the film, Arthur Lewis (played by James Marsden) also works for NASA and in particular helps develop the camera to take said Mars pictures. So, on the outset, one could maybe see "The Box" as Kelly's semi-autobiographical work.
But the canvas of conspiracy and all of its elaborate thematic and scientific implications that Kelly illustrates is pretty overwhelming. So now that it's been some time since seeing the film, I want to go back with you--the reader--and try to get a better grasp on this film and to hopefully qualify its significance/potency to a level that is close to "Donnie Darko."
So let's go.
After the wife Norma (Cameron Diaz) abruptly presses the button on the box, Steward (Frank Langella) does indeed return with the cash reward and picks up the box. The same ominous line is said (without being underlined): "I can assure you it will be offered to someone whom you don't know." So here is the tipping point for Kelly and film. What's going to be the revelation? Is it some government conspiracy? An act of vast moral terrorism?
In plain terms, Kelly keeps it close the sci-fi realm, largely due to Arthur working for NASA. Lots of exposition is devoted to the Mars Lander Program (even on the living room television). We learn later that Steward, before being the ambiguous door-to-door box deliveryman, worked for NASA too and was struck by lightning. Unlike the "Twilight Zone" episode, this version of Steward is physically deformed in the face due to burned tissue. His side teeth are even visible because of these burns (a creepy image to be sure). In this most basic fashion, Steward is the embodiment of death, going door to door.
But Kelly doesn't just settle with the science fiction in this at times epic parable.
If anything, this is the real end of the world film 2009 has to offer (not some hokey disaster movie like "2012"). Kelly is giving us an ultimatum as a human race. If we are to assume that everyone is willing to have other people killed in order to gain their own wealth, then all is lost. In its most bare form, that's what the proposition of the box and the cash reward represents.
Also, a key thing to note are the allusions in the film, and boy do we know how Kelly loves those (does "cellar door" still have a place in your memory?). Specifically, when Norma is teaching her high school English class we see the class is studying existentialist Jean Paul-Sartre and his vision of hell. Later after pressing the button and receiving the cash reward, Norma and Arthur even go see a Sartre stage play. Are you starting to get it? If not, Kelly spells it out quite literally after a weird dinner rehearsal party when Norma and Arthur begin to suspect a bigger hand controlling their fates: as a valet driver gives them their car on a snowy night they see that someone has written "NO EXIT" on the snow on their car window. "No Exit" is of course the name of Sartre's 1944 play where the line "Hell is other people" is famously declared.
In the case of "The Box" hell most certainly is "other people." Yes, the people in the streets act like pod people and they bleed from the nose (due to frontal lobe hemorrhaging). If we take the "science" from this and couple it with the characters of science in the film, we can rightly say there are extraterrestrial beings at work here (the ones orchestrating the whole human experiment). And though Steward keeps referring to his "employers" when asked why all this is happening I don't know if I personally can stop at the conclusion of just aliens being behind the curtain.
Much like in "Darko," Kelly is fascinated with transportation or more specifically, physical human transport in space and time. In the film, as Arthur and Norma try to figure out if they are indeed the next people to die in Steward's dark game, the image and theory of portals are again brought up. Arthur in particular physically walks through a portal. In this film they are visualized in two steps. First, as free standing blocks of wavering water doors. Then once one passes through them, it's sort of like going through a negative-exposed hyperspace. If you remember in "Donnie Darko" the human portals also were water-like (resembling the tunneling aqua cylinder forms in "The Abyss"). The water in this case is very important. If we are to assume it as a religious image, then we can say that Arthur is baptized after walking through it. And if we are to assume that what he sees as he goes through that portal is "eternal salvation" then it is heaven/the afterlife. And don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to sell some neo-religious-crazy warning to folks. I do think Kelly is very knowledgeable about the human experience and that's why he uses religious archetypes in his work (one could argue that Donnie Darko himself was a Christ-like figure or martyr dying for mankind) in order to tap into people's primal fears or affirmations.
If you run with this idea, and the knowledge of a world of people falling prey to greed (the million dollars) and murder (someone dying when a button is pushed), then perhaps there is no real exit. It is Sartre's realization of a hell above ground, here in life. And if these 'employers' or whatever beings that are running this experiment are offering a second chance to an other worldly existence, then perhaps that is the only salvation. No exit. Just a transport into another life (or form of it).
(left: x-ray of Norma's foot; right: poster for "Donnie Darko")
Some final thoughts. In the film the acronym HREM pops up in the form of a manual (HUMAN RESOURCE EXPLOITATION MANUAL) Arthur obtains, which reveals some of the mechanisms and inner workings of the box units. If you go to the film's official website and thumb around you will eventually be able to actually download a PDF copy of this manual. If you do some real world research you'll find that in practical science terminology HREM really stands for High Resolution Electron Microscopy and according to the Journal of Research of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, "HREM can be used to determine an approximate structural model, with further refinement of the model using much higher resolution powder x-ray or neutron diffraction." Why am I even mentioning this? Because the film goes into lengths with Norma's foot and its missing toes which were a result of a freak x-ray accident (picture at the above left). Consider this: if we replace the "HREM' in this scientific explanation with the "HREM" manual from Kelly's film, then we can say that the box experiment is a way of stripping the human race down to its rawest form--or "approximate structural model"--to see if people are ultimately good (will they press the button or not?).
One last thought has been flirted in some of the critical reviews of the film. Considering you the reader saw the film as instructed at the beginning of this blog entry you would know that at the end of the film, in order to essentially save the life of his son, Arthur must shoot Norma in the heart, obviously killing her. This action coupled with the knowledge that Norma was the one who actually pushed the button (and theoretically authorizing the murder of an individual) has led some to label Kelly as misogynist. Also, a missed clue to this possible theory comes in the serial comic book Walter Lewis (the couple's son) reads called "The Teleporting Man." If we know Arthur teleports in the film, we can mirror him to the character of that comic book--a hero. And if the hero shoots mommy in the heart in order to save a young, innocent life, well there you have it. Frankly, I think that's a bit extreme and if you want to unravel a current film that epitomizes the female individual as the root of natural evil, I suggest dissecting Lars Von Trier's "Antichrist."
Still, for all of its flaws, gaping third act plot holes, Richard Kelly's "The Box" is unlike any other film in the cinemas right now. Going along with the theme of 2009 where Directors stick to their vision whether it is universally celebrated or not (e.g. Spike Jonze's "Where The Wild Things Are" or the Coens' "A Serious Man"), it is assured in its filmmaking and is rarely boring. It's full of (sometimes too many) ideas and has skill to spare. "The Box"--much like that Artur C. Clarke quote at the top of the page--is at times "indistinguishable from magic."
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